Near Laventie, France, on the morning of 23 December 1914, a British sentry reported that several unarmed Germans were cavorting atop their trench parapets, making "come over here" gestures while a juggler performed tricks with tins and stones to applause from his comrades. A British officer, summoned from his dugout, ordered his men to keep the Germans away, since the apparently friendly proposals could be a ruse to get a close-up examination of the British trenches.
Christmas Eve was marked by heavy frost, which the troops welcomed as a respite from waist-deep mud. On that day, soldiers on the left of the British trench lines saw about a dozen Germans emerge from the morning mist bearing boxes of cigars and bottles of beer. The British allowed them to approach, and the Germans' lone English-speaking representative asked for a cessation of hostilities and for English newspapers, cigarettes and bully beef - the canned corned beef so reviled by British troops. The exchange was accompanied by handshakes over the barbed wire and by mutual yuletide greetings between the German contingent and an increasing gathering of incredulous Britons.
No further fraternisation took place until dusk, when astonished British soldiers, still buzzing about the morning encounter, saw Saxon troops placing small candlelit Christmas trees and Chinese lanterns on the parapet of their trench. The British Tommies shouted encouragement, brandishing bottles and canned food while standing in the open behind the barbed wire.
At 11 o'clock on a lovely moonlit night, a rendition of the famed Austrian carol "Stille Nacht" came from the German trenches. British cheers and applause at the carol's finale were acknowledged by bows from the equally enthusiastic performers.
To reward their Saxon and Bavarian opponents - and following a brief discussion of possible consequences - a group of officerless Tommies crawled over the snow into no man's land. They carried bully beef, chocolate and the ubiquitous plum-and-apple jam from newly arrived parcels from home, to be exchanged for cigars and schnapps. During the food trade, a rendezvous was arranged between officers of both sides in no man's land. The result was the unofficial truce that has become enshrined in the annals of war as a striking example of man's humanity to man - when antagonists found themselves stripped of cannon-fodder status and came face to face with their enemies who shared the misery and the hopelessness of the war.
The holiday spirit prevailed unabated throughout Christmas Eve, though officers from the opposite camps were apprehensive as to what their high commands would make of it. Soldiers traded names and addresses with their enemies, and vows were made to write after the war. Indeed, many lasting friendships were made that would survive long after the armistice in 1918.
A Scottish soldier produced a soccer ball, and a vigorous game took place on the corrugated earth, with caps representing goal posts. Shouts in both languages permeated the stillness. "It lasted an hour - and no referee!" wrote a German soldier of the Royal Saxon Regiment. The match ended in a 3-1 Saxon victory over the Lancashire Fusiliers.
Eventually, the British troops shook hands to bid farewell to their German counterparts, overwhelmed by meeting enemies who did not at all seem like beasts who bayoneted babies and defiled women, as cartoons had depicted them back home. Despite the "over by Christmas" vows from their leaders, Tommy and Jerry alike realized that the war would be long and savage, with new, frightful weapons employed, and that the Christmas camaraderie was unlikely to be repeated. Before ducking into their respective sandbagged trenches, British and German personnel turned and waved back to those amiable benefactors whom they would soon be trying to kill again.
Christmas Eve caroling resumed that pre-yuletide night as a sudden, fierce wind carried tones of Stille Nacht across to the British, who responded with The First Noel and Come All Ye Faithful to a storm of clapping and cheers of "Bravo, Tommy!" from good-natured Saxons. As a German searchlight swept the night sky, a lone Saxon soldier, holding aloft a small candlelit Christmas tree, approached the British trenches and handed his humble symbol of yuletide across the barbed wire to the dumbfounded occupants. The Illustrated London News of 9 January 1915, depicted the incident with the caption, "The Light of Peace in the Trenches on Christmas Eve."
From the top of the German positions, charcoal-lighted braziers pierced the darkness, prompting the British to reciprocate. "Just like Fleet Street on Christmas Night," wrote a British corporal to his parents. "I shall never forget it!" A plaintive appeal came from the German ranks: "English soldiers! Where are your Christmas trees?"
Given the depredations that German soldiers had wrought on both their countries, the French and Belgians had minimal fraternisation in their sectors, and both allies were openly critical of British participation in the truce. The French believed that even a temporary peace would be construed as recognition of the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. On Christmas Day the French and Germans observed a civil but less-than-cordial cease-fire to bury their dead. Distrustful French and German troops stiffly shook hands and returned to the trenches. One further meeting took place in no man's land at French instigation, in which their officers suggested that firing should cease over the holiday between their two armies, but that the Germans should fire on the British.
