1. Prologue
2. Chapter One
3. Chapter Two
4. Chapter Three
5. Chapter Four
6. Chapter Five
***
Chapter Six
Sunset
brought about the end of the socialising between the two armies, the football
game having ended earlier still. As light faded, the men who had become quite
familiar with one another over the course of the days’ worth of no fighting,
shook hands, wished each other the best for the rest of the war – and fervent
wishes on both sides that they would not be stuck spending another Christmas in
the trenches – and slowly returned to their own trenches, carrying trinkets and
mementos gifted by the men whom their government had designated as enemies,
relieved to remember and safe in the knowledge that they would all get a sold
night’s sleep before the war burst back into reality come morning.
“Pleasant
chaps, all in all,” Henry decided. That was the general feeling from all those
he’d spoken to.
“Not
at all what I expected,” Martin agreed. “Although, I must say, I really didn’t
quite know what to expect.”
“Under
any other circumstances, I would probably like to be friends with most of the
fellows I met,” Henry said. Yet they were caught on opposite times of one of
the most destructive conflicts the world had known.
“Seems
rather strange that we’ll be back to fighting them tomorrow, doesn’t it?”
Martin
offered his friend a grim sort of look. “I’ve been trying not to think about
that for most of the afternoon, but I suppose there’s no avoiding it now.”
There
was not, and in twelve or so hours, the war would resume and Christmas Day,
such as it had been – and Martin admitted to himself that the day could have
been a lot worse – would be but a distant memory. The irony of the situation
wasn’t lost on him: the only way to ensure they didn’t spend another miserable
Christmas in the trenches was to kill all the men across No Man’s Land to win
the war and go home. The problem was that he wasn’t sure that he wanted to kill
the men whom, he’d discovered, weren’t quite the marauding enemy that he’d been
trained to think of them as. He hoped that the Germans were thinking the same
thing.
A part
of him wondered if Sergeant Danson hadn’t been right, at least on some level.
The sergeant hadn’t been seen or heard from throughout the afternoon’s truce,
preferring to remain in his dugout, which was two bays down from where Martin
and Henry had their own similar structures. Martin had not seen the sergeant
all day, and doubted that anyone would see him again until such time as the war
recommended. At times, the sergeant was a dark presence on an otherwise sunny
day.
No
word had come back on which nation had won the big football game taking place
further down the line, nor on how competitive it had been. Martin couldn’t help
but wonder if the victor of the contest would treat it as some sort of omen for
the rest of the war, and fervently hoped that ‘the rest of the war’ wouldn’t be
that long. Not being at home for Christmas had made him more homesick than ever
before, the sort of gut-twisting pain that came from not being amongst loved
ones during the festive season.
“I
heard from a runner that some of our lads were shot by the Germans this
morning,” Henry reported glumly. “Shot as they tried to set up a truce – can
you believe it?”
Thinking
back over all the horrible things Martin had already seen, he nodded. “Unfortunately, I can. There are diehards on both sides, aren’t there?”
“We
were lucky, I fancy.”
“Very,”
Martin agreed. “Some German who thinks like Sergeant Danson does would’ve
accepted the opportunity to, well…what is it that the Americans like to say?
Another notch on a cowboy’s belt?”
“Two
notches, actually,” Henry noted grimly, an involuntary shiver running up and
then down his spine. The story was enough that next time – if indeed there was a next time – he would stop and
consider taking a jaunt through No Man’s Land, white flag of truce or not. “I’m
rather proud of myself that I went out there with you. On my own, I might not
have.”
A
half-smile crossed Martin’s face. “Safety in numbers, I suppose. And it was for
a good cause. If we hadn't gone over, we might’ve spent the day trying to kill
them, like we’ve spent so many other days this year. Not much of a Christmas.”
“No,
it’s bloody not,” Henry quipped, a rare profanity. “I’m still waiting for my
roast turkey, potatoes and gravy.”
The
joke was enough to turn Martin’s half-smile into a full one. “Don’t hold your
breath.”
“You
said that before about a rum issue and I – “
Cutting
his friend off, mid-sentence, Martin smiled a smile that indicated just how
right he’d been. “We didn’t get it, did we?”
“No,
but I prefer what I did get.”
Martin
looked hard at his friend, perplexed. “What do you mean?”
