The Christmas Truce

Christmas Eve 1914. World War I has been raging for only four months but already the French-Belgian border had been turned into the waste land that would later be called "The Western Front". Allied and German soldiers fire at each other from their trenches--some of which are not more than a few yards apart. As Christmas approaches the firing dies down along the Western Front but never seems to die out. Sitting in their trenches, filled with mud, ooze, and gore the soldiers try to focus on the care packages of cigarettes and chocolates from the government. As they open their gifts and read the letters from loved ones safely at home, many are reminded that this is the first Christmas that many will be spending away from their families.

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From enemy trenches soldiers are shouting greetings across No Man's Land. Christmas carols mix with the sounds of artillery guns in the distance. Then someone shouts an order not to shoot. Bravery a few Germans stand up out of their trenches and offer cigarettes to the British troops that had been trying to kill them just hours before. Somewhere else along the Front, a German soldier sent a chocolate cake with a message for a truce to begin at 7:00 p.m. In this way the Christmas Truce began in chunks across the Western Front. Former enemies exchanged gifts and sang Silent Night. The most value gift were cigarettes which dotted the inky blackness of No Man's Land like cancer-causing fireflies.

 

When the officers of the British and German command heard of what was happening, some tried to quash the impromptu celebrations out of fear that it would make it more difficult to convince the soldiers to resume killing one another once the holiday was over.

 

The next morning - Christmas Day- British and German soldiers could be seen walking around No Man's Land, laughing and sharing photos of their families. Some even got a soccer match going right in the middle of the biggest killing zone Europe had ever seen. Where it existed the truce lasted the entire day. Some people who had been barbers before the war gave out free haircuts. Another showed off his juggling skills right out in the open as he were in a park rather than on a battlefield.

 

For most parts of the Western front, the Christmas Truce ended as quickly as it had come. One British soldier, Captain J.C. Dunn, recounts the following story:

 

'At 8.30 I fired three shots in the air and put up a flag with "Merry Christmas" on it, and I climbed on the parapet. He [the Germans] put up a sheet with "Thank you" on it, and the German Captain appeared on the parapet. We both bowed and saluted and got down into our respective trenches, and he fired two shots in the air, and the War was on again.'

 

In some isolated spots the truce held for days even weeks. But by spring 1915, the war was back in full swing. The introduction of poison gas would take the fighting to a more brutal level, Never again would the soldiers of World War One voluntarily stop fighting and come together to celebrate their humanity.