Jay
Winter, one of the preeminent historians of the First World War, has said, “The
importance of that moment [the Christmas Truce] was that it indicated something
about the humanity of soldiers, the preservation of which was so difficult over
the course of fifty months of killing.” Winter
says that the Christmas Truce of 1914 gave evidence of “the common decencies of
ordinary men.”
As
we remember that very special
Christmas, it’s a wonderful thing to celebrate those men and let their words be
heard once again. Several years ago, the organization The Christmas Truce: Operation Plum Pudding, worked to locate, transcribe, and share actual letters of soldiers who
participated in the Christmas Truce. The
letters were sent home to loved ones, and a number of them were then published
as letters to the editors of local papers.
This avoided military and government censorship, as the Christmas Truce was
an incident in the war that politicians and generals wanted to suppress.
I’ve
taken an excerpt from the letter of Private Heath, which was found and transcribed by Marian Robson, and reformatted it as poetry.
The letter was written on the
Western Front and published in the North
Mail on January 9, 1915 (it can be read in its entirety at this site).
Fires
in the English lines had died down,
and
only the squelch of the sodden boots in the slushy mud,
the
whispered orders of the officers and the NCOs,
and
the moan of the wind
broke
the silence of the night.
The
soldiers' Christmas Eve had come at last,
and
it was hardly the time or place
Memory
in her shrine kept us
in a
trance of saddened silence.
Back
somewhere in England,
the
fires were burning in cosy rooms;
in
fancy I heard laughter
and
the thousand melodies of reunion on Christmas Eve.
With
overcoat thick with wet mud,
hands
cracked and sore with the frost,
I
leaned against the side of the trench,
and,
looking through my loophole,
fixed
weary eyes on the German trenches….
Blood
and peace, enmity and fraternity –
war's
most amazing paradox.
The
night wore on to dawn –
a
night made easier by songs from the German trenches,
the
pipings of piccolos and from our broad lines
laughter
and Christmas carols.
Not
a shot was fired, except for down on our right,
where
the French artillery were at work.
Came
the dawn, pencilling the sky with grey and pink….
Then
came the invitation to fall out of the trenches and meet half way.
Still
cautious we hung back.
Not
so the others.
They
ran forward in little groups, with hands held up above their heads,
asking
us to do the same.
Not
for long could such an appeal be resisted –
beside,
was not the courage up to now all on one side?
Jumping
up onto the parapet,
a
few of us advanced to meet the on-coming Germans.
Out
went the hands and tightened in the grip of friendship.
Christmas
had made the bitterest foes friends.
Here
was no desire to kill,
but
just the wish of a few simple soldiers
(and
no one is quite so simple as a soldier)
that
on Christmas Day, at any rate,
the
force of fire should cease.
We
gave each other cigarettes and exchanged all manner of things.
We
wrote our names and addresses on the field service postcards,
and
exchanged them for German ones.
We
cut the buttons off our coats
and
took in exchange the Imperial Arms of Germany.
But
the gift of gifts was Christmas pudding.
The
sight of it made the Germans' eyes grow wide with hungry wonder,
and
at the first bite of it
they
were our friends for ever.
Given
a sufficient quantity of Christmas puddings,
every
German in the trenches before ours would have surrendered….
(The
original letter was transcribed by Marian Robson; the line breaks are my
invention).
For
those wanting to know more, the web site of the U.S. National World War I
Museum offers exceptional background on the Christmas Truce,
including a video narrated by historian Jay Winter.
Hi Connie
ReplyDeleteI am enjoying and learning from your blog. I'm certain you will have come across this already, however, I think, it stands repetition.
Very best
Richie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vH3-Gt7mgyM
So glad you posted the link to Blackadder - I love the show, and although I've seen it before, this last "over-the-top" episode still gives me chills. Even Blackadder has generated controversy in this centenary year, most famously when education secretary Michael Gove attacked the show claiming "left-wing academics" were using Blackadder "to feed myths" about World War One. Check out this link --http://www.historyextra.com/feature/blackadder-bad-first-world-war-history
ReplyDeleteIt's a more thoughtful discussion by historians about the ways in which Blackadder is simply one retelling of the war that needs to be viewed as an interpretation. What's interesting to me is that there is little discussion of the ways in which all accounts of experience are interpretations, or that the war wasn't a monolithic event that was experienced in One Way.
I like Blackadder Goes Forth, the Sainsbury Christmas Truce ad, the poetry of the Great War, the art of Paul Nash, and all the various ways in which we're invited to remember the war and discuss how we remember it.