It had snowed overnight, and the clouds had cleared just after sunrise, so by the middle of the day, bright sunshine reflected off the endless blanket of white snow.
Eight or so inches had fallen in a short period of time, the worst and most sustained blast of winter that the men in the Western Front trenches had yet experienced, and a certain harbinger of what was yet to come, as winter in France and Belgium really took hold. Yet, the snow, for all the discomfort it brought to the men existing in the trenches, was welcomed, for it had helped to mask the incredible, stomach-churning, vomit-inducing stench that had been everywhere for months and months.
That stench was of death, and it was everywhere, inescapable. Sustained and costly fighting in torrential rain had turned the battlefield into a hellish and never-ending landscape of corpses, bodies dotted across the churned ground as far as the eye could see in every direction, craters filled up with water, drowning unfortunate men laden with too much equipment to be able to struggle out. Some of the bodies were now just fragile and crumbling remains of the men they had once been. The overpowering smell of rotting and decay always present, no matter which way the wind seemed to be blowing.
If there was one thing that reinforcements on both sides learnt almost as soon as they descended into the meat grinder that the Western Front had become, it was that there was no escape from the worst odour that any of them had known. It got worse every day, rain and death mixing, a potent cocktail of smells that no man who fought on the Western Front would ever forget. Even the Boer War veterans, who knew a little about what it was to experience a landscape filled with dead bodies had never smelt anything like it.
Yet, the freshly-fallen snow had become a barrier and, for the first time in a long time, there was a chance to breathe something approaching fresh and crisp air. They were desperate. Even just a small respite from the seemingly unending smell of death was a giant relief for men on both sides, an early and much-welcomed present on what promised to be the bleakest Christmas most of the soldiers on the Western Front had ever known.
Christmas Eve was colder than the day before, but without the clouds that had brought the overnight snow and the bitter cold to the front, and Martin, fresh from a month’s worth of convalescence miles behind the lines, wondered if there would be a heavy frost replacing the snow when Christmas Day dawned. Not that he would’ve minded another snowfall, now or tonight. It was a relief not to smell the dead with every breath he took. It hadn't been like this for quite some time. For so long, in fact, that he could scarcely remember the last time there hadn't been an impenetrable barrier of rot in the air. Even in the hospital, he hadn't forgotten the smell, and hadn't been able to forget the memories of the attack that had put him there.
The Yorkshire native couldn’t quite believe it was Christmas tomorrow – really, just a few hours away – for the lead-up had been so completely different to what he was used to. No carols or church services or dinners with friends. No champagne toasts to everyone’s good health, no fond reminiscing of Christmases past. At least, not out loud. Martin had held tight to those memories. They were what got him through these bleak days at a war no one had ever expected would last as long as it had. With the way things had gone, he was glad to simply be alive.
Snow had always provoked childlike thoughts in Martin’s mind and, despite the dire circumstances, it was no different on this occasion. A Christmas snowfall: clichéd but very welcome. He hoped, even though it seemed a foolish hope that he would again get to experience Christmas around a blazing hearth with family and friends. But nothing was certain in this war, except for death. It was all around them, men dying horribly in aid stations and hospitals behind the lines when they weren’t being machine-gunned to death in futile frontal attacks against German fortifications. He’d seen it first-hand, and never wanted to again.
The other early Christmas present, taken with open arms by so many British Tommies, was that there hadn’t been any major activity in their sector – and not anywhere else up and down the line, according to the news and rumour that swept up and down the line. It seemed that no one on the German side wanted to die before Christmas Day, either. It was as happy a circumstance as there was in a war, where every single step represented a supreme struggle through trenches thick with sticky mud. There was no such thing as easy here. If anything, conditions had gotten worse in the time Martin had been away. More mud, more rain, more misery, more death.
Of course, there’d still been the occasional coughs of artillery from the big guns behind the lines, their deadly salvos ever-present, no matter the time of year, rocketing overhead, sending misery to some distant enemy emplacement, but not much more than that from the front line soldiers. Martin was entirely grateful. Rifles cracked randomly, but not often, and the machine guns were mostly silent. That suited Martin just fine. The idea of dying before or, worse, on Christmas was a completely depressing one.
Just before sunset, the war took a strange, but not unpleasant turn. There was movement in the next trench bay to the south. These days, trenches were built in zigzag fashion to avoid a direct artillery hit taking out an entire battalion. It was just one of many innovations where trench construction was concerned, and new ideas were coming every day. It was morbid fascination for most men, Martin included: how they could build stronger and better trenches, when all anyone wanted to do was get out of the trenches, advance on German lines and win the war. It didn’t seem like that either side would in it stuck in stalemate as they were.
Lieutenant Henry Watson, Martin’s best friend in the war, rounded the corner of the trench in his customary hurry. During the attack where Martin had sustained his thigh wound, Henry had been behind the lines, having caught a piece of shrapnel in the left arm on an earlier trench raid. Until Martin had gotten back two days before, after begging to be put back in the line, they hadn't seen each other in more than two months, leading to as happy a reunion as there was in a time of war.
“Martin, old chap, you must come and have a look at this!”
“What is it?”
“To be honest, I don’t quite know,” Henry replied. He had a periscope in one hand and now stood on the raised fire-step, using the crude instrument to peer out into No Man’s Land.
Martin’s face screwed up in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“It looks like…a Christmas tree, but I can’t be sure. Here, have a look.”
