December 22, 2002

Christmas Truce

Of all Christmas accounts -- after that of the Bible -- none is more gripping than the Christmas Truce of 1914 during the Great War in Europe.

That war is now catalogued as the First World War, or WWI, because of the United States' participation. At the time, it was just another of the ongoing wars between Germany, France and Britain.

Germany had crashed through Belgium into France and was halted by the Allies on the fields of Flanders, centered at Ypres.  There, the German and allied soldiers had reached stalemate - dug into trenches less than a football-field apart.

Unusual heavy rains that fall turned the fields into a mud bog impassable to artillery or vehicles. Britain was not to invent "tanks" to breach trenches until 1916 and use them effectively until a year later.

In the early years of the Great War, fighting was man-to-man and the new, deadly machine guns.

A fierce battle early in December had left "no-man's land" between the forward trenches littered with dead soldiers. Burial details to recover bodies were mowed down to add to the carnage.

Rotting bodies of comrades demoralized both armies pinned down in their trenches.

Legend and Reality

According to popular legend today, German troops on Christmas Eve placed candle-lit pine trees atop their parapets and sang "Silent Night." Allied soldiers, principally British, called back "Merry Christmas." Then, both lines of soldiers crawled from their trenches to shake hands and exchange souvenirs.

This is a mythologized version of a real event that was dramatic enough without pacifist overtones.

Commanders on both sides of the line had been dickering over a truce to bury the dead that were a health and morale problem. Men in the trenches were aware of negotiations and therefore anticipated a truce.  

It is true that Germany had shipped thousands of little "Christmas trees" - complete with packages of little candles - to their soldiers on the Western Front as morale boosters. Religiously oriented evergreen trees were an ancient Saxon custom preceding Christianity.

Undoubtedly both sides across the Flanders turnip fields sang Christmas carols on Christmas Eve. Fraternization began on Christmas morning. It was as an appropriate time to call an informal truce by soldiers impatient to bury their dead.

In those days, there was no military censorship. British and German soldiers - astonished at their brashness - wrote letters home about the event.

Many of those letters were passed on to local newspapers. These give us a realistic, but still touching, account of the now famous "Christmas Truce." The role of "Silent Night" - having its own, romantic origin - was not mentioned until post-war memoirs were published in the 1920's.

A contemporary report   - reflecting scores of other eye-witness letters - was published at the time by Bruce Bairnsfather. He was a popular cartoonist of that era who created British Private "Old Bill" - the forerunner of WWII's "Willie and Joe" by Bill Mauldin.

Wrote Bairnsfather, who took part in the truce:

"A voice in the darkness shouted in English, with a strong German accent, 'Come over here!'

"A ripple of mirth swept along our trench, followed by a rude outburst of mouth organs (Bronx cheers) and laughter.

"Presently, in a lull, one of our sergeants repeated the request, 'Come over here!'

"'You come half-way. I come half-way,' floated out of the darkness.

"'Come on, then!' shouted the sergeant. 'I'm coming along the hedge.'  

"After much suspicious shouting and jocular derision from both sides, our sergeant went along the hedge which ran at right-angles to the two lines of trenches.

"Presently the sergeant returned. He had with him a few German cigars and cigarettes which he had exchanged for a couple of Machonochie's (a brand name for canned food delicacies, generally chocolate) and a tin of Capstan (a popular brand of cigarettes) which he had taken with him.

"On Christmas morning, I awoke very early and emerged from my dug-out into the trench. It was a perfect day. A beautiful, cloudless blue sky. The ground hard and white, fading off towards the wood in a thin low-lying mist.

"'Fancy all this hate, war and discomfort on a day like this,' I thought to myself. The whole spirit of Christmas seemed to be there, so much so that I remember thinking, 'This indescribable something in the air, this Peace and Goodwill feeling, surely will have some effect on the situation here today.'

"Walking about the trench a little later, discussing the curious affair of the night before, we suddenly became aware of the fact we were seeing a lot of evidences of Germans. Heads were bobbing about and showing over the parapet in a most reckless way. As we looked, this phenomenon became more and more pronounced.

"A complete Boche figure suddenly appeared on the parapet and looked about itself. This complaint became infectious. It didn't take our Bert (the British sergeant who exchanged goods with the Germans the previous day) long to be up on the skyline.

"This was the signal for more Boche (an offensive term for anyone of German descent) to be disclosed.

"This was replied to by our men, until in less time than it takes to tell, half a dozen or so of each of the belligerents were outside their trenches and advancing towards each other in no-man's land.

"I clambered up and over our parapet and moved out across the field to look. Clan in a muddy suit of khaki and wearing a sheepskin coat and Balaclava helmet, I joined the throng about half-way across to the German trenches.

 "Everyone was talking and laughing and souvenir hunting. Suddenly, one of the Boches ran back to his trench. He reappeared presently with a large camera. I posed in a mixed group for several photographs.

 "This was my first real sight of them at close quarters. Here they were - the actual, practical soldiers of the German army.

"There was not an atom of hate on either side that day, and yet, on our side, not for a moment, was the will relaxed to beat them. It was just like the interval between the rounds in a friendly boxing match."

* * *

The dead all along the Ypres line were buried, where they lay, in unmarked graves. If there was a chaplain present, he said a prayer. In most cases, a lieutenant or sergeant solemnized the proceedings.

In the afternoon, the enemies gathered to swap stories, show family pictures and exchange small gifts. In some cases, they played soccer.

In some cases, the soldiers were reluctant to be first to resume fighting. After a few shots in the air to warn each other it was time to get down to business, war resumed.

In order to prevent such fraternization on Christmas Day 1915, the British general ordered all-day "slow cannonading."

Informal truces were not unusual in wars when fighting was up close and personal. Mechanization made hand-to-hand fighting largely rare, and the impetus for unauthorized truces became an historical anachronism.

Americans entered what they called the European War in support of the Allies on April 6, 1917. The Great War ended with Allied victory on "the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" of 1918.

Author: Lindsey Williams

Cutlines - three col.

Photo provided

1-

head and shoulders group soldiers

[ A group of German and British soldiers pose for a group photograph during the unauthorized Christmas Truce of 1914. ]

2-

three standing soldiers

[ Bruce Bairnsfather, British cartoonist famous for his front-line sketches during the Great War 1914-18, gestures while talking with a German soldier. ]  

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