A Truce
Henry Williamson was just 17-years-old when he joined the British Territorial Army for the sports - including boxing and swimming – the Army offered.
By the end of the year - 1914, more than a million young men had enrolled in the British military – believing they would quickly win the war in Europe and be home with stories to tell as they celebrated the Christmas holiday.
But “the War to End All Wars” was quickly marked by the widespread use of militarized chemical agents such as mustard gas, which would result in almost certain death, and, especially on the Western Front, “the Great War” devolved into trench warfare – a military tactic traced to the American Civil War. Trenches afforded some protection from firearms and artillery and allowed soldiers time to put on gas masks.
In the beginning, soldiers with bayonets fixed to their rifles charged over trench tops in single straight lines and under a barrage of gunfire and into “No Man’s Land” – the area between opposing forces.
With time, forces on both sides initiated nighttime attacks under covering artillery fire and German troops effectively used nighttime incursions to encircle and trap French and British forces in a ring of gunfire.
From the beginning, infantry soldiers built sophisticated and elaborate trench systems and trench warfare was seen as a great adventure. But diseases – dysentery, cholera and typhoid fever - resulting from the unsanitary conditions of the trenches and “shell shock” – today’s Post Traumatic Stress Disorder – and “trench mouth,” a gum infection, took their toll. And, “trench foot,” caused by constant exposure to wetness, resulted in amputations. In the end, World War I became the first conflict in history to have more deaths caused by combat than by disease.
Then came the rains. Williamson recalled
We walked about a lot and moved very slowly in yellow watery clay.
When the evening came it took about an hour to get out of the trenches. Some of our chaps slipped in and were drowned and weren’t seen until later.
We had a lot of men sniped. I had my friend beside me, we were trying to work a pump which wouldn’t work.
Then suddenly there was this tremendous crack. The bullet hit my friend in the front of the head, and took away the back of his head and he fell down, just slopped down.”
But on Christmas Eve 1914 the young Henry and his team were ordered into the No Man’s Land
to knock in these posts into the frozen soil, whilst being 50 yards away from the Germans, so we crept out, and at the same trying to avoid our boots ringing on the frozen ground.
We were expecting any moment to fall flat and for the machine guns to open up.
But nothing happened, within two hours were walking about, laughing and talking, there was nothing from the German lines.
Around eleven o clock I saw a Christmas tree going up on the German trenches and there was a light.
We all stood still and watched this. A German voice began to sing the song, ‘Heilige Nacht!’
Recognizing the melody, the British troops began singing, “Silent Night, Holy Night, All is calm…”
The German troops were saying 'come over Tommy, come over'.
And we still thought it was a trap, but some of us went over at once, and they came to this barbed wire fence between us which was five strands of wire, hung with empty bully beef tins to make a rattle if they came.
And very soon we were exchanging gifts.”
An undeclared truce erupted spontaneously and peace broke out.
Soldiers – British and German - used the opportunity to bury their dead; the Germans made small, makeshift memorial crosses of ration box wood; troops from both sides used indelible pencils – copying pencils containing graphite and clay – to write a few words on the markers of their fallen comrades.
Williamson noticed the Germans writing “Fur Voterland und Freiheit” – “For Fatherland and Freedom.”
I said to a German excuse me but how can you be fighting for freedom?
You started the war and we are fighting for freedom! He said excuse me English comrade we are fighting for freedom for our country!
I said also put here rest in God, an unknown hero. The German said oh yes ‘God is on our side.’
The young Henry argued, “But he is on our side.”
"That was a tremendous shock, I began to think, these chaps who like ourselves, whom we liked and who felt about the wars we did and who said it will be over soon because we would win the war."
As Henry and the German inched toward arguing over who would win, the German soldier urged, “English comrade do not let us quarrel on Christmas Day.”
According to Pvt. Albert Moren of the Second Queens Regiment, it was “a beautiful moonlit night, front on the ground, white almost everywhere.”
Graham Williams of the Fifth London rifle Brigade, gave greater detail:
First the Germans would sing one of their carols and then we would sing one of ours, until we started up ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’ the Germans immediately joined in the same hymn to the Latin words Adeste Fideles. And I thought, well, this is really a most extraordinary thing – two nations both singing the same carol in the middle of a war.
