so by early December 1914 the punishing advance of the Germans have been stopped
by the Allies before the Germans made it to Paris but had been stopped at a great
cost a sickening cost but now the armies had settled into the trenches and we
know what the trenches were hell not some metaphorical approximation of hell
but actual hell hell on earth artillery mortars machine gun fire snipers
shrapnel screams of the wounded and dying and on top of that the environment
rain and sleet and snow and flooded trenches and freezing cold and of course
death was everywhere everywhere and there seemed no end to the horror but on
Christmas Day 1914 the horror did stop if only for a short time while men for a
moment recognized the men they were fighting against as other men as other
men with the same hopes and dreams and desires that they had themselves and the
chief of all hope where's peace and this is an
excerpt of how the Christmas truce unfolded according to Henry Williamson a
British Army officer who is there and here's what he wrote four weeks we had
lived in flooded trenches the Germans were 80 yards away our trench was and
fellated we lost many men shot by snipers night after night since the
tailing off the Battle of Ypres x' we had toiled in the parapets filling
sandbag with clay mud squelched through muddy lagoons of woodland tracks
carrying rations duckboards pumps and ammunition we were volunteers rushed out
to help general French's shattered Expeditionary Force a few weeks before
we had been schoolboys bank clerks undergraduates medical students now our
lives were ravaged some of us the young ones who thought of their mothers were
near to despair we were without hope without horizon at first
trench life had been interesting even enjoyable it was fun cooking our own
bacon and making tea in the wood while shrapnel cracked overhead good sport
stalking the wild geese in the marshes satisfying to feel the soft hairs of our
unshaven chins the regulars were decent chaps heroes of Mons but the rains fell
and the trenches filled almost waist high after a few days we could scarcely
move our legs nor did we seem to need food at night we dragged ourselves out
of the ditches and moved about uncaring of bullets aimed at random in the dark
all night we worked carrying parties pumping fatigues parapet building at
dawn we slid in the water again and set ourselves to endure the gray daylight
even now so long afterwards when I hear rain on the tiles overhead the ghost of
that time makes me draw the blankets closer around my neck on Christmas Eve
of 1914 we were in the support line about 200 yards inside the plug stared
wood it was freezing our overcoats were as stiff as boards our boots were too
hard to move but we rejoiced as the mud was hard too also happy thought we would
be able to sleep that night inside a new block house of oak boughs and sandbags
called Piccadilly Hotel no bed but the cold earth no blankets even but sleep
sleep
then came a message from brigade headquarters broad I think by second
lieutenant Bruce Barron's father of the Warrick's wiring parties were required
in no-man's land all night and there would be a moon we would have to work
only 50 yards from the German machine guns in the white house opposite the
eastern edge of the wood two hours later we filed out of the dark trees into the
naked moonlit terror of no-man's land holding our shovels besides our faces in
hope of protection against the expected mortar blast the moon was high and white
among the frozen clouds we were visible someone slipped with a Clank of a spade
or rifle we flung ourselves on our faces and waited but the battlefield was as
silent as the moon for an hour we worked in silence in a most mysterious sound
lessness what had happened we began to talk naturally as we drove in stakes and
pulled out concertinas of prepared wire there was no rifle fire either up or
down the line from way up north beyond appraise to south beyond our mentiras
and the French army at midnight we heard laughing as we worked we heard singing
from the German lines carols the tunes of which we knew I noticed a very bright
light on a tall pole raised in their lines down opposite the east lanx trench
in front of the convent a Christmas tree with lighted candles was set on their
parapet
the unreal moonlight life went on happily cries of c'mon over Tommy we
won't fire at you a dark figure approached me hesitatingly a trap I
walked towards it with a bumping heart Merry Christmas
English friend we shook hands tremulously then I saw that the light on
the pole was the morning star the star in the east it was Christmas morning all
Christmas Day gray and khaki figures mingled and talked in no-man's land the
picks and spades rang in the hard ground it was strange to stare at the dead we
had only glimpsed at swiftly from the trenches the shallowest graves were dug
filled and set with crosses knocked together from lengths of rationed
boxwood marked with indelible pencil for king and country for fatherland own free
height fatherland and freedom freedom freedom how was this we were fighting
for freedom and our cause was just we were defending Belgium civilization
these fellows in gray were good fellows they were strangely just men like
ourselves how can we lose the war English comrade our cause is just
we are ringed with enemies the war was thrust on us we are defending our
parents our homes our German soil the most shaking staggering thought that
both sides thought they were fighting for the same cause
the war was a terrible mistake people at home did not know this then the idea
came to the young and callow soldier that if only he could tell them at home
what was really happening and if the German soldiers told their people the
truth about us the war would be over but he hardly dared to think it even to
himself the next day was quiet and the next waving hands from the trenches by
day singing and reflected blaze of trench bonfires at night it was a lovely
time on the third afternoon came a message from the Germans at midnight our
staff officers visit and we must fire our automatic pistol on but we will fire
higher nevertheless please keep undercover at 11 p.m. Berlin midnight we
saw flashes going away into the air
two days later an army order came from GHQ to the effect that men found
fraternizing with the enemy would be court-martialed and if found guilty
would suffer the death penalty and again in that place the very lights soared
over no man's land at night then bullets cut showers of splinters from trees and
sometimes human flesh and bone so hope sank into the mud again but did not die
despite a withering anew as each or human unit fell in machine gun and
mortar blast and colossal reverberating rending of the shells of those four
years the years whose truth seems to be in communicable sometimes as one listens
to what people say here in the England a generation died for it seems like almost
pre-war again can it be that we lack imagination to see the other fellow as
ourselves
Henry Williamson continued to fight he was eventually wounded by gas then
when he was declared unfit to serve in the army he then volunteered for the Air
Force to see if that could get him back to the front but he didn't make it back
to the front luckily because the war ended the war ended but not before 20
million were wounded and 17 million men were killed men just normal men gone
so this holiday season please think of those men and women around the world in
the trenches now risking life and limb for what they believe in for freedom and
think of the civilians trapped in those hellish places suffering in the
merciless paths of war and finally as Henry Williamson asked let us not lack
the imagination to think to think of other men as men men like ourselves men
like us
you
Merry Christmas to all and may there be peace on earth