Christmas Eve, 1914.
The war was supposed to be over by now.
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The Christmas Truce is one of the most poignant events of the First World War.
A time when men rose above the madness of the conflict
and, for just a moment, saw each other as fellow humans.
This is an event that definitely DID happen.
Thousands of men laid down arms in the truce,
but a century of retellings has also kinda sanded down its rough edges
and oversimplified its messy reality.
Indeed, this event wasn’t just the result of pure human spirit and holiday cheer.
It was a host of unique factors that drove these enemies
to spontaneously declare peace in no man’s land.
And really, it may not have been all that spontaneous.
Small armistices were happening every day.
As frontline troops became accustomed to the rhythms of trench warfare,
they learned that looking the other way now and then
could bring a shred of safety and calm to their lives.
The armies ate meals at the same time, which became a daily ceasefire.
Patrols frequently ignored each other, adopting a live-and-let-live attitude.
Troops often shouted to each other across the lines.
After all, the Autumn battles had passed, and both sides were waiting out the winter.
In reality, the weather was the primary enemy for both sides.
The high water table at Flanders
meant that the trenches were always filling with water,
sometimes collapsing and burying men inside.
Soldiers leaned against the walls to sleep, trying to keep themselves out of the wet.
Food supplies had to be hung up on dugout ceilings.
And that winter had been particularly miserable.
Weeks of rain flooded the dugouts.
The mud pulled men down like quicksand.
Now, British Field Marshal Sir John French had noticed the hands-off attitude
his men were developing toward the enemy,
and so he ordered attacks in late December to boost morale.
This resulted in heavy British losses.
Concerned about possible fraternization over the holiday,
he issued orders that no unofficial armistice would be tolerated.
Morale was much better over in the German trenches.
After all, they were winning,
but many men were also experiencing their first holiday away from home.
Knowing this would be difficult,
commanders brought Christmas to the trenches,
shipping thousands of presents to the field.
Each man received a gift from the Kaiser,
cigar boxes for NCOs, a pipe with the crown prince on it for the ranks.
The British, for their part, received a brass box from Princess Mary
filled with cigarettes, tobacco, a Christmas card, and sweets.
And then there were personal packages.
Enterprises sprang up on the home front,
offering family members a chance to send gift boxes to the troops.
British soldiers received plum puddings and thousand-count boxes of cigarettes.
German and Austrian troops were bombarded
with chocolate, salami, and cognac.
Both sides received winter clothing.
In truth, though? The gifts were kind of a nuisance.
I mean, there was nowhere to put it all.
Soldiers had nowhere to store a thousand extra cigarettes.
But that Christmas Eve delivered a true gift:
the rain stopped and the trenches drained.
Dry cold froze the mud into a hard surface, almost like a floor.
Snow dusted the countryside.
That afternoon, the gunfire dwindled, and in some sectors it stopped entirely.
The weather just seemed too nice for it.
The Germans, stuffed with Christmas chocolate and cheered by the weather,
started putting lit tannenbaum on their trench parapets.
And then, the German line started singing.
Over on the British parapets,
watchmen of the Scots Guards saw lines of lights along the enemy trench.
At first, they suspected an attack. But then,
they heard an ethereal sound drifting across no man’s land:
Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht.
The original, Austrian version of Silent Night.
Sensing a challenge, Guards officer Lieutenant Sir Edward Hulse
decided they should drown this out with their own carol.
The sides went back and forth,
but soon, the competition merged into a harmony
of Good King Wenceslaus and Auld Lang Syne.
Men began shouting Christmas greetings across the line,
jokingly, at first.
A few even stepped out to talk.
Hulse didn’t know it,
but the same thing was happening up and down the entire British line.
Agreements formed. In some sectors, the officers met at the wire and shook hands,
agreeing to cease hostilities the next day.
In other areas, the ranks took the lead,
Germans shouting across no man’s land,
“English! Tomorrow if you no shoot, we no shoot!”
At times, it was just one brave soul,
walking into no man’s land waving a newspaper.
These overtures were extremely dangerous.
Though peace was breaking out in certain areas, it didn’t happen everywhere.
One British regiment responded to German carolling with a machine gun blast.
Some unarmed soldiers were gunned down trying to broker this holiday armistice.
But in most sectors, the ceasefire held.
This truce mostly happened between German and British units.
The French and the Belgians, whose countries were under German occupation,
were... less inclined.
There were agreements to bury the dead and cease hostilities,
but not as much fraternization.
Yet a Bavarian unit held fire during a French mass,
and both sides halted fighting long enough for a guest,
a soloist from the Paris opera, to make a performance.
