Frank Richards recalled:
"On Christmas morning we stuck up a board
with 'A Merry Christmas' on it. The enemy had stuck up a similar one.
Platoons would sometimes go out for twenty-four hours' rest -- it was a
day at least out of the trench and relieved the monotony a bit -- and my
platoon had gone out in this way the night before, but a few of us
stayed behind to see what would happen. Two of our men then threw their
equipment off and jumped on the parapet with their hands above their
heads. Two of the Germans done the same and commenced to walk up the
river bank, our two men going to meet them. They met and shook hands and
then we all got out of the trench.
"Buffalo Bill [the Company Commander]
rushed
into the trench and endeavoured to prevent it, but he was too late: the
whole of the Company were now out, and so were the Germans. He had to
accept the situation, so soon he and the other company officers climbed
out too. We and the Germans met in the middle of no-man's-land. Their
officers was also now out. Our officers exchanged greetings with them.
One of the German officers said that he wished he had a camera to take a
snapshot, but they were not allowed to carry cameras. Neither were our
officers.
"We mucked in all day with one another. They
were Saxons and some of them could speak English. By the look of them
their trenches were in as bad a state as our own. One of their men,
speaking in English, mentioned that he had worked in Brighton for some
years and that he was fed up to the neck with this damned war and would
be glad when it was all over. We told him that he wasn't the only one
that was fed up with it. We did not allow them in our trench and they
did not allow us in theirs.
"The German Company-Commander asked Buffalo Bill if he would accept a
couple of barrels of beer and assured him that they would not make his
men drunk. They had plenty of it in the brewery. He accepted the offer
with thanks and a couple of their men rolled the barrels over and we
took them into our trench. The German officer sent one of his men back
to the trench, who appeared shortly after carrying a tray with bottles
and glasses on it. Officers of both sides clinked glasses and drunk one
another's health. Buffalo Bill had presented them with a plum pudding
just before. The officers came to an understanding that the unofficial
truce would end at midnight. At dusk we went back to our respective
trenches."
Bruce Bairnsfather remembered:
"The dawn of the 24th brought a perfectly still, cold, frosty day.
The spirit of Christmas began to permeate us all; we tried to plot ways
and means of making the next day, Christmas, different in some way to
others. Invitations from one dug-out to another for sundry meals were
beginning to circulate. Christmas Eve was, in the way of weather,
everything that Christmas Eve should be.
"I was billed to appear at a dug-out about a quarter of a mile to the
left that evening to have rather a special thing in trench dinners—not
quite so much bully and Maconochie about as usual. A bottle of red wine
and a medley of tinned things from home deputized in their absence. The
day had been entirely free from shelling, and somehow we all felt that
the Boches, too, wanted to be quiet. There was a kind of an invisible,
intangible feeling extending across the frozen swamp between the two
lines, which said 'This is Christmas Eve for both of us—
something in common.'
"About 10 p.m. I made my exit from the convivial dug-out on the left
of our line and walked back to my own lair. On arriving at my own bit of
trench I found several of the men standing about, and all very
cheerful. There was a good bit of singing and talking going on, jokes
and jibes on our curious Christmas Eve, as contrasted with any former
one, were thick in the air. One of my men turned to me and said:
"'You can 'ear 'em quite plain, sir!'
"'Hear what?' I inquired.
"'The Germans over there, sir; 'ear 'em singin' and playin' on a band or somethin'.'
"I listened;—away out across the field, among the dark shadows
beyond, I could hear the murmur of voices, and an occasional burst of
some unintelligible song would come floating out on the frosty air. The
singing seemed to be loudest and most distinct a bit to our right. I
popped into my dug-out and found the platoon commander."
"'Do you hear the Boches kicking up that racket over there?' I said.
"'Yes,' he replied; 'they've been at it some time!'
"'Come on,' said I, 'let's go along the trench to the hedge there on the right—that's the nearest point to them, over there.'
"So we stumbled along our now hard, frosted ditch, and scrambling up
on to the bank above, strode across the field to our next bit of trench
on the right. Everyone was listening. An improvised Boche band was
playing a precarious version of 'Deutschland, Deutschland, uber Alles,'
at the conclusion of which, some of our mouth-organ experts retaliated
with snatches of ragtime songs and imitations of the German tune.
Suddenly we heard a confused shouting from the other side. We all
stopped to listen. The shout came again. 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 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!'
"'Ah! but there are two of you,' came back the voice from the other side.
"Well, anyway, 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. He was quickly out of sight;
but, as we all listened in breathless silence, we soon heard a spasmodic
conversation taking place out there in the darkness.
"Presently, the sergeant returned. He had with him a few German
cigars and cigarettes which he had exchanged for a couple of
Maconochie's and a tin of Capstan, which he had taken with him. The
séance was over, but it had given just the requisite touch to our
Christmas Eve—something a little human and out of the ordinary routine.
"After months of vindictive sniping and shelling, this little episode
came as an invigorating tonic, and a welcome relief to the daily
monotony of antagonism. It did not lessen our ardour or determination;
but just put a little human punctuation mark in our lives of cold and
humid hate. Just on the right day, too—Christmas Eve! But, as a curious
episode, this was nothing in comparison to our experience on the
following day.
"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. It was such a day as is invariably depicted by artists
on Christmas cards—the ideal Christmas Day of fiction.
"'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 to-day!' And I wasn't far wrong; it did around us,
anyway, and I have always been so glad to think of my luck in, firstly,
being actually in the trenches on Christmas Day, and, secondly, being on
the spot where quite a unique little episode took place.
"Everything looked merry and bright that morning—the discomforts
seemed to be less, somehow; they seemed to have epitomized themselves in
intense, frosty cold. It was just the sort of day for Peace to be
declared. It would have made such a good finale. I should like to have
suddenly heard an immense siren blowing. Everybody to stop and say,
'What was that?' Siren blowing again: appearance of a small figure
running across the frozen mud waving something. He gets closer—a
telegraph boy with a wire! He hands it to me. With trembling fingers I
open it: 'War off, return home.—George, R.I.' Cheers! But no, it was a
nice, fine day, that was all.
"Walking about the trench a little later, discussing the curious
affair of the night before, we suddenly became aware of the fact that we
were seeing a lot of evidences of Germans. Heads were bobbing about and
showing over their parapet in a most reckless way, and, 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' long to be up on the skyline (it is one long grind to ever keep
him off it). This was the signal for more Boche anatomy to be disclosed,
and this was replied to by all our Alf's and Bill's, until, in less
time than it takes to tell, half a dozen or so of each of the
belligerents were outside their trenches and were advancing towards each
other in no-man's land.
"A strange sight, truly!
"I clambered up and over our parapet, and moved out across the field
to look. Clad 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.
"It all felt most curious: here were these sausage-eating wretches,
who had elected to start this infernal European fracas, and in so doing
had brought us all into the same muddy pickle as themselves.
"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."
John McCutcheon reimagined:
Joe Henry and Garth Brooks rediscovered:
Even Snoopy was inspired:
And now, after 98 years,
what will we do?
