Christmas Truce during the First World War

I am reminded of reading `The Best Christmas Present in the World’ written by Michael Morpurgo when I have to do research and write about the famous Christmas Truce between England and Germany during the peak of the battles of the First World War. Morpurgo weaved a great story around this famous event and presented a very fine emotional account of it. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Europe came to be divided into opposing power blocs. The German Empire, that came into power in 1871 and was created from prior independent German states, emerged as one of the most dominant among Europe’s military and industrial powers. In 1879, the German Empire allied with the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This came to be regarded as the Dual Alliance. In 1882, it transformed into a Triple Alliance when Italy signed a military pact with these two empires. Wary about this Triple Alliance, France rushed into a pact, known as the Dual Entente, with the Russian Empire in 1892. The British Empire, who liked to isolate itself from European affairs, became concerned of the growing power of the Triple Alliance and went on to join the French and the Russian Empires to form the Triple Entente, in 1907. These six nations were undoubtedly among the most powerful industrial and military states in the world. Each pledged to come to the help of its ally in time of need and war. This network of military pacts was to ascertain peace in the region and at the same time, all were aware that sooner or later; it would lead to a very large scale European war. The spark that ignited the First World War was the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, who was heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This happened during his visit to Sarajevo on 28th June 1914. The assassin belonged to a secret society from Serbia. He opened fire when they were about to get into a car, killing the Archduke and his wife. The Austro-Hungarian Empire immediately invaded Serbia when they came to know the roots of the assassin. When this happened, Russia arranged a partial mobilisation of its reserve troops. Germany took this as a direct threat and began its own mobilisation of reserve forces and declared war on the Russians on 1st August, 1914. France and Britain, as allies, had to jump in this war to aid Russia and it turned into a full-scale World War. All those countries who helped this alliances from other parts of the world did not realise that new military tactics and technology would make this war more deadly and destructive than any other previous wars fought before. During the first Battle of Ypres, in matter of just one month; a quarter of a million German, British, Belgian and French troops became casualties of war and not a single party had successfully achieved a breakthrough in enemy lines. The Initiation of the Trenches Germany had canvassed vigorously and inducted much young blood into their armed forces and Kaiser Wilhelm II had said to them.”Well boys! Before the leaves fall from the trees here, you shall all be back in the Dear Vaterland.” A great film was made to cover this scope of the First World War. It was `All Quiet on the Western Front’ in 1930, directed by Lewis Milestone and a remake in 2022 of the same name, directed by Edward Berger. Both the films are worth a watch and they cover the narrative brilliantly. During the opening engagement of the First World War on the Western Front, the First Battle of the Marne saw German troops advancing towards the French and British defenders. The result was that more than five-hundred thousand men became casualties of war on both sides. Then, The First Battle of the Aisne was responsible for another quarter of a million casualties. The result was about the same after the First Battle of Ypres. These three battles on the Western Front saw over one million casualties. By the end of the year 1914, it became clear that traditional military tactics were simply not working because of the new weaponry. The German Empire, as was the case in the Second World War, had hoped for a quick victory against the French soldiers. When this did not happen, German troops switched to a defensive posture and started making a network of bunkers and fortified positions that would allow them to hold their territory for a longer time and then help them counter attack. The focus of these positions was to make a strong stand and protect themselves with the help of artillery and machine guns. To allow the troops to dwell within them safely, trenches were dug. They were dug in No-Man’s Land and they provided a strong line of defense in case of attacks. Supplies were passed on to these trenches from the front lines. The nature of these trench systems depended on the nature of the terrain where they were created. The films I have mentioned in this article give you a fair idea of the nature of these trenches. As a case in example, the ground area around River Somme was chalky and was easily dug out but it tended to crumble easily during heavy rain. So, many trenches were heavily secured with wood or sandbags to prevent them from collapsing. In the Ypres region, the boggy soil made the digging of trenches very difficult. Breastworks were built up above the ground, using sandbags and wood behind which the defenders could take shelter. This network of trenches was created on both