What
Henry meant became apparent when Martin followed his friend back to their
adjoining dugouts, where the bottle of French champagne was unearthed. It was
just as well that the young Corporal Bates was the only man in the bay, or
there would have been howls of protest were the two lieutenants to drink the
contents between them. Worse, they might have had to share it around, Martin
thought, and decided that he could be a little selfish in that regard. He and
Henry could spare a glass for Bates, especially if it bought the man’s silence.
“Well
I’ll be damned,” Martin said in wonderment. “You’re right about it being better
than rum! Do I want to know where you got it?”
“From
our friends, the Germans,” Henry replied. “Apparently they had champagne for
breakfast, which is a nice sort of way to start Christmas morning in any
language. I was offered their last bottle. As long as you don’t think too much
about how they most likely plundered it from a French or Belgian farm on their
way through – like in all the propaganda, Martin – then it’s really quite a
thoughtful gift, and nice that they were willing to part with it.”
Martin
smiled. “Indeed, and for them to do so, you’ve obviously made quite the
impression, Henry.”
“Yes,
I would imagine so. I certainly wasn’t expecting this, but my dear old father
once taught me to never turn down something that you know you’d enjoy. I just
hope that Sergeant Danson’s comments about the Germans poisoning anything they
give to us don’t turn out to be prophetic.”
“No, I
don’t think so – they’ve got nothing to gain, in terms of the larger picture…or
the smaller one for that matter. They want goodwill as much as we do, so that
if for some reason we happen to be here next year, we might have a chance at
another cessation. If they were to poison our men, that wouldn’t get them far
at all, would it?” Martin turned towards the trench’s fire-step where Bates cut
a lonely figure. “Do you like champagne, Corporal Bates?”
Bates
looked at the lieutenant and smiled. “I’ve never tried it, sir.”
“Well,
there’s no better time than Christmas Day, except that we don’t have glasses,
so you’ll have to join us in a drink out of a tin mug. Not quite the same, of
course, but better than nothing at all.”
Still,
Bates hesitated. “Sir, I’m supposed to be watching the trench…”
“Nonsense,”
Martin replied, waving away that duty with a flourish of his right hand. “Get
down here and have some champagne, Corporal. That’s an order. As lieutenant, I
can give them, you know?”
Henry
grinned. “He’s very good at it, in fact!”
Christmas
Night featured another beautiful sunset – a Shepherd’s Delight – the sky
seemingly on fire once again, red, orange and purples, slowly-fading light, and
then, as Martin, Henry and Bates got down to only one third of a bottle
remaining, the stars came out, and the Germans began to sing again, their
impressively booming voices carrying easily across No Man’s Land in the cool
night air.
The
easy moment was a stark contrast to what Martin had done during the early
afternoon: supervising the grim work of collecting for burial the men who had
been killed in the recent attack. It had been carried out mostly by a group of
enlisted men under the command of a sergeant, though Martin had stood watch,
having been asked to do so by Captain Hetherington, casting an eye over the
unforgiving work, recognising some of the dead men, whilst trying not to think
too much of it. The nightmares had come and gone over the last few weeks,
though they had mostly subsided upon his return to the front line – that was
something, at least – but the memories were still there, and they tended to
intrude upon his thoughts whenever he wasn’t busy.
Of
course, this Christmas truce had left him at a loose end, mostly, and time
spent watching the unfortunate men detailed to ferry their dead comrades for
burial, brought it all back with the force of an enemy artillery barrage. How
he hadn’t been machine-gunned to death along with so many others, he still
didn’t know, and it was something he continued to brood on, even as he sipped
at his French/German champagne out of a tin mug made in Britain under a starry
sky as serenely beautiful as any he’d experienced back at home.
A
series of fortunate events had stacked one on top of the next, to the point
where he had been wounded in the vicinity of Sergeant Danson, and that the
sergeant had been able – and willing, for they hadn't gotten on particularly
well, clashing at times over different issues regarding the platoon’s actions –
to carry him back to the relative safety of their own trenches. Coming so close
to death was a particularly sobering experience and Martin felt like a
different person as a result.
During
the process, Martin had seen first-hand that the British hadn't been the only
ones who’d suffered. If anything, the Germans had gotten the bluntest end of
the stick, for they’d launched just as many futile attacks against the British
lines. The Christmas truce had allowed for a burial party from the other
trenches to come out, the two groups of men working in close proximity, and
he’d spoken to a German officer, his opposite number, who had handed over some
uniform buttons and a clump of tobacco as thanks for the company. Even so, the
work, for Christmas, had been particularly ghastly. Like so much else in this
war, Martin decided. He was glad when it had come to an end.
