On a crisp, clear morning 102 years ago, thousands of
British, Belgian and French soldiers put down their rifles, stepped out of
their trenches and spent Christmas mingling with their German enemies along the
Western front, reported Time Magazine.
Most accounts suggest the truce began with carol singing
from the trenches on Christmas Eve, “a beautiful moonlit night, frost on the
ground, white almost everywhere”, as Pvt. Albert Moren of the Second Queens
Regiment recalled, in a document later rounded up by the New York Times.
Graham Williams of the Fifth London Rifle Brigade described it in even greater detail:
“First the Germans would sing one of their carols and then
we would sing one of ours, until when we started up ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’
the Germans immediately joined in singing the same hymn to the Latin words
Adeste Fideles. And I thought, well, this is really a most extraordinary thing –
two nations both singing the same carol in the middle of a war.”
Pope Benedict XV, who took office that September, had
originally called for a Christmas truce, an idea that was officially rejected.
Yet it seems the sheer misery of daily life in the cold, wet, dull trenches was
enough to motivate troops to initiate the truce on their own — which means that
it’s hard to pin down exactly what happened.
The next morning, in some places, German soldiers emerged
from their trenches, calling out “Merry Christmas” in English. Allied soldiers
came out warily to greet them. In others, Germans held up signs reading “You no
shoot, we no shoot.” Over the course of the day, troops exchanged gifts of
cigarettes, food, buttons and hats. The Christmas truce also allowed both sides
to finally bury their dead comrades, whose bodies had lain for weeks on “no
man’s land,” the ground between opposing trenches.
The phenomenon took different forms across the Western
front. One account mentions a British soldier having his hair cut by his
pre-war German barber; another talks of a pig-roast. Several mention impromptu
kick-abouts with makeshift soccer balls.
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