Christmas morning in the British sector dawned in a thick frost and an uncanny stillness in sharp contrast to the previous night's revelry. Impromptu worship services were conducted above both lines of trenches in full view of each side. Combined services allowed German and British chaplains to intermingle and to lead the mixed congregation in prayer and hymn-singing. Some soldiers joined freely in jogging in no man's land to keep out the chill. An extraordinary coincidence occurred during the no man's land gathering when one Tommy recognized his German barber from prewar London and had his picture taken on a crate while getting a short-back-and-sides haircut.
Crude hand-painted signs appeared above trench ramparts. "We not shoot, you not shoot," read a German sign. Word of these astounding Christmas scenes reached incredulous British corps commander General Sir Henry Rawlison, who noted in his diary: "A German shouted out to our men 'Look out, we have a general coming.. .so we have to fire at you but we'll aim high. You do the same for us! "'
As the morning fog lifted, a British officer and two other ranks reached the German position and requested an extension of the cease-fire to bury more dead bodies, some of which had lain in no man's land for weeks. The Germans readily agreed. The working parties, heads bared in tribute, consented to bring each other's dead midway across no man's land so they could be interred with their comrades.
Hitherto dismissed by the Allies as inflexible and morose, German soldiers were the truce's main supporters from the beginning. The genial Bavarians and Saxons contrasted with hard-line Prussians. In an isolated misadventure, a soldier of the Dublin Fusiliers was killed by a stray bullet, prompting Saxons to send over an apology to the British trench: "It must have been one of those damned Prussians!" Emphasizing their regrets at the fatality, the German rolled over two barrels of beer from a captured French brewery to the English line near Le Touquet and received Christmas puddings in exchange.
Troops opposed to the
historic truce remained in their positions nursing their deep-rooted distrust
of the enemy while their mates intermixed, taking part in what many of them
feared was the last chance to exchange more food and souvenirs. Pickelhauben,
the Germans' distinguishing spiked helmets, were eagerly sought by British
soldiers and traded for pocketknives, esteemed by Saxons and Bavarians alike.
Christmas Day 1914 passed into history, and with it went a great deal of the
rancor with which the opposing soldiers had marched off to war, to hymns of
hate and jingoism.
The troops tentatively poked their heads above trench parapets in the first light of a snowy Boxing Day, 26 December, and the British and Germans, still reluctant to resume hostilities after the holiday euphoria, milled about their trenches, indifferent to what would have been sheer suicide 36 hours before. Groups of soldiers repaired trench breastworks and fortified their posts for the inevitable resumption of hostilities. A British corporal wrote in a letter home, "I would not have swapped yesterday for being home to Christmas dinner by the old fireside!"
A few desultory shots were fired skyward from both sides. A British officer climbed onto his parapet waving a handcrafted "Merry Christmas" flag, and a German captain countered with his own sign, "Thank you!" Throughout Boxing Day the men conversed across narrow stretches of no man's land. "How did you like our beer yesterday?" a German called out in English. "It was a bit weak, but we enjoyed it," was the cheery response.
Having exhausted their repertoire of carols the previous day, the British serenaded the Germans with such familiar standards as Tipperary and There's a Long, Long Trail. Jerry, always in better voice, responded with selections from Die Lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow), by former Austro-Hungarian army band member Franz Lehar.
British troops who had been home on Christmas leave were chagrined when they got back to their lines to lean of the remarkable scenes they had missed over the previous two days. "The Allemands seemed like quite decent chaps," their mates said. "Look at these cigars they gave us! They call this stuff 'sauerkraut!"'
Elsewhere along the
Western Front that by now stretched from the English Channel south to neutral
Switzerland, hostile gunfire had continued over Christmas, although on a milder
scale.
The Christmas truce died hard. A few troops met in no man's land on Boxing
Day afternoon, removing overcoats with the express intention of trading, but
prudence prevailed, since the men could not figure out how to account for
a "British warm" or a "German gray" to their respective
officers.
That evening, amid a sprinkle of snow, British General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien sent an order to commanders in the truce district: "I have issued the strictest orders that on no account is intercourse to be allowed between the opposing troops. To finish this war quickly we must keep up the fighting spirit....I am calling for particulars as to names of officers and units who took part in this Christmas gathering with a view to disciplinary action."
No evidence exists that Smith-Dorrien's threat was ever carried out. In his diary the general added, "War to the knife is the only way to carry out a campaign of this sort."