Accepting the periscope – one of the real marvels of ingenuity that the war had produced, other than sturdier trenches and jam tin grenades – Martin climbed onto the fire step and raised the wooden contraption a little above the top row of sandbags, focusing on the nearest part of the German trench line, following the instructions that Henry provided. He could see everything in the vicinity without risking his life by showing his head to a German sniper, and it took but a second to see what his friend was talking about.
Henry was alongside, eager. “What do you think, Martin?”
Looking again through the periscope, Martin was convinced. He didn’t see how it could be anything else. The Germans had indeed found themselves a Christmas tree. It was certainly a ragged one clearly suffering from the elements like everything and everyone else on the Western Front, and it’s decorations were sparse at best. The strangest thing was actually seeing a tree with branches. They were few and far between out here, even the strongest and tallest trees having fallen victim to artillery barrages months earlier.
“I think you’re right, Henry. I think it’s a Christmas tree. Rather a rich target for our snipers, for all that,” Martin observed, and then gave voice to his sudden fear: “I wonder if this is some sort of trick?”
Henry shook his head. “On Christmas Eve? That would be a dirty trick to play, Martin.”
“It’s war – an inherently dirty enterprise, even at Christmas time, I suspect. Where’s Sergeant Danson?”
“With me in the next bay a few minutes ago,” Henry offered helpfully.
The sudden appearance of the Christmas tree had quickly become a hot topic and there were men two and three deep trying to get onto the fire step and get a turn with one of the periscopes to get a glimpse of the Christmas decorations that were going up across the line. To find Sergeant Danson, Martin had to push his way through a trench as busy as it was before an attack went over the top. Thankfully, there was no such event taking place tonight, though the thought was more than enough to send shivers up his spine.
As it turned out, Danson actually found Martin. “I think I know what you’re going to say, sir, and, respectfully, I think we shouldn’t be encouraging the men to look at whatever you wish to call that thing above the enemy lines.”
“It’s a Christmas tree, sergeant. Surely you know what one of those looks like?"
“Oh, I know, sir. But this, what this is, is some damn German trap, more like…sir,” Danson added belatedly and hastily, not quite able to lose his inherent anger even when talking to an officer. “They’re up to something, sir. Mark my words: it isn’t in their bones to celebrate Christmas. I can smell it in the bloody air. Can't you, sir?”
Martin could only smell the distant smell of decay, but didn’t want to admit as much to the sergeant. Nor did he want to inform the man that the historic roots of Christmas involved a lot of German connections. “I believe it’s just men celebrating a Christmas far from home, sergeant. That and nothing more, I might add.”
“Well, that’s your opinion, sir, and you’re welcome to it, but my nose” – here, the sergeant tapped it twice – “which is honed to detect all sorts of stunts, tells me that the slimy buggers have something in the works. I recommend we don’t encourage them in any way. If we’re lucky, this…whatever it is will blow over and we can all get back to the important business of winning this war. I’d like to get back to Yorkshire before I’m a bloody old man!”
Henry had made his way to join the three-man conference. “We’ll have the Jerries bringing over some cups of Gluhwein under a white flag, next!”
The thought of warm German wine made Martin smile. He was quite partial to that sort of thing. “That would be nice.”
Danson spat against the earthen wall of the trench. “If they did, the bastards will probably poison it.”
“At least they’re not trying to blow us all to hell and gone at the present moment,” Henry observed. “That’s something at least. Sergeant, keep an eye on things, please, and let us know if anything develops.”
“We should shoot the thing down,” Danson opined. The last attack, and hearing the German celebrations as he’d fallen back, had given him a harder edge than ever before. "Now, while we can. When it gets dark, we’ve lost our opportunity. I can get artillery on the line, sir?"
“No, that won’t be necessary, Sergeant Danson,” Martin said, shaking his head. He didn’t want to disturb the semi-ceasefire that he suspected to be rather fragile. Besides, the idea of some Christmas cheer – from the enemy or otherwise, it didn’t matter – made him feel much less homesick. “But thank you for the suggestion. If you need me, you can find me in my dugout.”
“I’ll check on the men down in the next bay,” Danson said stiffly. The tone in his voice suggested that the two lieutenants had made a grave and dire mistake by not allowing him to order the artillery to bring down the German Christmas tree.
Watching the departure of the gloomily-faced sergeant, Henry looked at Martin and smiled. “I’d say that about confirms my suspicions, Martin.”
“How so?”
“Our dear Sergeant Danson, I’ve decided, is most certainly a man in line to get coal in his stocking on Christmas morning!”
Martin laughed, glad for a moment of levity. “I suspect you’re correct. A singularly unhappy man, the sergeant.”
“He certainly takes the war personally. You’d think if there’s a time to lighten a little, it’s on Christmas Eve, despite everything that’s happened, everything that we’ve seen.”
“Yes,” Martin agreed. “What we’ve seen and done…that’s more than enough reason to try and find some Christmas cheer, but Sergeant Danson is from the old Army. I suspect his fellows in South Africa would take a dim view of what’s going on.”
“But this isn't south Africa, is it?” Gesturing towards No Man’s Land and the distant German trenches, Henry said, “It’s quite something, isn't it, Martin? You have to admire their ingenuity, don’t you? The Jerries, I mean. Where on earth did they manage to find a tree with branches?”
“Perhaps they shipped it all the way in from Germany?"
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