The Christmas Truce of 1914 by Aly Renwick
In World War One, the trench system on the Western Front extended from the North Sea to the Swiss Frontier. Over the course of the war there occurred many local agreements, or truces, between the opposing forces. Sometimes, just to give each side a little peace, or to enable each other to gather up their dead for burial.
Occasionally, fraternization between the opposing forces came about from time to time in no man’s land. This happened at various places across the front, with the opposing soldiers mingling and friendly interactions breaking out between them. The Christmas Truce of 1914 is the best-known example of this.
While this was hated by the Generals and the warmongers of both sides, it gave inspiration to those seeking peace. ‘Christmas 1914’ is one of the best songs about the truce, it was written and performed by Mike Harding:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSpVxIOYwDE
Mike Harding, an acclaimed popular comedian, folk-song writer and singer, was born in 1944, just a few weeks after his father was killed on a Lancaster Bomber that was shot down returning from a raid over Germany in the Second World War. After he released his song ‘Christmas 1914’, Harding wanted to explain his reason for producing it and this is what he said about it:
“The First World War has dominated my imagination since I was a child. The stupidity of all wars was here made doubly stupid by the ineptitude of leaders who were prepared to see men die in millions in the mud, facing each other across a few hundred yards of barbed-wire and shell holes. Two great industrial nations had strutted on the stage of Europe striking warlike postures for so long that when a crazed student assassinated the Archduke Ferdinand at Sarajevo it was too late for the fools to back down. And so, the whole crazy steamroller got under way, supported as ever by the profiteers, the racketeers and the arms manufacturers.
Between 1914 and 1918 a whole generation was killed, gassed and maimed. Anzac troops were slaughtered at Gallipoli, Sikhs were blown to pieces on the Somme, Canadians were massacred at Verdun, Americans shot to bits at Passchendaele, volunteers from both the north and south of Ireland were killed in their thousands. And boys from villages and towns in every comer of England, Scotland and Wales were waved off at the station by mothers, wives and sweethearts never to return, and if they did, they were often mutilated, gassed or shell-shocked so that their lives were ruined.
When you see the old men at the Remembrance Day services it’s difficult to see them as the sixteen-year-old boys who lied about their age so that they could join with their pals in the Great Patriotic War. Like all wars, it produced heroism and courage on an incredible scale. While the fat brigadiers and generals were safe behind the lines, VCs and MCs were won by young boys and men facing the most unbelievable horrors.
… There was a sub-literature of the war, … diaries and journals that were kept by the ordinary footsloggers and Old Contemptibles. They give a picture of life in the trenches from the viewpoint of the common soldier. These diaries and journals are tremendously valuable for their sheer immediacy and for the light they throw on the Old Sweats’ way of life and death in the trenches. Three such journals that are well worth reading are Old Soldiers Never Die by Frank Richards, The Bells of Hell by Eric Hiscock and Tom Green’s Journal, to be found in the Imperial War Museum (when, oh when are we going to have a peace museum?).
The story of the first Christmas of 1914 that inspired me to write the song was one I found in Frank Richards’s book. The generals denied that it ever happened, fearful that the desire for peace might spread like an epidemic along the trenches, but the diaries and journals of the men who were there and the photographs that were taken on that historic occasion when men said ‘no’ to war and embraced their enemy prove beyond doubt that it did indeed happen”.
Eleventh November this year, 2023, marked 105 years from the ending of WW1. It is good that we still remember and think about such wars, and we should also recall how conflict can affect some veterans long after they have taken part in any fighting. In the ten years after the ending of WW1, pension boards examined over 100,000 cases of former front-line troops suffering from conditions like Shell Shock. At the start of the Second World War the British Government was still paying two million pounds a year to shell-shocked veterans of the First World War.
Over the coming festive season, perhaps, we can find some time to consider the Christmas Truce of 1914. In the 2005 film ‘Joyeux Noel’ a dramatic imagination of the truce was depicted in depth, to see it click on:
Article by Aly Renwick, who co-founded Veterans In Prison with Jimmy Johnson. Aly served for 8 years in the British Army from 1960-8.