The German high command responded in a similar vein. All further fraternisation was forbidden, and deviation from the order would lead to a transfer to the Russian front, a dismal prospect. In defiance of the menacing directives, as late as 10 January 1915, at Saxon prompting, small parties of intrepid soldiers continued to meet in no man's land. Said an understanding and equally dauntless British colonel, "I don't think they [the Germans] want to start [any] more than we do as it only means ...being hit and does not affect the end of the war!"
A group of unarmed Germans, wandering between the trenches, was warned by a British gun battery officer to get inside their barbed wire. Petulantly, they refused and sat down outside their wire, watching shells blasting their trench-bound comrades.
By New Year's Eve the Christmas truce was worldwide news and featured, with photos taken by troops in no man's land, in British and German newspapers. The blue-collar Daily Mirror editorialised: "The soldier's heart has rarely any hatred in it. He goes out to fight because that's his job. He fights for his country. . .against his country's enemies. Collectively [the enemy] are to be condemned and blown to pieces. Individually, he knows they're not bad sorts!" London's austere Daily Telegraph's war correspondent, Ashmead Bartlett, wrote, "It seems to prove that the German soldier is a good-hearted, peace loving individual once he is outside the influence of the Prussian military machine."
The war escalated as January 1915 came to a close. British writer A.J.P Taylor called 1915 "a year of battles which have no meaning except as names on a war memorial". British troops in the truce sector were warned by commanding officers that "nothing of the kind of Christmas will be allowed this year. You are to remain possessed by the spirit of hate, answering any advances with lead." The death penalty was announced as punishment in all sections of the British line. From the German side came similar warnings: "Any attempt at fraternisation with the enemy. . . is strictly forbidden; this crime will be considered as verging on high treason."
As Christmas 1915 approached, German soldiers, enthusiastic truce participants from the onset, were ecstatic to receive a directive from company commands ordering a choir assembled for caroling "powerful enough to be heard in the British trenches!" The sobering strains of Stille Nacht wafted across no man's land once more - and for the last time - to whistling, cheers and riotous applause from the British ranks, but with no choral response.
To some participants, the Christmas truce was merely a lark, a respite from the daily dance with death. For others, that brief armistice promised a sudden, merciful end to the war. That's all it was, however, a short-lived, unfulfilled promise.
Reprinted from Military
History magazine.
Near Laventie, France, on the morning of 23 December 1914, a British sentry reported that several unarmed Germans were cavorting atop their trench parapets, making "come over here" gestures while a juggler performed tricks with tins and stones to applause from his comrades. A British officer, summoned from his dugout, ordered his men to keep the Germans away, since the apparently friendly proposals could be a ruse to get a close-up examination of the British trenches.
Christmas Eve was marked by heavy frost, which the troops welcomed as a respite from waist-deep mud. On that day, soldiers on the left of the British trench lines saw about a dozen Germans emerge from the morning mist bearing boxes of cigars and bottles of beer. The British allowed them to approach, and the Germans' lone English-speaking representative asked for a cessation of hostilities and for English newspapers, cigarettes and bully beef - the canned corned beef so reviled by British troops. The exchange was accompanied by handshakes over the barbed wire and by mutual yuletide greetings between the German contingent and an increasing gathering of incredulous Britons.
No further fraternisation took place until dusk, when astonished British soldiers, still buzzing about the morning encounter, saw Saxon troops placing small candlelit Christmas trees and Chinese lanterns on the parapet of their trench. The British Tommies shouted encouragement, brandishing bottles and canned food while standing in the open behind the barbed wire.
At 11 o'clock on a lovely moonlit night, a rendition of the famed Austrian carol "Stille Nacht" came from the German trenches. British cheers and applause at the carol's finale were acknowledged by bows from the equally enthusiastic performers.
To reward their Saxon and Bavarian opponents - and following a brief discussion of possible consequences - a group of officerless Tommies crawled over the snow into no man's land. They carried bully beef, chocolate and the ubiquitous plum-and-apple jam from newly arrived parcels from home, to be exchanged for cigars and schnapps. During the food trade, a rendezvous was arranged between officers of both sides in no man's land. The result was the unofficial truce that has become enshrined in the annals of war as a striking example of man's humanity to man - when antagonists found themselves stripped of cannon-fodder status and came face to face with their enemies who shared the misery and the hopelessness of the war.
The holiday spirit prevailed unabated throughout Christmas Eve, though officers from the opposite camps were apprehensive as to what their high commands would make of it. Soldiers traded names and addresses with their enemies, and vows were made to write after the war. Indeed, many lasting friendships were made that would survive long after the armistice in 1918.