“Would
you believe that I was speaking with an officer born in Chicago?” Henry asked
his drinking buddies.
“America?” Martin exclaimed. “Really?”
Henry
nodded. “That’s how I reacted. German father, American mother. Travelled back
to Germany earlier this year, fell in love, stayed – and decided to join up
when war was declared. I couldn’t believe it.”
“I’ve
never met an American,” Bates put in.
Martin
turned to smile at him. “If this war drags on too much longer, you’ll probably
see a whole load of them turn up to give us a hand. There’ll be more Americans
than you ever thought you’d encounter. Like the Archduke being assassinated was
the spark that lit this powder keg of a war, the Americans only need a spark to
get them involved. The way the German navy operates – particularly their
submarines – it might come through them sinking an American vessel.
“If
you ask me, anyone who volunteers to serve on a submarine needs to be sent to
have his head examined. Imagine an underwater duel, torpedoes this way and
that, never seeing what could be your end. Christ, it gives me the chills just
thinking about it. Same goes for being in the Navy, in respect of how there’s
nowhere for you to go. At least on a battlefield, you can run.”
“And
risk being caught by Military Police and shot by our own men?” Martin asked. “Not
to mention the shame of it all.” He paused, and shook his head. “How on earth
did we get onto such morbid topics? It’s meant to be our day off – or our night
off, and what a beautiful one it is, too.”
“Quite
a day it’s been, too,” Henry observed. “I hope I live to tell my grandchildren
about it!”
It was
the sentiment being echoed up and down the trenches of the Western Front on
both sides of No Man’s Land. Men of the British, French and German armies and
aeroplane corps who had today been a part of an event that, they were sure, would
go down in the annals of history as one of the strangest days of war ever, and
wanted nothing more than to be able to live long enough to pass their stories
down to children and grandchildren. Perhaps it was secondary to the sentiment
about being home for next Christmas, the war over. The men who saw, up close,
the horrors of the Great War could only hope and pray.
The
day after Christmas – Boxing Day, as it was known to the British – dawned clear
and calm and quiet, men dragging themselves into an upright position after the
sort of restful night’s sleep that most hadn't known or enjoyed since before
the war. With waking up came the disappointing realisation that the niceties of
yesterday, brought on by the Christmas spirit, were a thing of the past. The
war was about to recommence, whether they liked it or not.
Men in
both sets of trenches began making preparations for the resumption of
hostilities, just after dawn. Martin awoke in the pre-dawn darkness, boiling
enough water to be able to shave the stubble from his cheeks and make two cups
of tea, the second for Henry when he finally awoke. Most men were still asleep,
though they would certainly be woken by the first salvo, which couldn’t be too
far away. Rather imminent, Martin thought as he looked at his watch.
After
yesterday’s peace, it seemed a shame that the war had to commence. At least
there was some hope now that the two sides could somehow work out their differences,
or so Martin prayed, and then reflected that things might be resolved much
quicker if it was left to the men in the trenches. After all, without any real
input from respective High Command or Berlin or London, they’d managed to reach
terms for a Christmas truce. For soldiers, rather than diplomats, it had been
good work.
“Seems
a right shame to start back at each other’s throats, doesn’t it?” Henry asked
when he awoke, and after he’d taken a sip from the mug of tea that Martin had
provided.
“It does,
but I think being at each other’s throats is the only way we’re ever going to
get home.”
Henry
frowned at that. “Except that because we’re fighting still, some of us won’t
get that chance.”
“Unfortunately,”
Martin said, nodding. It was the price of going home: a battle that would cost
men their lives to open the front and allow the army to advance on Berlin. Or,
unthinkably, in the other direction for the Germans.
It was
a dark thought and it had been timed almost perfectly, for the words had barely
left Martin’s mouth when, just to the north, a solitary artillery shell was
fired, and men everywhere stopped what they were doing, as though the event was
something out of the ordinary, watching the trajectory of the first German
shell. The guns were well sighted, of course, and the first round did not miss,
falling right over the British trenches, a billow of black-white smoke drifting
into the sky.
Then
there was another crash, and a third, the big guns opening up all along the
line, and the trailing explosions. It was less exciting now, men going back to
what they’d been doing. The typical German barrage – men joked that they could
set their watches by it – continued in earnest, the veterans shrugging it off,
able to forecast where a shell would land and the green troops, new to the
front, remained in a state of shock. It was the Great War, the amused veterans
told them. Already, men were dying.
Christmas,
not even seven hours in the past, already seemed a lifetime ago.
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