This was a letter to a German newspaper, December, 1914:
"Yesterday there was a fierce and terrible onslaught"...
..."of Christmas packages into our trenches." "Yesterday there was a fierce and terrible onslaught"...
..."of Christmas packages into our trenches."
"No man was spared."
"In the confusion, one soldier suffered a salami impaled straight into his stomach."
"Another had raisins from an exploding pastry fly directly into his eyes."
"A third had the misfortune of having a bottle of cognac fly into his mouth."
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World War I was a letter-writing war, one where pencil and paper
were a soldier’s line of communication with friends and family.
And reading those letters provides some insight
into what life was like in the trenches.
So today, let’s read some excerpts from those soldiers’ holiday letters.
Of course, none of us at Extra Credits
have ever experienced being deployed over the holidays,
so real quick, I want to hand the mic to someone who has.
Here’s Wargaming’s military specialist Richard Cutland
back again to give us a little insight:
In my 30 years of service, I was extremely fortunate
to only spend around six Christmases away from home and family.
The first was spent lying in a muddy ditch in Northern Ireland,
where we had been ordered to set up an Observation Post
to watch the comings and goings of a known IRA terrorist.
Cold, wet, hungry, and tired -
watching someone else celebrate Christmas with family and friends.
It was certainly a low point for us all!
As a young solider, the easiest thing to do was not think about it.
It was merely another day amongst a multitude of "other days".
The real heartbreak occurred after marriage and children.
It was wrenching to explain why daddy would not be there on such a special day.
Tales of "helping Santa at the North Pole" or "having to feed the reindeer"
quickly wore thin as my children grew older and wiser.
A soldier’s wife has much to contend with,
and my own wife’s angst and worry during any Operational Tour
was compounded when I was away for the holidays.
The Army always tried their best if circumstances allowed.
If you were near an HQ,
the chefs would knock up a Christmas dinner with all the trimmings.
Well, perhaps not all...but they did their best with what was available.
Unfortunately, sitting with a hundred men wearing paper hats
was not quite the same as Christmas Dinner with your family.
Yet we were all aware it was necessary to spend such periods away,
and let’s face it, it was part of the job.
But it was always a killer to be told that a deployment was imminent,
and Christmas would be cancelled.
So to all those servicemen and women who find themselves away for this special time:
I salute you and wish you and your family peace and happiness.
Thank you, Richard. Let’s set the scene.
It’s Boxing Day 1914, and private Henry Williamson is writing home
about the most extraordinary Christmas of his life...
"I am writing from the trenches."
"In my mouth is a pipe presented by the Princess Mary."
"In the pipe is tobacco."
"'Of course', you say. But wait."
"In the pipe is German tobacco, from a German soldier."
"Yes, a live German soldier from his own trench."
"On Christmas Eve, both armies sang carols and cheered"
"and there was very little firing."
"The Germans called to our men to come and fetch a cigar,"
"and our men told them to come to us."
"This went on for some time until a bold Tommy crept out"
"and stood between the trenches, and a Saxon came to meet him."
"They shook hands and laughed. Thus the ice was broken."
"Our men are speaking to them now."
German corporal Josef Wenzl was similarly amazed at the gathering.
"What I believed to be madness several hours ago"
"I could see now with my own eyes."
"Bavarians and English, until then the greatest of enemies,"
"shook hands, talked and exchanged items."
"A single star stood still in the sky directly above them,"
"interpreted by many as a special sign from heaven."
"More and more joined, and the entire line greeted each other."
"For the rest of my life I shall never forget this scene."
"Which goes to show that human feelings continue to go on, even if,"
"in these times, men do not know anything but killing and murdering."
But not everyone held fire.
British Rifleman John Erskine’s unit was fraternizing in no man’s land
when a soldier, disobeying his officer’s order, shot one of the Germans.
He writes "The Germans immediately replied,"
"and instead of firing on where the shot came from,"
"they fired at the first person they saw."
"Unfortunately this happened to be one of our corporals who was shot through the head."
"A most regrettable fact connected with the affair"
"was that he has three brothers in the battalion,"
"and it must have had a disheartening effect on them."
"The Germans apologised, but it left a black mark on the day."
Still, in many places the peace held until the generals ended it with artillery.
The spirit of the Christmas truce would be rekindled the following year,
albeit on a small scale.
In December 1915,
French soldier Louis Barthas found himself in a spontaneous ceasefire
when heavy rain forced both sides to abandon their trenches...
"Frenchmen and Germans looked at each other, and saw that they were all men,"
"no different from one another."
"They smiled, exchanged comments; hands reached out and grasped."
"We shared tobacco, a canteen of coffee or pinard."
"One day, a huge devil of a German stood up on a mound and gave a speech,"
"which only the Germans could understand word for word."
"But everyone knew what it meant, because he smashed his rifle on a tree stump,"
"breaking it in two."
"Applause broke out on both sides."
"Meanwhile, our big-shot leaders were in a furor."
"What in the Lord’s name would happen if the soldiers refused to kill each other?"
German soldier Hermann Baur, also present, was thinking much the same.
He wrote: "The infantry does not shoot any more, just the crazy artillery"...
"The masters make war, they have a quarrel,"
"and the workers, the little men"...
..."have to stand there fighting against each other."
"Is that not a great stupidity?"
Once again, senior officers broke the truce with artillery and court-martial threats.
The fighting began again, and Barthas would spend three more Christmases at war.
The same was true for many others.
In fact, Christmas of 1916...
brought Canadian infantryman John McLean his first taste of combat.
He wrote: "Dear Mother":
"I haven’t written for over a week now, but I couldn’t very well."
"We went into the trenches on Christmas Eve and were in for six days."
"It was not too bad at all, far better than I expected."
"All our fellows came out fine except Jack Ivnor,"
"he got a machine gun bullet through the leg."
"The noise was awful, but a person will get used to that after a while."
"I spent Christmas day in a dugout."
"If I live to be 300 years old, I will never forget this Christmas week."
"One night I was going up a trench and saw a big grey cat sitting on the parapet."
"I would like to tell you more, but I can do that when I get home."
"Now you are doing too much worrying. We are alright if a man is careful."
A month later, he was dead.
Meanwhile another Canadian, Jack Davey, was having a bittersweet Christmas.
He’d come home after months in a POW camp,
only to find himself at a military hospital in Toronto,
thousands of miles from his new fiancée. He wrote to her on Boxing Day:
"Darling Kitty, Many thanks for the letter and the card with Christmas wishes."
"We had quite a snowstorm on Christmas Eve."
"It’s quite a novelty to see a real white Christmas."
"Yesterday was a lovely day. On the whole, I had a good time"
"but I hope next year won’t be such a disappointment for us, sweetheart."
"Surely this rotten luck of being separated at Christmas can’t go on forever."
"One week has passed since I was measured for my leg."
"I wish I could have it by the New Year, so I could start the year on both feet again."
"It will soon be two years since I walked like a human being."
"It seems a long time to talk about it, but I can picture those fields"
"and imagine I can see the exact spot where I fell"
"as though it only happened yesterday."
"I guess it will be a long day before I forget it."
"But I hope all the dark days are behind us now, sweetheart."
"We just have to be happy and live long to make up for it all."
As the war ended and veterans trickled home, that’s exactly what they tried to do.
Yet their holidays spent in the shadow of dugouts would never fully leave them.
There are so many letters like these.
Honestly, deciding which ones to include was the hardest part.
But if this happened to capture your imagination, try something later.
When you go home for the holidays,
ask your relatives if they have any old letters lying around.
It’s possible that the next story from the trenches might come from your own family.
Happy Holidays, everybody. See you next year!