The year 1914 marked the beginning of World War I, and it’s destruction that covered Europe. Those who witnessed the devastation thought it would be the war to end all wars. Soldiers who thought that they would be serving a short time, ended up staying in the cold damp trenches for months. The conflict lasted 4 years.
But, something remarkable happened on Christmas Eve, 1914. In the trenches of the Western Front, the soldiers called a truce.
A British machine gunner, Bruce Bairnsfather wrote about it in his memoirs. It was about 10 PM that he noticed a noise across the Western Front. It was the German soldiers singing Christmas carols in the darkness. The British troops stopped to listen then began to sing carols back to them. A short time later, a German soldier called “Come over here.” Then a British Sergent answered “You come halfway.” “I come half-way.”
With that, enemy soldiers began to climb nervously out of their trenches and meet in the no-man’s land between them. Normally only bullets fly over no man’s land, but on that day the British and Germans had handshakes and words of kindness. The soldiers traded tobacco, wine and songs creating a Christmas party in the middle of that cold night. Bairnsfather could not believe his eyes. There was not hate on either side.
It wasn’t confined to that battlefield only, small truces spontaneously happened among French, German, Belgian and British troops across the Western Front. Some happened along the Eastern Front as well.
One soldier wrote “Here we were, laughing and chatting to men whom only a few hours before we were trying to kill!”
One British soldier set up a makeshift barbershop charging Germans a few cigarettes for a haircut. Accounts describe vivid scenes of men helping enemy soldiers collect their dead.
A soccer ball appeared from somewhere and they made up some goals. The men participated in a general kick-about. There may have been a couple of hundred taking part. Other soldiers wrote in their memoirs about how a lively game of soccer brought men from their trenches to play. The Christmas season celebrates the birth of Christ who taught us to love each other. In that time of war, it created a celebration bringing together enemies, who became friends for a time.
Some sources have claimed that 100,000 soldiers took part in the truce. Not everyone was pleased. A German scolded his fellow soldiers saying “Such a thing should not happen in wartime.” That German’s name was Adolph Hitler.
Some of the British soldiers were punished for fraternization, and top command said that it should never happen again. As for Bairnsfather, he said “Looking back on it all, I wouldn’t have missed that unique and weird Christmas Day for anything.”
The world is a beautiful place at Christmas time. Thank you for all your support for the museum this year.
Click on this QR code and visit our new museum web site, Dublin Historical.org. Take care of yourself and family members over this Christmas Season. Merry Christmas.
(The History Channel, “WWI’s Christmas Truce: When Fighting Paused for the Holiday” history.com)