Penny For Your Thoughts By: Nancy Whitaker
As Christmas approaches, our love and best wishes go out to our troops away from home. We are here in the land of the free and the home of the brave forever grateful to those who are served and have served to protect our freedom.
One story called The Christmas Truce was brought to my attention and I felt this story needed to be shared. The day was Christmas Day, 1914, during WWI. The French, German, and British soldiers were only five months into the war and they were sick of senseless killings and the battles. It was just after dawn on a bitingly cold Christmas Day in 1914, and one of the most extraordinary incidents of the Great War was about to unfold.
As the troops were hunkered down in their trenches in sub zero weather, there were an unmistakable words drifting across the frozen battlefield: ‘Stille Nacht. Heilige Nacht. Alles Schlaft, einsam wacht’. To the ears of the British troops peering over their trench, the lyrics may have been unfamiliar but the haunting tune was unmistakable. After the last note a lone German infantryman appeared holding a small tree glowing with light. ‘Merry Christmas. We not shoot, you not shoot.’
Weary men climbed hesitantly at first out of trenches and stumbled into no man’s land. Walking over dead corpses, they shook hands, sang carols, lit each other’s cigarettes, swapped tunic buttons and addresses and, most famously, played football, kicking around empty bully-beef cans and using their caps or steel helmets as goalposts. It was even reported they had roasted a pig. The unauthorized Christmas truce spread across much of the 500-mile Western Front where more than a million men were encamped.
A lot of speculation has arose out of the Christmas Trench story. One story is that a barber offered to cut all the troops’ hair, even the enemies. While the guards were on duty, the young soldiers fraternized and celebrated Christmas, They told each other that if they were told to fire, to just shoot up in the air.
According to records held by the World War One Veterans’ Association, there is only one man, Alfred Anderson, in the world still alive who spent 25 December 1914 serving in a conflict that left 31 million people dead, wounded or missing.
Alfred Anderson was 18 at the time. In an interview with The Observer, he spoke of his experiences on that cold Christmas Day. He was happy, healthy and surrounded by most of his former school friends, who had all joined the Territorial Army together in 1912 and thought that they were at the start of an exciting adventure. He had left his home in Newtyle, Angus, in October, taking the train from Dundee to Southampton, then a ferry to Le Havre.
But by the first Christmas of the war they had already experienced horror and the death of young friends was commonplace.
His unit, the 1/5th Battalion The Black Watch, was one of the first involved in trench warfare.
A song came out of this Christmas Truce so many years ago.
Christmas in the Trench song
Two years ago the war was waiting for me after school.
To Belgium and to Flanders to Germany to here
I fought for King and country I love dear.
‘Twas Christmas in the trenches where the frost so bitter hung,
The frozen fields of France were still, no Christmas song was sung,
Our families back in England were toasting us that day,
Their brave and glorious lads so far away.
I was lying with my messmate on the cold and rocky ground
When across the lines of battle came a most peculiar sound
Says I, “Now listen up, me boys!” each soldier strained to hear
As one young German voice sang out so clear.
“He’s singing bloody well, you know!” my partner says to me
Soon one by one each German voice joined in in harmony
The cannons rested silent, the gas clouds rolled no more
As Christmas brought us respite from the war.
As soon as they were finished and a reverent pause was spent
“God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” struck up some lads from Kent
The next they sang was “Stille Nacht,” “Tis ‘Silent Night’,” says I
And in two tongues one song filled up that sky.
“There’s someone coming towards us!” the front line sentry cried
All sights were fixed on one lone figure coming from their side
His truce flag, like a Christmas star, shone on that plain so bright
As he bravely strode unarmed into the night.
Soon one by one on either side walked into No Man’s land
With neither gun nor bayonet we met there hand to hand
We shared some secret brandy and we wished each other well
And in a flare-lit soccer game we gave ’em hell.
We traded chocolates, cigarettes, and photographs from home
These sons and fathers far away from families of their own
Young Sanders played his squeeze box and they had a violin
This curious and unlikely band of men.
Soon daylight stole upon us and France was France once more
With sad farewells we each began to settle back to war
But the question haunted every heart that lived that wondrous night
“Whose family have I fixed within my sights?”
‘Twas Christmas in the trenches, where the frost so bitter hung
The frozen fields of France were warmed as songs of peace were sung
For the walls they’d kept between us to exact the work of war
Had been crumbled and were gone for evermore.
My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I dwell
Each Christmas come since World War I I’ve learned its lessons well
That the ones who call the shots won’t be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we’re the same.
