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Germans with Christmas tree, accordion and song sheets
Christmas 1914: truce along two thirds of the British line
On my first trip to the battlefields we went past Ploegsteert, a Belgian village almost on the French border south of Ypres. I was told it was the place where the Christmas truce had happened in 1914. The British (who called it ‘Plug Street’) heard the Germans singing carols and after some shouting across No Man’s Land, soldiers from both sides climbed out, shook hands, exchanged cigars and whisky and played football (the Germans won.) The next day they went back to shooting each other.
There is a memorial to the Christmas truce at Ploegsteert, with a place where visitors leave commemorative footballs. But Malcolm Brown of the Imperial War Museum reckons that Christmas truces took place in 1914 along two-thirds of the British line. There are plenty of grainy photographs from the soldiers’ own cameras and dozens of letters home describing what happened. After Christmas some of these pictures and accounts were reprinted in British and German newspapers.
Everywhere the pattern was similar. On Christmas eve the Germans sang carols and put up lights. Sometimes there were bands. The two sides shouted Christmas greetings. Christmas morning was crisp and cold, with a dusting of snow, in contrast to the muddy wet of the weeks before. It was always the Germans who initiated contact, calling across, climbing into No Man’s Land. Sometimes it began with a simple request to bury the dead, since such truces had happened before.
The pattern is not as unexpected as it seems. The Germans were usually Bavarians or Saxons and would almost all have been conscripts. It would not have been surprising if they were less committed to what was widely seen in Germany as a Prussian war. In 1914 the British were all volunteers and would have come across British propaganda – some of it based on a germ of truth – of German atrocities in Belgium. But the days when both sides widely abused, looted and shot prisoners were yet to come. It was still possible to think of the other side as human.
Company Sergeant Major Frank Naden of the 6th Cheshire Territorials, told The Newcastle Evening Mail, ‘the Germans gave us some of their sausages, and we gave them some of our stuff. The Scotsmen started the bagpipes and we had a rare old jollification. The Germans expressed themselves as being tired of the war and wished it was over.’ There was one report of a pig roast.
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British and German soldiers together from the scrapbook of CSM Herbert Styles, 2nd Battalion The Gordon Highlanders.
We don’t want to kill you and you don’t want to kill us
The Tommies’ letters agree on their astonishment that such a thing could have happened.
The best they had expected for Christmas was a letter and a plum pudding from home, and a woollen muffler, knitted in a campaign led by Commander in Chief Sir John French’s wife.
One Second Lieutenant wrote, ‘a German climbed out of his trench and came over towards us. My friend and I walked out towards him. We met, and very gravely saluted each other. He was joined by more Germans, and some of the Dublin Fusiliers from our own trenches came out to join us. No German officer came out, it was only the ordinary soldiers. One of the German soldiers said, ‘We don't want to kill you, and you don't want to kill us. So why shoot?’
Footballs appeared from either side in a number of places, and there were a few organised matches. If there was no proper ball they played with an empty jam box or a bundle of straw.
Some exchanged addresses and talked about meeting up after the war.
Many Germans had worked in Britain and spoke English. One turned out to have been the head waiter at the Great Central Hotel, by London’s Marylebone Station. One passed over a letter for his girlfriend. Others swapped photos. There are a couple of stories of men who had been barbers setting up in No Man’s Land and cutting the hair of soldiers from both sides.
There were fewer truces in the French sector and the French press seems to have remained silent about them. In some places joint masses were held, burying the dead from No Man’s Land. French military intelligence dispatched officers to discover what was going on.
In one place the Germans had sent over a note in schoolboy French. It warned that a German Colonel was due to visit and they would therefore have to do some shooting at about 2 o’clock. So the French should keep their heads down then. But they could all still meet up for drinks, as they’d agreed, at 5.
#23 The last million men - Ep 7 World War One: how much was it Britain's fault?
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Football matches, drinking tea and whisky, sharing cigars and, best of all, taking selfies...
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