Remembrance

During World War One around Christmas 1914 there were a series of widespread, unofficial ceasefires. About 100,000 British and German troops were involved. Soldiers from both sides – and to a lesser degree, from French units – independently ventured into "no man's land", where they mingled, exchanging food and souvenirs. As well as joint burial ceremonies, several meetings ended in carol-singing. Troops from both sides were also friendly enough to play games of football with one another. The truce is seen as a symbolic moment of peace and humanity amidst one of the most violent events of modern history. In some sectors, the truce continued until New Year's Day.

General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, commander of the British II Corps issued strict orders forbidding friendly communication with the opposing German troops. In the following years of the war, artillery bombardments were ordered on Christmas Eve to try to ensure that there were no further lulls in the combat. Troops were also rotated through various sectors of the front to prevent them from becoming overly familiar with the enemy. Captain Billy Congreve from the 3rd division noticed that the Germans did try to make a truce for Christmas. “We have issued strict orders to the men not to on any account allow a truce, as we have heard rumours that they will probably try to. The Germans did. They came over towards us singing. So we opened rapid fire on them, which is the only truce they deserve.”



In the following months, there were a few sporadic attempts at truces; a German unit attempted to leave their trenches under a flag of truce on Easter Sunday 1915, but were warned off by the British opposite them, and later in the year, in November, a Saxon unit briefly fraternised with a Liverpool battalion. Come December, there were explicit orders by the Allied commanders to forestall any repeat of the previous Christmas truce. Individual units were encouraged to mount raids and harass the enemy line, whilst communicating with the enemy was discouraged by artillery barrages along the front line throughout the day. The prohibition was not completely effective, however, and a small number of brief truces occurred. In the later years of the war, in December 1916 and 1917, German overtures to the British for truces were recorded without any success.

The news of these events was broken by the New York Times on 31 December. The British papers quickly followed, printing numerous first-hand accounts from soldiers in the field, taken from letters home to their families, and editorials on "one of the greatest surprises of a surprising war". By 8 January pictures had made their way to the press, and both the Mirror and Sketch printed front-page photographs of British and German troops mingling and singing between the lines. The tone of the reporting was strongly positive, with the Times endorsing the "lack of malice" felt by both sides and the Mirror regretting that the "absurdity and the tragedy" would begin again. In France, meanwhile, the greater level of press censorship ensured that the only word that spread of the truce came from soldiers at the front or first-hand accounts told by wounded men in hospitals until the press was eventually forced to respond to the growing rumours by reprinting a government notice that fraternising with the enemy constituted treason, and in early January an official statement on the truce was published, claiming it had happened on restricted sectors of the British front, and amounted to little more than an exchange of songs which quickly degenerated into shooting.

French and British atrocity stories had emphasised the brutality and inhumanity of the German nature. According to the allied propaganda, war prisoners were ill-treated, tortured and under-fed. German soldiers were purported by the allied forces to rape women and cut their breasts off. The hands of small boys were cut off to satisfy the Germans’ sadism and to prevent their service in the enemy’s forces. Furthermore, German soldiers were said to have burned civilians and babies alive. Germany was also accused by France and England of taking hostages as human shields to prevent allied attacks.

Soldiers started thinking about the way the Germans were presented in the British press. One British soldier commented “The Germans opposite us were awfully decent fellows – Saxons, intelligent, respectable-looking men. I had a quite decent talk with three or four have two names and addresses in my notebook.…After our talk I really think a lot of our newspaper reports must be horribly exaggerated.”

 English officer R.J. Fairhead saw the evil, but not in the soldiers. They just had to fight. In his statement, he strongly attacked the political structure in Europe and looked above the taught national stereotypes. “Politicians do not listen to those whom they claim to represent and the failure to take notice of the fragile peace declared for that brief period led to the anti-government revolution throughout Europe.” His learned hatred for the Germans was converted to a general hate for the whole situation and the system which made a war like this possible.

 Lieutenant A.P. Sinkinson describes similar experiences: “As I walked slowly back to our own trenches I thought of Mr. Asquish’s sentence about not sheathing the sword until the enemy be finally crushed. It is all very well for Englishmen living comfortable at home to talk in flowing periods, but when you are out here you begin to realize that sustained hatred impossible.” Sinkinson saw that Germans were not worse people than himself. Only the people at home, far away from the cruelties, the brutalities, from death and from the war’s real grimace, could keep their hatred.

That the opinion toward the enemies had changed after the truce is emphasized by Westminster Rifle Man Percy. The new experiences he had with the Germans whom he met made him rethink everything he had heard about them. He wrote that “they [Germans] where really magnificent in the whole thing [Christmas Truce] and jolly good sorts. I now have a different opinion of the German. Both sides have now started firing, and are deadly enemies again. Strange it all seems, doesn’t it?”

For Henry Williamson fraternisation on Christmas Eve 1914 made a deep and lasting impression upon his life, in which he saw that war was created by greed, misplaced zeal and bigotry. He could never forget that the German soldiers thought as deeply and sincerely as the English soldiers that they were fighting for God and Country. This determined his life’s work – to prevent war ever occurring again by showing the world

Fraternization crossed all boundaries of hate and the soldiers were not judged by their origins, but as humans and as nothing else.

A Carol from Flanders
by Frederick Niven

In Flanders on the Christmas morn
The trenched foemen lay,
the German and the Briton born,
And it was Christmas Day.

The red sun rose on fields accurst,
The gray fog fled away;
But neither cared to fire the first,
For it was Christmas Day!

They called from each to each across
The hideous disarray,
For terrible has been their loss:
“Oh, this is Christmas Day!”

Their rifles all they set aside,
One impulse to obey;
‘Twas just the men on either side,
Just men — and Christmas Day.

They dug the graves for all their dead
And over them did pray:
And Englishmen and Germans said:
“How strange a Christmas Day!”

Between the trenches then they met,
Shook hands, and e’en did play
At games on which their hearts were set
On happy Christmas Day.

Not all the emperors and kings,
Financiers and they
Who rule us could prevent these things —
For it was Christmas Day.

Oh ye who read this truthful rime
From Flanders, kneel and say:
God speed the time when every day
Shall be as Christmas Day.