25 December 1914 A.D. CHRISTMAS DAY ON THE WESTERN FRONT: WWI—Christmas
Truce of 1914 (The Killing Will Promptly Resume 26 Dec 1914…That is All)
Graves, Dan. “The Christmas
Truce.” Christianity.com. Jul 2007. http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1901-2000/the-christmas-truce-11630705.html. Accessed 24
Dec 2014.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the
fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, was not writing about a fictional event
when he wrote about the Christmas Truce of 1914. In Europe, the nations of
Britain and France with their allies were battling Germany. The fighting was
savage. And yet at Christmas, all along the lines, something amazing happened.
Doyle described it as "one human episode amid all the atrocities which
have stained the memory of the war."
The war which both sides had
thought would come to a speedy conclusion, instead bogged down into trench
warfare when neither side was able to break through the other's defenses. By
this day, Christmas, 1914, both sides were in a holding pattern, waiting for
new troops and the coming year when a new offensive could begin. Life (and
death) in the wet, muddy trenches was appalling.
In the evenings leading up to
Christmas, men on both sides sang hymns. On Christmas Eve, they decked their
trenches with Christmas symbols. In places, the Germans hung paper lanterns at
the tops of their trenches. All along the front, groups of soldiers here and
there met each other in no man's land, sometimes arranging to bury the dead who
lay between the lines, sometimes exchanging Christmas songs and greetings. One
observer wrote, "For an instant, the God of goodwill was once more master
of this corner of the earth."
Christmas Day dawned with frost
on the ground. For once there were no planes overhead, no rifle fire, no bombs
along large stretches of the front. An unofficial truce was in effect, as the
hostile nations with shared Christian roots extended a brief peace toward one
another. "The silence seemed extraordinary after the usual din,"
wrote one Lieutenant.
In places along the line,
officers and soldiers from both sides climbed out of their trenches, met the
enemy between lines, shook hands and even exchanged Christmas gifts--mostly
tobacco and food rations. Some shared addresses and photos and compared
propaganda.
Of course, not everyone was
friendly. In places along the line, especially where fighting had been
particularly deadly in recent days, the men took shots at one another all day
long. Here and there along the line, where truces were agreed upon, one side or
the other broke the truce. Men on both sides were killed in this foul play, but
it was rare. As one soldier wrote, "...why kill one another on such a
festival day?" Or as Private William Tapp wrote in his diary, "...it
doesn't seem right to be killing each other at Xmas time."
Generally more cordial relations
prevailed. Near Frelingheim, the Germans rolled over a barrel of beer and the
English responded with plum puddings. Near Le Touquet, Germans and English
played a game of football. The Germans won 3-2.
For days afterward, fighting was
more subdued. In some places the informal truce lasted a day or two more. Many
wished it could have become permanent, that "peace on earth, goodwill to
men" was more than a one-day sentiment. As a German put it, "it was a
day of peace in war; it is only a pity that it was not decisive peace."
Hundreds of thousands of casualties followed before the armistice of 1918.
Bibliography:
1. Brown, Malcolm and Seaton, Shirley. Christmas Truce. New York: Hippocrene,
1984.
2. Duffy, Michael. "The Christmas Truce." http://www.firstworldwar.com/features/christmastruce.htm
3. Morgan, Tom. "The Christmas Truce, 1914."
http://www.fylde.demon.co.uk/xmas.htm
Last updated July,
2007
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