sides of the front line and came to be known as the `Western Front’. Stalemate on the Western Front By the end of the year 1914, life in the battleground trenches had become a fact that had to be accepted by thousands of soldiers on the Western Front. Even when there were no attacks taking place, all the troops faced the lurking threat of death or a serious injury through artillery fire or from snipers in the opposing trench system. Enemy fire was not the only danger that was present; the living conditions were pitiful. The soldiers had to live in permanently cold and damp conditions, reminding the youth about how comfortable life was during peace days in their respective homes. The sanitation conditions were poor. Toilets often overflowed into the trenches and there were rotting dead bodies to be found frequently, nearby. Dysentery and diarrhoea were sadly common as were lice and scabies. Soldiers were suffering with a condition called Trench Foot that was caused by wet feet for longer periods. That caused their feet to swell and the skin to decay. Often, it would lead to gangrene and feet had to be amputated. Many soldiers on the Western Front had to be evacuated to get medical attention, mostly for frostbite and hypothermia. Each day became a crushing routine for them, which sapped their energy. Combat troops in a trench would have to take up defensive positions, about half an hour before dawn as most attacks began at that time. These were precautionary moves. Breakfast was usually served around 0700. The same routine was repeated around dusk. The soldiers who were not on guard duty mostly cleaned their weapons and themselves. They also made the required repairs to the bunkers or trenches. They were sometimes ordered out into No-Man’s-Land to repair barbed wire and defensive equipment. Patrols were sent out in the night to reconnoitre enemy lines and to generate maps of important positions. The actual time that was spent by men on the lines at the front depended first on the location and then on the availability of reserve troops. Each section was of about eight soldiers. It should be remembered that these soldiers were spending a twelve-day rotation in these trenches with wet, unsanitary and cold conditions with very little sleep, under the constant threat of injury or death. This was to be endured for months on end. The senior officers had the comfort and shelter of working and ordering from shelters or buildings and were away from danger as there was very little threat of being bombarded by air force. An issue for senior officers on all sides was of the potential drop in the morale within their camps and a reality check of lack of enthusiasm when coming to grips with the actual enemy. In 1915, hostilities lost their sheen and there was a time when the soldiers saw the futility of war for some stupid ideologies and decided that they wanted to reduce the risk of injury or death by inclining themselves towards a `live and let live’ policy which led to the famous truce during Christmastime in 1914. In fact, the people at the front were actually preparing to protect the men while assuring the higher command that the enemy was continuously being attacked. On several occasions, informal local cease-fires were being agreed to, mutually to allow for the removal of wounded and dead troops. There were even reports of fraternisation and exchange of goodies like tobacco and chocolate between opposing frontline trenches. The reality of the situation becomes clear that war is a horrendous, vain and futile fact of life in comparison with peace and brotherhood. The men in the trenches may have been wearing different uniforms but they shared a clear understanding of the stark horrors of life on the frontlines. This awareness grew to quite an extent among British and German troops. Hence, my referral to Morpurgo’s great novel, `The Best Christmas Present in the World’. Not many people know that King George V, the British Monarch and the German Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, were cousins as both were grandsons of Queen Victoria. It also has to be noted that Many Germans spoke English well as many of them worked in England before the war started. All this was being done during propaganda speeches by opposing senior officers in the army as they were trying to dehumanise the enemy and presenting them as barbaric and savage. What they did not know was at the Western Front; the soldiers could clearly her and see their enemy. This was quite an unexpected outcome of trench warfare. In wars that were held before, ordinary soldiers of opposing armies had never spent long periods of inactivity while they were just about hundred yards from each other in trenches. The governments of the countries involved in this war discouraged fraternisation through threats of prison sentences for treason. Field Marshal Kitchener When the war began, Field Marshal Herbert Kitchener was made British Secretary of State for War and he predicted that this would be a long conflict and that Britain would need a large army and unlike the Austro-Hungarian Empire, there was no system in England of compulsory military training for the young blood. In comparison with the Germans, the British soldiers at the Western Front were not so experienced in the art of war. Kitchener started a publicity campaign for volunteers to join the army. He had a good response as half a million citizens