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The Christmas Truce 1914

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THE 1914 CHRISTMAS TRUCE – HOW IT HAPPENED, AND WHY IT NEVER HAPPENED AGAIN.

It’s coming up to 110 years since this most legendary of World War 1 events took place: the Christmas Truce of 1914. It’s been immortalised in movies, on TV, in songs, opera, plays, even in a Sainsbury’s commercial. How and why did it happen, and how did the world get to know about it?

It wasn’t the only example of a temporary truce on the Western Front. There had been previous tacit agreements to halt hostilities so each side could retrieve their dead and wounded, take exercise or carry out repairs. There was a ‘live and let live’ attitude in which, early on in the war at least, soldiers acknowledged that the enemy was having as miserable a time of it as they were.

Prior to Christmas 1914 (and remember, it was all supposed to be over by then) there were some official calls for a ceasefire from British suffragettes and Pope Benedict XV amongst others. They were rejected.

Men on both sides couldn’t help but be aware that Christmas was coming. Gifts and food were arriving from home, including charitable initiatives such as the Princess Mary gift boxes. In a time when religion was a far more important ingredient of Christmas than it is now, the men must have asked themselves how war could continue at this time of supposed ‘peace on earth.’

So it seems that the truce was a spontaneous event coming from below, from the men themselves. Or rather, a series of events. There were Christmas truces of varying duration along many, although not all, sectors of the Western Front. Commanders on the ground seem to have accepted it while not exactly approving it, and officers on both sides joined in with the rank and file.

There are many fascinating contemporary accounts from the soldiers. Letters home and regimental diaries all record the truce. It began with carol singing; sweet melodies in German, English and French yearning across No Man’s Land. There would have been shouted remarks and rude jokes too. Some of the Germans put up Christmas trees in plain sight. Sometimes there were shouted assurances, or semaphore signals, that firing was over for the time being.

On Christmas Day, the men began to scramble up from their trenches, unarmed, and step cautiously into No Man’s Land. There are multiple accounts of exchanges of cigarettes, food, drink, uniform buttons, and other souvenirs. Some even exchanged addresses. For the first time, they could get a close look at one another, compare the quality of their kit, their rations and their own physical condition. Just ordinary blokes meeting other ordinary blokes. Many expressed opinions that they hated the war and just wanted it over with. There was mutual carol-singing too. Imagine how moving a bi-lingual rendering of ‘Silent Night’ would have sounded. An unidentified British private, whose account appeared in the London press, said “The Germans seem very nice chaps, and said they were awfully sick of the war.”

And the famous football match? It appears there were kickabouts in many places, usually with a ball improvised from something, rather than formal matches. The ground was too chewed up for that, and too many men wanted to join in anyway.

It must be said that this short period of friendly fraternisation didn’t happen in every sector.  One of the Carillon’s local regiments, the 1st Leicesters, were holding trenches in La Grande Flamengrie Farm sector, and did not enjoy a truce. Instead, two of their men were killed and one wounded on Christmas Day.

By the end of Boxing Day, in most sectors it was back to deadly business as usual.

We have photographs of these extraordinary happenings because some of the men had their own cameras with them and took unofficial snaps for their own records. The pictures found their way to the newspapers and the media loved them. Soldiers also wrote home and their first-hand accounts also appeared in the papers. It seemed an almost unbelievable story; a case of ‘you couldn’t make it up’.

It didn’t happen again. High Command on both sides banned any further fraternisation, and from 1915 on, the nature of the war changed. It became ever nastier, as gas, tanks and more lethal weapons entered the fray. The sinking of the Lusitania by a German U-Boat in May 1915, with the loss of 1,197 civilians, also helped put an end to any further ideas about friendly connections across the trenches.

Peace in war at Christmas is an irresistible idea, and one reason why the 1914 Truce has attained mythic status. Could it really have happened? It certainly could, and it did.

 

 

 

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