A Scottish soldier produced a soccer ball, and a vigorous game took place on the corrugated earth, with caps representing goal posts. Shouts in both languages permeated the stillness. "It lasted an hour - and no referee!" wrote a German soldier of the Royal Saxon Regiment. The match ended in a 3-1 Saxon victory over the Lancashire Fusiliers.
Eventually, the British troops shook hands to bid farewell to their German counterparts, overwhelmed by meeting enemies who did not at all seem like beasts who bayoneted babies and defiled women, as cartoons had depicted them back home. Despite the "over by Christmas" vows from their leaders, Tommy and Jerry alike realized that the war would be long and savage, with new, frightful weapons employed, and that the Christmas camaraderie was unlikely to be repeated. Before ducking into their respective sandbagged trenches, British and German personnel turned and waved back to those amiable benefactors whom they would soon be trying to kill again.
Christmas Eve caroling resumed that pre-yuletide night as a sudden, fierce wind carried tones of Stille Nacht across to the British, who responded with The First Noel and Come All Ye Faithful to a storm of clapping and cheers of "Bravo, Tommy!" from good-natured Saxons. As a German searchlight swept the night sky, a lone Saxon soldier, holding aloft a small candlelit Christmas tree, approached the British trenches and handed his humble symbol of yuletide across the barbed wire to the dumbfounded occupants. The Illustrated London News of 9 January 1915, depicted the incident with the caption, "The Light of Peace in the Trenches on Christmas Eve."
From the top of the German positions, charcoal-lighted braziers pierced the darkness, prompting the British to reciprocate. "Just like Fleet Street on Christmas Night," wrote a British corporal to his parents. "I shall never forget it!" A plaintive appeal came from the German ranks: "English soldiers! Where are your Christmas trees?"
Given the depredations that German soldiers had wrought on both their countries, the French and Belgians had minimal fraternisation in their sectors, and both allies were openly critical of British participation in the truce. The French believed that even a temporary peace would be construed as recognition of the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. On Christmas Day the French and Germans observed a civil but less-than-cordial cease-fire to bury their dead. Distrustful French and German troops stiffly shook hands and returned to the trenches. One further meeting took place in no man's land at French instigation, in which their officers suggested that firing should cease over the holiday between their two armies, but that the Germans should fire on the British.
Christmas morning in the British sector dawned in a thick frost and an uncanny stillness in sharp contrast to the previous night's revelry. Impromptu worship services were conducted above both lines of trenches in full view of each side. Combined services allowed German and British chaplains to intermingle and to lead the mixed congregation in prayer and hymn-singing. Some soldiers joined freely in jogging in no man's land to keep out the chill. An extraordinary coincidence occurred during the no man's land gathering when one Tommy recognized his German barber from prewar London and had his picture taken on a crate while getting a short-back-and-sides haircut.
Crude hand-painted signs appeared above trench ramparts. "We not shoot, you not shoot," read a German sign. Word of these astounding Christmas scenes reached incredulous British corps commander General Sir Henry Rawlison, who noted in his diary: "A German shouted out to our men 'Look out, we have a general coming.. .so we have to fire at you but we'll aim high. You do the same for us! "'
As the morning fog lifted, a British officer and two other ranks reached the German position and requested an extension of the cease-fire to bury more dead bodies, some of which had lain in no man's land for weeks. The Germans readily agreed. The working parties, heads bared in tribute, consented to bring each other's dead midway across no man's land so they could be interred with their comrades.
Hitherto dismissed by the Allies as inflexible and morose, German soldiers were the truce's main supporters from the beginning. The genial Bavarians and Saxons contrasted with hard-line Prussians. In an isolated misadventure, a soldier of the Dublin Fusiliers was killed by a stray bullet, prompting Saxons to send over an apology to the British trench: "It must have been one of those damned Prussians!" Emphasizing their regrets at the fatality, the German rolled over two barrels of beer from a captured French brewery to the English line near Le Touquet and received Christmas puddings in exchange.
Troops opposed to the
historic truce remained in their positions nursing their deep-rooted distrust
of the enemy while their mates intermixed, taking part in what many of them
feared was the last chance to exchange more food and souvenirs. Pickelhauben,
the Germans' distinguishing spiked helmets, were eagerly sought by British
soldiers and traded for pocketknives, esteemed by Saxons and Bavarians alike.
Christmas Day 1914 passed into history, and with it went a great deal of the
rancor with which the opposing soldiers had marched off to war, to hymns of
hate and jingoism.