volunteered and joined the British Army. As the Germans failed in the war to come in 1939, in this war too; their plans misfired. They were contemplating on a swift victory against the French and they wanted to swing their armies to the East to face the Russians. When such a victory failed, Germany found itself declaring a war on two fronts; hence, the term Western Front. The main core of the German Army was the Prussian regiments. Germany failed to defeat the French convincingly and these elite units were redeployed to the East. To replace them at the Western Front, less experienced troops were called in from Bavaria, Saxony and Westphalia. It was expected that these troops would be able to hold the Western Front. How the Singing began on the Christmas Eve? By the third week of December in 1914, the weather turned at the Western Front. It became colder, making the mud freeze and the movement within the trenches became easier. Many soldiers were dreading to face the prospect of spending Christmas in the cold trenches. A week before Christmas, the Germans took the initiative and baked a chocolate cake, sending and sharing that with the British troops. They also invited the `enemy’ to join them for a round of carols that night and asked for a cease-fire for a whole day on Christmas. The British troops gladly agreed and sent them tobacco in return. There was even a talk about playing a friendly football (soccer) match. This relaxed attitude among the soldiers did not go along too well with their seniors, particularly the singing in the night of Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht or Silent Night, Holy Night carol. The British sang the `First Noel’ and `O Come All Ye Faithful.’ The German trenches were lit by Christmas decorations. Thee was no shooting from either side. It was a mutual agreement as the troops were disillusioned with the very act of hostilities. Among the British High Command, discovering that the men in the opposite camps wished to celebrate Christmas in peace was a stunning shock. Propaganda had portrayed the Germans as brutal and merciless; the picture in reality was an altogether different one. On Christmas Day, unaccustomed silence reined on the battlefields. This famous Christmas Truce was glorified by John Morpurgo when he wrote `The Best Christmas Present in the World’. On Christmas Day in 1914, the German and British troops even played soccer games with one another in No-Man’s Land. Those who were able to speak with their enemies were surprised to learn that the propaganda they had read about did not seem to be true. One of the officers from the London Rifle Brigade wrote in a letter home, “The Germans whom I spoke with were awfully decent fellows – Saxons, intelligent, respectable-looking men. I had quite a decent talk with three of my enemy soldiers.” This letter was published in the Hull Daily Mail. This was being looked at by respective government heads as treasonous peace. One of the Corporals from the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment, Adolf Hitler, wrote “Such things should not happen in wartime; have you Germans no sense of honour left at all?” Earlier in December 1914, Pope Benedict XV had sent out a request to all warring nations that they consider establishing a `truce during Christmas’. The soldiers on opposing sides took this plea seriously and they did exactly what the Pope had suggested. The New York Times ran an article on 31st December that year about this `Christmas Truce’ at the Western Front in Europe. The senior officers in Britain and Germany denied such news and called it false. They much preferred the news that the First World War was being fought in an entirely inhuman way with the scale of carnage that it brought. Under military law, the fraternisation instances were outlawed. The soldiers that took part in such a truce would be dealt with severely and charged with desertion or treason, punishable by death. The End of the Christmas Truce The acts of humanity and sanity were short-lived. On the Boxing Day, the seniors had goaded the troops to continue with their battles by announcing engagement by firing two shots in the air. The wars that have been fought since Adam and the waste of human lives have never been questioned by government and their heads (or should I say tails)! I consider war as not a necessary act but a criminal act where taking the life of a soldier of an opposing country should be deemed as cold degree murder. The night of the Boxing Day saw hostilities begin again influenced the fears of senior officers. I am digressing here but not many people know the source of the Boxing Day. It has nothing to do with the sport that made Muhammad Ali famous. It has to do with boxing the gifts that had been brought for Christmas by family members to be given to their servants and their families as well as distributing these boxes to orphanages and old-age homes. Despite the orders of the senior officers, neither the Germans nor the British were in the mood for being cruel and killing people. So, there was little activity on the Western Front in the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day of 1915. This was the only remarkable example of a Christmas Truce during a World War. Such acts were not repeated during the Second World War. God had also sent much snow during this time, resulting in the battleground become muddy and slushy. Preoccupied with the rain and