According to Pvt. Albert Moren of the Second Queens Regiment, it was “a beautiful moonlit night, front on the ground, white almost everywhere.”
Graham Williams of the Fifth London rifle Brigade, gave greater detail:
First the Germans would sing one of their carols and then we would sing one of ours, until we started up ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’ the Germans immediately joined in the same hymn to the Latin words Adeste Fideles. And I thought, well, this is really a most extraordinary thing – two nations both singing the same carol in the middle of a war.
British private Marmaduke Walkington offered insight into the spontaneity of the truce.
We were in the front line; we were about 300 yards from the Germans. And we had, I think on Christmas Eve, we’d been singing carols and… the Germans had been doing the same. And we’d been shouting to each other… Anyway, eventually a German said, ‘Tomorrow you no shoot, we no shoot.’ And the morning came and we didn’t shoot and they didn’t shoot. So then we began to pop our heads over the side and jump down quickly in case they shot but they didn’t shoot. And then we saw a German standing up, waving his arms and we didn’t shoot and so on and so it gradually grew.
The truce began with carols, according to Colin Wilson of the Grenadier Guards:
We heard a German singing Holy Night of course in German, naturally. Then after he’d finished singing there were all sorts of Christmas greetings being shouted across no man’s land at us. The Germans shouted out, ‘What about you singing Holy Night?’ We had a go but of course we weren’t very good at that. Anyway they said ‘Meet us and come over in no man’s land.’ Well after a time we were allowed - a limited number of us – a limited number of us to go into no man’s land.
More than one-hundred years later, historians still cannot explain precisely how the truce began and spread. Perhaps serendipity. Perhaps Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s inexplicable “hard grace.” Yet it is estimated that some two-thirds of troops participated in the legendary – or was it miraculous – truce.
Almost two years after that spontaneous Christmas Eve truce, the Battle of Somme – July to November 1916 - began as an Allied offensive against German forces and became one of the most bitter and costly battles of the War. Britain suffered 57,000 casualties – including more than 19,000 death – on the first day – the single most disastrous day in British history. Within five months, more than one million troops on both sides had been killed or wounded.
Like Henry Williamson, many of the young British soldiers in “the Great War” had volunteered for army service in 1914 and 1915 as members of so-called Pals battalions, - units made up of friends, relatives and neighbors in the same community. The 720 men of the Accrington Pals – the 11th East Lancashire battalion - lost 584 killed or wounded on July 1.
British soldier George Ashurst described soldiers’ responses to the high commands’ orders ending the truce begun by the men in the trenches:
We got orders come down the trench, ‘Get back in your trenches every man,’ by word of mouth down each trench; ‘Everybody back in your trenches’ shouting. The generals behind must’ve seen it and got a bit suspicious so what they did, they gave orders for a battery of guns behind us to fire, and a machine gun to open out and officers to fire their revolvers at the Jerries. ‘Course that started the war again. Ooh we were curing them to hell, cursing the generals and that, you want to get up here in this stuff never mind your giving orders, in your big chateaux about in your big cars. We hated the sight of and driving about in your big cars. We hated the sight of the bloody generals.
“The War to End All Wars” erupted on August 20, 1914; Giacomo della Chiesa was elected and became Pope Benedict XV barely three weeks later. Within weeks of his election, he presciently described the war as “the suicide of civilized Europe” and urge the warring nations to work toward peace. In his first encyclical – Beatissimi Apostolorum – Benedict observed: “There is no limit to the measure of ruin and of slaughter; day by day the earth is drenched with newly shed blood and is covered with the bodies of the wounded and the slain.”
Having celebrated Hanukah and Christmas and anticipating the New Year and the Feast of the Epiphany – the Twelfth Day of Christmas - and Inauguration Day, the beginning of a new administration, and the opening of the 117th Congress, perhaps America’s political leaders might learn from the insights of Pope Benedict XV and British soldier George Ashurst: We hate the sight of the bloody politicians whose unrelenting pursuit of their own self-interests and power provokes the suicide of the nation and leads us into conflict - one party against another, one neighbor against another, one family member against another.
And let us pray for peace and unity in the coming year.
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The British supermarket chain Sainsbury’s has captured the essence of the Christmas truce in an outstanding four-minute film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KHoVBK2EVE