Peggy Stanton’s notes on the Christmas Truce
According to one account, roughly 100,000 British and German troops were involved in the informal cessation of hostility along the western front. The Germans placed candles on their trenches and on Christmas trees, then continued the celebration by singing Christmas carols. The British responded by singing carols of their own.
Late on Christmas Eve, 1914, men of the British expeditionary force heard German troops in the trenches, opposite them, singing carols and patriotic songs and saw lanterns and small for trees along their trenches.
Messages began to be shouted between the trenches. The following day, British and German soldiers met in Nomansland and exchanged gifts, took photographs and some played impromptu games of football. They also buried casualties and repaired trenches in dugouts. This is one of the soldiers, Colin Wilson, of the grenadier Guards, describing the truce, and how it started.
“we heard a German singing oh, Holy Night, of course, in German… Then after he finished singing, there were all sorts of Christmas greetings, being shouted across no man’s land at us. These German shouted out, “What about you singing? Oh, Holy Night? Well, we had a go at it, but of course, we weren’t very good….. Anyway, they said, meet us and come over in no man’s land.”
When the two sides met, they often exchanged gifts and souvenirs. George Jamieson recalled….Keith and Philip Ridley, two of my section, came dashing into the BA during the morning and said,“what do you know, the Jerries (that’s the Germans), are out on the top. They’re walking about, they’re dishing out drinks and cigarettes – there’s no fighting going on!“ Well, we noticed the place was very quiet. I said I don’t believe it.” So Keith and Phillip and Leslie went off and they arrived back around lunchtime. Keith with one of the German hats on… the gray thing with the red band around the button. Phillip had a water bottle. They’ve had drinks they’ve had smokes and they have been walking about. “You just wouldn’t believe it!”
The high commands on both sides ordered an end to the truce when they heard of it.
George Ashurst described how unpopular this made them. “We got orders that came down the trench. “get back in your trenches every man“. by word of mouth down each trench.“Everybody back in your trenches,”shouting. The generals behind must’ve seen it and got a bit suspicious, so what they did, they gave orders for a battery of guns behind us to fire, and a machine gun to open out and officers to fire their revolvers at the Jerries…. course that started the war again. Who we were cursing those generals and that and you want to get up here and this stuff never mind you’re giving orders in your big château and driving about in your big cars. We hated the sight of the bloody generals.”
