The Christmas Truce

Very often history focuses on catastrophic events, but across the world, there are more periods of peace than of war. And even during the fiercest wars there have there have been times of empathy and peace. Among the most notable was that of the Christmas Truce of World War I. World War I was fought between 1914 and 1918, with fierce, but often inconclusive battles. The Truce took place before and during Christmas of 1914, extending along two-thirds of the Western Front, that is, the boundary between France and Germany, and involving around 1,00,000 soldiers from both sides. It was not organised, it happened spontaneously. The opposing armies were separated by barbed wire and trenches, yet were close enough to hear one another’s voices. A typical incident that set off the truce is narrated by a British soldier. On Christmas Eve, lights shone along the German side, and then a beautifully sung Christmas carol wafted over the air, ‘Stille nacht, heilige nacht...’ (Silent night, holy night..). The sound was so pure that all the British soldiers fell silent and listened, and when the song was over, spontaneously burst into claps, and then responded with a song of their own. Each side sang to the other for quite some time, in German, in English, and in other languages. Then, they jointly sang a song in Latin, ‘Adele fideles..’ (O come all ye faithful). Now both sides forgot their different nations and different languages. After all, was there really any difference between them? They were all young men, ordered by their respective Governments, to fight a war against people for whom they had no personal enmity. They came out of the trenches, crossed the boundary line, met and exchanged small gifts. And this happened in hundreds of places across that artificial boundary. Some groups even played football matches. Perhaps, if there had been no officers around, the war could have ended right then, but the officers did not allow this friendship to continue. After Christmas was over, the soldiers had to fight again, to kill those they had briefly met in friendship.

But this event is remembered even today, and inspired many writers, artists and composers. One of the Beatles, Paul McCartney, composed the song, Pipes of Peace in its memory, in 1980. The Truce found its way into movies, among them ‘Joyeux Noel’ (Merry Christmas) a war drama produced in 2005. In this film, it is the Scots who began the singing, accompanied by bagpipes.

This was not the only occasion during World War I when enemy troops briefly made friends. It happened to a limited extent on other Christmases, and on other fronts, and even on no particular occasion. Sometimes, the infantry troops facing each other were just exhausted, and wanted a break. And even many officers had no enmity against the opposing troops. Lt Edwin Vaughan, of the 1st/8th Warwickshire (British) regiment, describes the terrible suffering during the battle of Passchendaele, and recounts what happened with a group of German prisoners: “The prisoners clustered around me, bedraggled and heartbroken, telling me of the terrible time they had been having...I could not spare a man to take them back, so I put them into shell holes with my own men, who made a great fuss of them, sharing their scanty rations with them.”

Interviewing survivors of the First World War, Max Arthur put together their accounts in a book titled ‘The Last Post’. Some of these veterans, really did not want to remember the war, and not all spoke against it, but some did. Harry Patch, born on June 17, 1898, fought as a private in the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry. Reminiscing about the war, he said, “Why should the British Government call me up and take me out to a battlefield to shoot a man I never knew, whose language I couldn’t speak? All those lives lost for a war finished over a table. Now what is the sense in that? It’s just an argument between two Governments. Neither Charles nor I ever want any other young man to go through what we did again, but still we send our lads to war.” Harry joined the war at the age of 18, while Charles Kuentz was one of the last surviving German veterans of the war. The two met at Ypres and talked about the past, when Charles was already 107 years old. And even at that age, they were unable to forget, and still wondered why war had to take place.

Alfred Anderson of the 5th Battalion (TA) was also against the war. He said, “I’ve been trying to forget war for the past eighty or so years, but wars just keep happening and it’s ordinary folks who pay the price.”

One hundred and four years have passed since the First World War. Wars continue to take place, but still many, or perhaps even most people, would prefer that they never happen.

(A PhD in ancient Indian History, the writer lives in Dehradun and has authored ten books)