mud, the unofficial truce got prolonged in some regions of Flanders. Many British and Scottish units chose to spend Hogmanay and New Year’s Day in relative peace and their German opponents seemed very willing to cooperate. By the first week of January 1915, all traces of truces finally ended and the world was back to business; the business of making money with armoury and the business of killing. The Western Front returned to the misery of trench warfare and the daily danger of death or severe injury through enemy fire. This Christmas Truce at the Western Front became famous In the early part of the year 1915, the British newspapers carried several reports of this famous Christmas Truce between the Germans and the British. In a journal, `South Wales Echo’, it was noted that the way in which soldiers on both sides had adhered to this unofficial truce would certainly go down as one of the greatest surprises of a World War. There was an overpowering feeling that the men on both sides of the front lines were exposed directly to the genuine horrors of modern warfare and they understood about what was really happening while their seniors and political leaders were the ones who wanted to prolong the war. Sometime in the later part of January 1915, the `Daily Mirror’ noted that “the lull is finished. The absurdity and the tragedy renew themselves.” It took ten weeks for the British to use the new troops of the Volunteer Army to launch an attack after this notable Christmas Truce. The result was that the battle ended with over eleven thousand British and Indian casualties. A month later, the German troops launched an attack on British positions around Ypres, using poison gas. There were further casualties of about seventy thousand allied troops and about thirty-five thousand German troops. There were attempts to organise brief unofficial truces around Easter time but they were not noteworthy and fizzled out. When Christmas approached in 1915 and the war was still not over; the British senior officers were concerned about a repeat of the previous year’s truce but it did not happen as there was close monitoring and senior officers made sure that a truce did not materialise. As time moved on, there was no congeniality left among the troops. The German Zeppelin airships had also begun a large scale campaign at bombing British cities, killing large number of civilians. The RMS Lusitania was torpedoed in May 1915 by a German submarine, killing more than one thousand two hundred people including naval troops, soldiers, women and children. However, there were reports that on Christmas Day in 1915; there was a ceasefire and the respective sides were allowed break to bury their dead. An officer in a Highland Regiment reported in the Times Edition of 2nd January 1915, “So there you are; all this talk of hate, all this fury at each other that has raged since the beginning of the War, quelled and stayed by the magic of Christmas.” The fact has to be separated from the fiction. Unlike the majority, there were very few who truly saw the futility of war and hatred among races of mankind. Those who thought like this were in the minority. The fact was that this war went on for three more long years. The letters written by few soldiers on the Western Front show respect for the courage and professionalism of their enemies, as is brought out in the novel by Robert Morpurgo. The Christmas Truce of 1914 has attained a mythic status down the ages in the United Kingdom. Though it was covered in a number of books as I have suggested above, it was also reflected in few movies such as Lewis Milestone’s 1930 film, `All Quiet on the Western Front’, the 2022 remake and `Oh! What a Lovely War’ in 1969 by Richard Attenborough. Post 1915, the perspective changed and the German atrocities like the indiscriminate bombing of civilians hardened the attitude of British soldiers and the scale of carnage continued on the Western Front. The war, as was expected, did not end quickly. It is important to mention that the fraternising that took place on Christmas Day in 1914 brought in severe punishments in the form of a court martial of Captain Sir Iain Colquhoun for allowing his men to cease fire and distribute cake and wine within the enemy camp on the Western Front. Whatever the case may be, this Christmas Truce of 1914, in itself, is unique in the history of battlefield reports and in the annals of modern warfare. It is certainly worth remembering. Some records say that about ten thousand British troops may have been involved in a kind of informal cease fire agreement and that some of them may have met amicably with their German counterparts in No-Man’s Land. It was deemed as a rebellion by the High Command but it did happen. The troops involved did look at this truce as a very welcome and temporary respite before the resumption of fighting. If you ask my personal opinion, I consider the whole period of the First World War to be a state of extended horror and of pointless suffering as incompetent generals pushed their men in the name of motivation into costly and futile attacks on enemy trenches. Those troops were forced to live and fight in unhealthy conditions in those trenches. It is surprising and beyond me that people of this world simply accept such mindless wars and never question the fundamental rights of men during war and do not question the unchallenged leadership of the senior officers. *******