Christmas truce

On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 1914 the rifles fell silent along many stretches of the Western Front. Without orders, and often against orders, German and British soldiers climbed out of their trenches, met in no man’s land, shook hands, swapped cigarettes, food and souvenirs, and above all buried the dead who had lain between the lines for weeks. This Christmas truce was not a single event but a series of local, unconcerted ceasefires. On some sectors it lasted a few hours, on others until Boxing Day, and here and there until New Year. In many places the fighting went on throughout Christmas.

Before Christmas

By the end of 1914 the Western Front had congealed into a line of trenches from the sea to Switzerland. In many places they were only a few dozen metres apart, and the soldiers could hear the enemy talking. On quieter sectors informal pauses in the firing had occurred since November, for instance when both sides brought food up to the trenches after dark. Commanders noticed the phenomenon and tried to stamp it out. On 5 December General Horace Smith-Dorrien, commander of the British II Corps, issued a memorandum forbidding friendly contact with the enemy and unofficial arrangements of the “we won’t fire if you don’t” kind.

On 7 December Pope Benedict XV called on the belligerents to suspend hostilities at least for Christmas night. The governments rejected his appeal. Just before Christmas heavy fighting was still going on along the British front: a few days earlier the Germans had struck at Givenchy, and after the failed December attacks hundreds of unburied bodies lay in front of the trenches in many places. On Christmas Eve the British high command warned all corps that the Germans might attack over Christmas or at New Year and ordered special vigilance.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day on the British front

After weeks of rain, frost came on Christmas Eve. In the evening Christmas trees with candles and lanterns appeared on the German parapets, and carols drifted from the trenches, among them “Silent Night”. The British answered with songs and shouts of their own. On many sectors conversations across no man’s land turned into meetings. Many Germans had worked in England before the war and spoke English. Most often the initiative came from the German side, especially from Saxon and Bavarian regiments.

On Christmas Day soldiers of both sides met between the lines during the day on many sectors. They exchanged cigarettes, tobacco, chocolate, alcohol, buttons and caps. A nineteen-year-old private of the London Rifle Brigade, Henry Williamson, later a well-known writer, told his mother that he was smoking a pipe of German tobacco given him by “a live German soldier from his own trench”. Captain Edward Hulse of the Scots Guards described joint singing that ended with “Auld Lang Syne” sung by English, Scots, Irish, Prussians and Württembergers. The British official history notes that during these conversations the Germans declared they were sure of early victory.

The most important result of the truce, confirmed in the war diaries of many battalions, was the burial of the dead. Officers agreed in the middle of no man’s land that each side would collect its own fallen. In some places joint funeral services were held. The British also took the opportunity to inspect German trenches and wire at close quarters.

The truce did not cover the whole British front. It was most widespread on the central sectors held by III and IV Corps, between Ploegsteert, Frelinghien and the area around Neuve-Chapelle, but even there not everywhere. II Corps in the north took almost no part in it, nor did I Corps in the south, which was still fighting at Givenchy and Cuinchy after the recent battle. It is often said that some 100,000 soldiers in all took part in the ceasefire, but that is only an estimate. According to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, about 80 British soldiers were killed in France and Belgium on Christmas Day itself.

Football matches: what is known

The most famous element of the truce became the football matches in no man’s land, and it is precisely this part of the story that is least well documented. Football appears only occasionally in the official war diaries of British units. A few letters from the front mention a game, often at second hand. Other soldiers wrote that a match was proposed but never took place, because the ground was churned up by shells and frozen, or because officers would not allow it.

The most credible mention comes from the diary of Lieutenant Kurt Zehmisch of the 134th Saxon Infantry Regiment, stationed near Ploegsteert. He recorded that a few Englishmen brought a ball from their trench and a lively game began. The most often quoted account, by Lieutenant Johannes Niemann of the 133rd Saxon Regiment, of a match against the Scots near Frelinghien won by the Germans 3–2, was recorded only in 1968 for BBC television and is not confirmed by British sources. The 3–2 score had in fact appeared earlier in an anonymous letter from the front published by The Times in early January 1915, but it most probably referred to another sector of the front. The same score was also given for a fictional match in a 1962 short story by Robert Graves.

Historians assess this evidence differently. Some believe there was only spontaneous kicking about of a ball, sometimes of a tin can, by soldiers of one army or of both at once. Others, such as the British author Mike Dash, accept that in three or four places soldiers of the opposing armies played each other. An organised match with teams, goals and a score remains more legend than documented fact. A popular photograph of soldiers playing football, often captioned as the 1914 truce, actually shows British troops near Salonika at Christmas 1915.

The French and the Belgians

On the French front, much longer than the British, ceasefires were rarer and less well documented. Many Frenchmen were fighting on their own soil, occupied by the Germans, and the command sternly suppressed any contact with the enemy. As early as 7 December Lieutenant Charles de Gaulle wrote indignantly of the soldiers’ inclination to leave the enemy in peace. Even so, letters from the front describe Christmas meetings on French sectors too. Near Carency in Artois a soldier of the 269th Infantry Regiment wrote to his family on 26 December about exchanging newspapers and shaking hands with Bavarians, and about a letter signed “the Bavarians called barbarians” in which the Germans assured them that they wanted peace. Military censorship stopped such accounts, and the French press hardly wrote about them.

There was fraternisation on the Belgian front on the Yser as well. At the so-called High Bridge (Hoge Brug) between Kaaskerke and Diksmuide, where the lines were only a dozen or so metres apart, Belgians and Germans sang carols and exchanged cigars and chocolate. On Christmas Day or Boxing Day, for accounts differ on the date, a German major handed a Belgian captain and chaplain, across the frozen river, a monstrance belonging to the nuns of a nearby hospital. According to some sources the Belgians also wanted to pass letters through the German lines to their families in the occupied part of the country.

The commanders’ reaction

On most sectors the truce died out on Boxing Day or not long afterwards. On the sector of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers, near Frelinghien, Captain Stockwell fired three shots into the air in the morning and hoisted a flag reading “Merry Christmas”. A German officer replied with a sheet bearing the words “Thank You” and two shots into the air. “And the war was on again,” Stockwell wrote.

The higher commands took the news from the front very badly. Field Marshal John French recalled after the war that he had immediately issued orders to prevent any recurrence of such conduct and had called the local commanders strictly to account. Smith-Dorrien demanded an explanation from one of his divisions but was satisfied with its reply, and no one was punished. In practice many junior officers tolerated the truce, and punishments for 1914 were rare. According to some accounts, on the German side an order of 29 December announced that any approach to the enemy would be punished as treason.

In Britain people learned of the truce from soldiers’ letters, which newspapers began printing in the last days of December. In early January the Daily Mirror published on its front page photographs of British and German soldiers standing together in no man’s land. In the following years the commands prevented similar events with shelling and orders, and at Christmas 1915 there were only a few brief ceasefires. The 1914 truce remained an exception and one of the most enduring symbols of the First World War.