The Christmas Truce

When war broke out in August 1914, it was generally assumed the whole affair would be over and done with by Christmas. Both sides, cocky with their assurance of victory, envisioned themselves back home with their families in time for Christmas dinner. The reality was that this was not to be a quick fight and as weeks turned to months, it became apparent that Christmas would be spent in the trenches of the Western Front.

It was December 24th, 1914 in a sector of the front line around the Belgian town of Ypres. The rain had been falling all morning, but stopped around dusk and the cold set in. Many of the men in Capt Edward Hulse’s regiment were suffering swollen feet from the cold and wet. As darkness fell, the men set about opening their “Princess Mary tins”…small brass boxes containing chocolate, tobacco and a Christmas greeting from the Princess and King George. Over in the German lines, the men were opening their own versions, the Kaiserliche …….pipes for the officers and cigars for the men.

It was now full dark and the sector around the lines had grown quiet. Suddenly, Captain Hulse noticed that four Germans were walking across no-mans land toward his lines. They were unarmed and were walking in full view of all the troops. Captain Hulse and a few of his fellow Scots Guards rose up out of their trenches to meet them and discovered that the men were doing this on their own….there had been no official order of a truce……..the men simply wanted to come over to the British lines as a gesture of good will. From that point, soldiers from both sides poured into no-man’s land to meet with their foe. At first the British and German soldiers just stared at one another, but one, then another cautiously approached the other with a handshake, an exchange of tobacco, perhaps a photograph of a loved one and the men realized that the inhuman foe that they had faced across the wire and mud were very much just like they were. They had families that they missed and they longed for just a few hours of peace on this most unusual Christmas Eve. Hulse noted in his diary: “Scots and Huns were fraternizing in the most genuine possible manner. Every sort of souvenir exchanged, addresses given and received, photos of families shown, etc. One of our fellows offered a German a cigarette; the German said “Virginian?” The fellow said “Aye, straight-cut”. The German said “No thanks, I only smoke Turkish”….it gave us all a good laugh,”

The Christmas Truce of 1914 was observed all along the lines of the Western Front…some more than others. First and foremost it gave men the chance to recover and bury their dead, but it also gave the men a much needed break from the appalling fighting. Both British, German and to a lesser degree, French soldiers met in the neutral area in front of their trench lines to sing Christmas carols, exchange buttons or other bits of kit, share tobacco and food and meet as friends instead of hated enemies. In many areas, football matches were hastily organized and played. In some areas, the truce lasted through New Years. When the British high command got wind of the truce, they were furious. In some cases, entire regiments were withdrawn and reassigned to different areas of the front. The Germans suffered a similar fate when their staff officers learned of the unofficial truce. Tragically, Capt. Hulse was killed in March of 1915.

Amidst the horror of the great charnel houses of the Western Front, the Christmas Truce proved to all that the inherit goodness of humankind could not be snuffed out and that goodwill towards all still existed in the least likely of places