British Indian troops, who were unfamiliar with this whole “Christmas” deal,
saw the lit German trees and thought of their own holiday of Diwali.
They held fire but also held position...
until some Germans tempted them out of the trench with cigars and cigarettes.
Soon, the men were smoking together on the parapet.
That Christmas night, the troops slept in sublime quiet.
Christmas Day dawned bright and cold,
the sky clear for the first time in weeks.
To their shock, British troops looked across no man’s land
to see the Germans walking around on their parapets.
Such a thing was suicidal in daylight,
and that gesture of trust, more than anything, lured a few British out.
It was heaven to at last stand up straight and walk on solid earth.
Some had ventured into no man’s land on Christmas Eve,
but in daylight, it was impossible to ignore the bodies lying between the trenches.
The two sides buried their dead in common graves,
grieving side-by-side in joint services,
listening to the faraway sounds of battle from other sectors.
And that shared experience broke down the wall.
Soldiers milled about together in no man’s land,
swapping overabundant gifts from home.
British beef for uniform buttons.
Chocolate cake for barrels of beer.
They exchanged hats. One German barber gave haircuts.
The men chatted. After all, they shared so much in common.
They’d lived in the same fields under the same rain, and were equally sick of war.
Besides, they were curious.
What was life like on the other side? Who were these enemies?
One British officer was perplexed to learn
that his new German friend believed the armies of the Kaiser fought for freedom.
That was impossible, the officer responded, we’re fighting for freedom.
Amid this, Lieutenant Hulse found himself
talking to Lieutenant Thomas of the 15th Westphalians,
who had something to pass on: a Victoria Cross and a packet of letters.
An English officer had died in the German trench during the last attack.
Perhaps he could give these to the man’s family?
Touched, Hulse removed his own silk scarf,
a gift from home, and presented it in thanks.
Thomas, embarrassed that he had nothing to give in return,
sent a soldier to fetch the fur gloves his family had sent.
Up and down the line, men started bringing out footballs.
Kickabouts broke out, with men from both sides chasing the ball
among shell holes and sliding on the frozen ground.
In one sector, a group of Highlanders challenged a Saxon regiment,
who burst out laughing whenever a kilt flew up during play.
But not all this activity was goodwill.
On both sides, a few used the gatherings to reconnoiter enemy trenches,
and both sides used the time to repair dugouts.
Of course, for some, this fraternization appeared false.
One British soldier flashed his squadmate a hidden dagger,
while another refused to smoke German cigarettes, fearing they might be poisoned.
When one squad of Bavarians discussed whether to meet the British,
their corporal snapped at them.
“Such a thing should not happen in wartime."
"Have you no German sense of honour left at all?”
They weren’t surprised.
The night before, this same soldier had refused to join the unit’s Christmas service.
Corporal Hitler was odd like that.
But his disapproval reflected the generals’ view.
This was exactly the situation that Field Marshal French had feared.
Commanders dispatched senior officers to threaten disciplinary action
and insist the men restart the war.
In some sectors, the armistice came to an orderly close.
Officers from both sides saluted and fired revolvers into the air,
signaling that the war was back on.
In a few places, troops resisted until nearly to New Year’s Eve.
But the generals would not have it.
German command dispatched snipers to break the ceasefire.
French ordered an artillery barrage,
letting the machinery of war roll over the human connections of the frontline troops.
Nothing like this Christmas Truce would happen again.
The generals wouldn’t allow it.
On Christmas Eve, 1915, British officers ordered a 24-hour artillery barrage.
Men who tried to form a truce were court-martialed.
Machine guns drowned out German carols.
The generals needn’t have bothered.
The spirit of that truce was unique to 1914, a symptom of a young war.
By Christmas 1915, those troops had experienced chlorine gas,
and creeping bombardments. Zeppelins were bombing London.
The Battle of Verdun would end just before the holiday,
leaving 750,000 casualties.
Indeed, many of the men who celebrated in no man’s land that day
would never see another Christmas.
One of those unlucky ones was Lieutenant Sir Edward Hulse,
who had sung carols and given a German officer his silk scarf.
He died three months later while trying save a wounded comrade. He was 25.
Yet, Hulse is not remembered today for his military achievements,
or even the book of letters his friends published after his death.
He, and so many others, are remembered for a victory entirely their own,
when a group of brave men ventured into the line of fire,
trusting their enemies not to shoot,
and believing that humanity was better than the bonfire it had built for itself.
Happy Holidays, everybody.