Christmas Truce: A Short Story of the Great War (Part Six)

Christmas Truce - Contents:  

1. Prologue
2. Chapter One
3. Chapter Two
4. Chapter Three
5. Chapter Four

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Chapter Five

At a word from Captain Hetherington, all of the look-outs were withdrawn from their positions on the trench’s fire-step, and, suddenly, there was a mass exodus, men climbing eagerly out of what they had called home for weeks or months – many remembered the last time they’d done this: the last, failed attack – relishing the chance, to do so, and making their way carefully into No Man’s Land, stepping over or around so many dead bodies, bloated and white, in various stages of decay, men who had once been comrades and, to some, friends.

Overhead, the sun was shining, the fog was long gone, a beautiful day now, completely at odds with the hellish landscape of the battlefield, without grass and most trees, aside from some stripped down trunks that had somehow survived the weight of artillery that crossed the dead ground, but for the men coming out of their trenches to celebrate this Christmas morning, none of that mattered. It was enough of a relief to not be killing other human beings on what was, for nearly everyone fighting along the entire Western Front, the most special day of the year. 

More so this year, because they understood that the truce would only last for another twenty-odd hours. That was enough. For boys who had become men, growing up too quickly amidst the horror of a war more violent and long-lasting than anyone had predicted, even five minutes of complete respite from the dangers that the battlefield produced, would have been something to celebrate. For men who lived minute by minute, hour by hour, not knowing whether they would see the next sunrise, sunset, hot day, cold day or wet day, a cessation of hostilities for nearly a whole day felt like a lifetime – a blessed lifetime.
 

Emerging from their own trenches were the German soldiers, whose faces showed similar, if weary relief, as the British. Also, like their opponents, they were warily moving into the centre of No Man’s Land, adhering to the strict rules concerning reconnaissance of the other side’s fortifications, and a little nervous about meeting a group of men whom, a day earlier, they’d been trying their hardest to kill. Yet, that was then, and now, on Christmas morning, there were no enemies, just tired, cold and filthy men, far from home on the one day of the year best spent at home with friends and family.

Martin decided that because he had done so much to facilitate this truce, his place was to lead from the front, and so he approached the closest German, hand outstretched, a smile on his face. “Merry Christmas, Fritz.”

The German smiled. “Merry Christmas, Tommy. I am Gunther.”

“Martin,” the Brit replied. “Nice to meet you.”

“Nice that the guns are silent for Christmas.” 

The German spoke with a thick accent, his English better than what Martin had expected. “I agree,” he said, digging into his pocket, looking for a cigarette and some matches, which he produced. “Do you smoke?”

Gunther smiled. “Ja! Sometimes, smoking is the only thing that keeps me from going insane from boredom.”

“I know how that feels,” Martin assured his would-be enemy. “Here…” He handed the German one of the thinly-rolled cigarettes and struck a match to light it. “We can’t have Christmas without presents, can we?”

Taking a long drag from the cigarette put an even bigger smile on the German’s face. “It is good tobacco.”

“British tobacco – the very best,” Martin replied, grinning with nationalistic pride.

And so it went, across nearly three hundred yards of trenches, Germans meeting British, talking, reminiscing, wondering and hoping. It might have seemed strange to an interloper to stand in the middle of the detritus of war talking to men who were, under normal circumstances, the loathed and detested enemy, but the relief of not being shelled, shot at or otherwise thrust into harm’s way, thought it to be more normal and far more pleasant than just about anything else they’d experienced since the outbreak of war.

Despite the good cheer of the day, there were nervous and uncertain men on both sides, not quite trusting of the other men, who had been enemies yesterday and would again be enemies tomorrow. That was just human nature, Martin knew. After all, this was an unprecedented situation, perhaps one that would never be repeated, and there were certainly no Army regulations on how to behave at a moment like this.

Officers spoke to officers, enlisted men to enlisted men. And soon, officers spoke to enlisted men and vice versa. Despite the broken ground, a football, nearly deflated, was retrieved by a British corporal, tossed into No Man’s Land, and an uncertain game of football broke out, the barely-inflated ball moving about as well as a heavy rock, but it was less about a game, and more about some shared spirit between men on both sides of the war. The more conversation, the more Germans and British both realised that, truly, the men whom they had enlisted to fight and kill weren’t much different to themselves.

“From Chicago – America?” Henry exclaimed, shaking his head in disbelief as he eyed the German lieutenant who was explaining his mixed heritage.

“I was born in Chicago,” the German answered. “My mother, God rest her soul, was born in Minnesota.”

The more the German, whose name was Roland, spoke, the more Henry could recognise the not-quite-buried Midwest American drawl. “And I thought I’d come a long way from Yorkshire! Tell me, how on earth did you end up here?”

“In May, I returned to discover my family’s heritage. I’d never set foot in Germany before. I met a woman, fell deeply in love, and decided to stay. When war was declared, I felt a duty to the country that had brought me so much happiness, so I enlisted in the Army, went through basic training and was sent to the front, certain that we would win the war in a couple of weeks.”

“And so, here we are,” Henry finished. “On Christmas Day, standing together in the middle of a battlefield in Belgium, temporarily friends rather than enemies. Strange, isn't it?”

