A Christmas Story of Peace and Love

By Nick Barbash
The Daily Cardinal

This Christmas Eve marks the 90th anniversary of a wondrous event that will likely never happen again.

On the night of Dec. 24, 1914, soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force and the Fifth French Army were huddled in trenches along the Western Front near the Belgian town of Flanders. They had ceased combat operations and were preparing a small Christmas celebration.

Approximately 250 yards across the combat zone known as no man's land, the German First and Second Armies were doing the same within their own cold and dirty trenches. For both sides, Christmas was a brief respite from a war that was only five months old but whose horrors of poison gas, heavy artillery and death by the thousands had already eclipsed anything previously experienced in human history.

Sometime around 9 p.m., a company sergeant-major in the North Staffordshire Regiment reported to his commander that several dozen German soldiers had climbed out of the trenches and were lighting candles and singing songs. The commander peered out over the parapet and was astonished to see a single unarmed German soldier walking toward them bearing a white flag. He crawled out of the British trench and met the soldier halfway across the battlefield, where he discovered the German had been a waiter in England before the war and was interested in trading cigars for brandy. He took the British commander to a group of German officers, and it was agreed there would be an unofficial truce until midnight of Christmas night.

All along the Western Front, hundreds of soldiers on both sides poured out of the trenches into no man's land to celebrate Christmas with the men they had sworn to kill. British 2nd Lt. Dougan Chater wrote in a letter that "in about two minutes the ground between the two lines of trenches was swarming with men and officers of both sides, shaking hands and wishing each other a happy Christmas."

The opposing sides exchanged candy, liquor, cigarettes and plum pudding. They roasted a pig. They played an enthusiastic soccer game on the frozen ground, which, according to German Lt. Johannes Niemann, was "three goals to two in favor of Fritz against Tommy." They sang carols of the season, never caring that some of them sang "Stille Nacht" while others sang "Silent Night." They helped bury each other's dead and recited prayers for peace together.

Not everyone was overcome by the surreal sight of German and British soldiers sitting and laughing together on their own battlefield. Gustav Riebensahm of the 2nd Westphalian regiment wrote in his diary, "the whole thing has slowly become ridiculous and must be stopped." Lt. Bruce Bairnsfather wrote, "It was just like the interval between the rounds in a friendly boxing match ... not for a moment was the will to beat them relaxed." A young Austrian soldier named Adolf Hitler said such an exchange "should not be allowed."

But as Christmas Eve turned to Christmas Day and the camaraderie continued, most of the men on either side began to think about how this Christmas miracle altered their perception of the conflict in which they were engaged. British soldier Sapper Davey declared, "hate, for a moment, disappeared along the Western Front." Josef Sebald observed, "this was war ... but there was no trace of enmity between us." British 2nd Lt. Drummond recalled a German remarking, "We don't want to kill you, and you don't want to kill us. So why shoot?"

Inevitably, Christmas came and went, and the time for the resumption of hostilities approached. British and German soldiers bade their new friends farewell, telling each other to stay low and that they would aim high when ordered to open fire.

Several hours later, as the guns on what was once again the enemy side went off, a tin can was discovered in a British trench with a piece of paper inside it that read, "We shoot to the air." Thus ended the strangest, most unlikely 24 hours any of them would ever experience.

According to John McCutcheon, who penned the ballad "Christmas in the Trenches," British commander Ian Calhoun was court-martialed along with several others for fraternizing with the enemy. World War I dragged on for four more years, at the cost of 38 million total casualties.

But for just one day, a small group of ordinary people was able to embrace the humanity of those they had been told were simply targets, and in doing so, was able to temporarily reclaim their own humanity.

It is my Christmas wish that 90 more years not pass before the guns go silent again forever.