![]() “Later on in the day they came towards us,” Reading described. They shouted out: ‘Are you the Rifle Brigade have you a spare bottle if so we will come half way and you come the other half.’” ![]() During the early part of the morning the Germans started singing and shouting, all in good English. Reading, wrote a letter home to his wife describing his holiday experience in 1914: “My company happened to be in the firing line on Christmas eve, and it was my turn…to go into a ruined house and remain there until 6:30 on Christmas morning. READ MORE: Life in the Trenches of World War I Firsthand Accounts of the Christmas Truceĭescriptions of the Christmas Truce appear in numerous diaries and letters of the time. Countless soldiers were living in misery in the trenches on the fronts, while tens of thousands had already died. There was the devastating Russian defeat at Tannenberg in August 1914 and the German losses in the Battle of the Marne a week later.īy the time winter approached in 1914, and the chill set in, the Western Front stretched hundreds of miles. ![]() And bad news on both sides had left soldiers with plummeting morale. The Industrial Revolution had made it possible to mass-produce new and devastating tools for killing-among them fleets of airplanes and guns that could fire hundreds of rounds per minute. Not only would the war drag on for four more years, but it would prove to be the bloodiest conflict ever up to that time. When the war had begun just six months earlier, most soldiers figured it would be over quickly and they’d be home with their families in time for the holidays. Some accounts suggest a few of these unofficial truces remained in effect for days.įor those who participated, it was surely a welcome break from the hell they had been enduring. Starting on Christmas Eve, small pockets of French, German, Belgian and British troops held impromptu cease-fires across the Western Front, with reports of some on the Eastern Front as well. There was not an atom of hate on either side.”Īnd it wasn’t confined to that one battlefield. “Here they were-the actual, practical soldiers of the German army. The soldiers traded songs, tobacco and wine, joining in a spontaneous holiday party in the cold night.īairnsfather could not believe his eyes. But now, there were handshakes and words of kindness. Normally, the British and Germans communicated across No Man’s Land with streaking bullets, with only occasional gentlemanly allowances to collect the dead unmolested. Enemy soldiers began to climb nervously out of their trenches, and to meet in the barbed-wire-filled “No Man’s Land” that separated the armies. What happened next would, in the years to come, stun the world and make history. British and German Soldiers Meet in the 'No Man's Land' I come half-way.”Īn illustration of soldiers fraternizing on Christmas Day 1914, drawn by World War I British soldier and cartoonist Bruce Bairnsfather. One of the British sergeants answered: “You come half-way. The shout came again.” The voice was from an enemy soldier, speaking in English with a strong German accent. “Suddenly,” Bairnsfather recalled, “we heard a confused shouting from the other side. In the darkness, some of the British soldiers began to sing back. The Germans were singing carols, as it was Christmas Eve. “Away across the field, among the dark shadows beyond, I could hear the murmur of voices.” He turned to a fellow soldier in his trench and said, “Do you hear the Boches kicking up that racket over there?” WATCH: The Christmas Truce on HISTORY Vault Singing Breaks Out in the Trenches on Christmas EveĪt about 10 p.m., Bairnsfather noticed a noise. Cold, wet through and covered with mud.” There didn’t “seem the slightest chance of leaving-except in an ambulance.” ![]() “Here I was, in this horrible clay cavity,” Bairnsfather wrote, “…miles and miles from home. And now, in a part of Belgium called Bois de Ploegsteert, he was crouched in a trench that stretched just three feet deep by three feet wide, his days and nights marked by an endless cycle of sleeplessness and fear, stale biscuits and cigarettes too wet to light. He had spent a good part of the past few months fighting the Germans. Like most of his fellow infantrymen of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, he was spending the holiday eve shivering in the muck, trying to keep warm. And it remains one of the most storied and strangest moments of the Great War-or of any war in history.īritish machine gunner Bruce Bairnsfather, later a prominent cartoonist, wrote about it in his memoirs. It came to be called the Christmas Truce. On Christmas Eve 1914, in the dank, muddy trenches on the Western Front of the first world war, a remarkable thing happened. ![]()
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