“The day I joined up, everyone was so certain of everything. I never imagined the war would last as long as it has,” Roland admitted.

Henry laughed. “I don’t think anyone did. We were all a little naïve, I think. In fact, I know that I was. I remember when the papers were talking about the war being a summer storm to clear the air over Europe. I believed every word they printed. Now…well, over the last few weeks, with the weather getting worse, next summer feels closer than the one just past.”

“I pray to God that we will all be home by next Christmas.”

“That’s my hope, too,” Henry replied, and didn’t add that he was praying for a quick victory that would allow him to go home – he didn’t think it appropriate given the situation – and return to his quietly uncomplicated life on his family’s Yorkshire estate.

Although, considering the way so many attacks had stalled, and been bloodily repelled in front of the barbed wire at great loss and considering, also, how the entire campaign had ground to a halt after the madcap Race to the Sea which most of these Yorkshiremen had not arrived in time to really be a part of, Henry wasn’t sure just how likely it was that they would be in their respective homelands this time next year: an entirely depressing thought on Christmas Day.

Unless there was a genius-in-waiting on either side of No Man’s Land with a plan to combat trenches and machine guns, then the chances were good that the war would drag on and on. Certainly, nothing had been produced yet, and, clearly, sustained artillery bombardment did little good. Something would eventually – surely, hopefully – have to give, for one side or the other. It seemed an unthinkable thing that the British might actually lose, but Henry, trapped by so much horror and misery for so long, wasn’t so sure that a German victory that would result in him going home would be a bad thing, personally. For the rest of the continent and for Great Britain, it would be a disaster. Here and now, he was selfishly thinking only of himself.

“Did you have champagne for breakfast?” Roland asked.

Henry nearly choked on the words, and his laughter. “Champagne? You must be joking?”

“No. We have a corporal who is very good at procuring things for us that would appear to be either in short of non-existent supply. He was lucky enough to deliver a number of bottles of champagne, just in time, too. We had champagne and bacon for breakfast.”

“You lucky bastard!” Henry shook his head ruefully, deciding that it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to be on the German side at the moment – purely and simply because of the champagne ration. At least the champagne explained their drunkenness this morning.

“One of the few luxuries we’ve had,” Roland replied. “Our field rations are not very nice, but they’re all we’ve got.”

“It isn't exactly five-star, is it? I’m not certain what our preserved and salted meat is,” Henry admitted with a dry grin. “And, to be truthful, I haven’t exactly been game to ask the powers-that-be. You know what they say about not asking a question that you might not like the answer to?”

Ronald tried to smile, but it became more of a grimace. “Field rations in the German army aren’t that much better, though finding the champagne certainly helped raise spirits. Tell me, Henry, would you like a bottle?”

For Henry, the answer was simple, and delivered with a grateful smile: “I’d love one.”

The soccer game continued without much of the beautiful game’s nuances, but the spirit was there, goals scored between imaginary posts marked by helmets, British ones on one side, which resembled large soup bowls that would not have been too out of place in a Parisian restaurant, and the more militaristic-looking German ones, a Pickelhaube, whose most recognisable feature was a spike protruding from the top-centre of the helmet.

Martin watched from what constituted the sidelines, still talking to Gunther, the man relating some German Christmas traditions, before it was the British officer’s turn to reciprocate. “For me, it has always been about a roast turkey and lunch with my family. I can’t help but imagine what they’re doing now. Most likely in church, praying for my deliverance” – here, he gestured with his hand at all the soldiers – “and for the deliverance of all these men.”

“But not the deliverance of the German men?” Gunther asked the question with a wry smile on his face.

“No, probably not,” Martin admitted, his head falling a little. 

That was the crux of the moment and it’s strangeness, Martin knew. In a handful of hours, the men who were currently socialising with each other, and trying to find similarities between themselves and their designated enemy, would go back to killing one another, the goodwill of Christmas completely forgotten. And no one who wasn’t here now would ever understand why the ceasefire had been so important.

If the interaction between Germans and British had been a little awkward at the beginning of the truce, it wasn’t now. Conversation was free-flowing and genuine, back and forth, men finding out that they had more in common than they had ever assumed – homesickness, for a start –despite the obvious differences in their countries ideologies, that ideology being what had landed them on this battlefield for Christmas, rather than at home with their families.

“We were told things about you, in the newspapers. You were said to be raiders from across the English Channel with no morals.”

Martin managed to smile at those words. He was glad in a strange way to know that German propaganda was as far off base about the British soldiers as British propaganda was about the German soldiers. If those reports were to be believed, the Germans were marauders who raped, pillaged and plundered, all of it with either a sausage hanging from their mouth, or at least the stench of one on their breath. He didn’t believe it, but he knew there were plenty of others back at home in England who did, their prejudices stoked by the cartoons and outlandish reports featured in the newspaper.

“Believe me when I say we heard similar things about you,” Martin told the German. “The nature of wartime propaganda, I suppose.”

Now, Gunther was smiling, looking around at the unusual scene. “You British are not so bad as we were led to believe.”

Martin returned the compliment. “Likewise you Germans.”