The troops tentatively poked their heads above trench parapets in the first light of a snowy Boxing Day, 26 December, and the British and Germans, still reluctant to resume hostilities after the holiday euphoria, milled about their trenches, indifferent to what would have been sheer suicide 36 hours before. Groups of soldiers repaired trench breastworks and fortified their posts for the inevitable resumption of hostilities. A British corporal wrote in a letter home, "I would not have swapped yesterday for being home to Christmas dinner by the old fireside!"
A few desultory shots were fired skyward from both sides. A British officer climbed onto his parapet waving a handcrafted "Merry Christmas" flag, and a German captain countered with his own sign, "Thank you!" Throughout Boxing Day the men conversed across narrow stretches of no man's land. "How did you like our beer yesterday?" a German called out in English. "It was a bit weak, but we enjoyed it," was the cheery response.
Having exhausted their repertoire of carols the previous day, the British serenaded the Germans with such familiar standards as Tipperary and There's a Long, Long Trail. Jerry, always in better voice, responded with selections from Die Lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow), by former Austro-Hungarian army band member Franz Lehar.
British troops who had been home on Christmas leave were chagrined when they got back to their lines to lean of the remarkable scenes they had missed over the previous two days. "The Allemands seemed like quite decent chaps," their mates said. "Look at these cigars they gave us! They call this stuff 'sauerkraut!"'
Elsewhere along the
Western Front that by now stretched from the English Channel south to neutral
Switzerland, hostile gunfire had continued over Christmas, although on a milder
scale.
The Christmas truce died hard. A few troops met in no man's land on Boxing
Day afternoon, removing overcoats with the express intention of trading, but
prudence prevailed, since the men could not figure out how to account for
a "British warm" or a "German gray" to their respective
officers.
That evening, amid a sprinkle of snow, British General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien sent an order to commanders in the truce district: "I have issued the strictest orders that on no account is intercourse to be allowed between the opposing troops. To finish this war quickly we must keep up the fighting spirit....I am calling for particulars as to names of officers and units who took part in this Christmas gathering with a view to disciplinary action."
No evidence exists that Smith-Dorrien's threat was ever carried out. In his diary the general added, "War to the knife is the only way to carry out a campaign of this sort."
The German high command responded in a similar vein. All further fraternisation was forbidden, and deviation from the order would lead to a transfer to the Russian front, a dismal prospect. In defiance of the menacing directives, as late as 10 January 1915, at Saxon prompting, small parties of intrepid soldiers continued to meet in no man's land. Said an understanding and equally dauntless British colonel, "I don't think they [the Germans] want to start [any] more than we do as it only means ...being hit and does not affect the end of the war!"
A group of unarmed Germans, wandering between the trenches, was warned by a British gun battery officer to get inside their barbed wire. Petulantly, they refused and sat down outside their wire, watching shells blasting their trench-bound comrades.
By New Year's Eve the Christmas truce was worldwide news and featured, with photos taken by troops in no man's land, in British and German newspapers. The blue-collar Daily Mirror editorialised: "The soldier's heart has rarely any hatred in it. He goes out to fight because that's his job. He fights for his country. . .against his country's enemies. Collectively [the enemy] are to be condemned and blown to pieces. Individually, he knows they're not bad sorts!" London's austere Daily Telegraph's war correspondent, Ashmead Bartlett, wrote, "It seems to prove that the German soldier is a good-hearted, peace loving individual once he is outside the influence of the Prussian military machine."
The war escalated as January 1915 came to a close. British writer A.J.P Taylor called 1915 "a year of battles which have no meaning except as names on a war memorial". British troops in the truce sector were warned by commanding officers that "nothing of the kind of Christmas will be allowed this year. You are to remain possessed by the spirit of hate, answering any advances with lead." The death penalty was announced as punishment in all sections of the British line. From the German side came similar warnings: "Any attempt at fraternisation with the enemy. . . is strictly forbidden; this crime will be considered as verging on high treason."
As Christmas 1915 approached, German soldiers, enthusiastic truce participants from the onset, were ecstatic to receive a directive from company commands ordering a choir assembled for caroling "powerful enough to be heard in the British trenches!" The sobering strains of Stille Nacht wafted across no man's land once more - and for the last time - to whistling, cheers and riotous applause from the British ranks, but with no choral response.
To some participants, the Christmas truce was merely a lark, a respite from the daily dance with death. For others, that brief armistice promised a sudden, merciful end to the war. That's all it was, however, a short-lived, unfulfilled promise.
Reprinted
from Military History magazine.
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