Christmas and World War One
Jim McAndrew 19:49:34 07/12/99 , mail: Jim McAndrew
Of all the stirring, dramatic events of World War I, the one that I
remember most is an event that took place on the first Christmas of the
dreadful war. After months of unavailing slaughter, the colossal armies
of the German Empire and France and Great Britan had fougght themselves
to a standstill, and now millions of their soldiers were glaring at one
another out of the trenches that gashed the earth from the North Sea
clear to the Alps.
In Flanders the German army lay confronting the British army. All about
them the desolate, bleak country was strewn with the wreckage of the
terrible struggle of these armies -- blackened and ruined villages and
smashed churches; jaggged trunks of trees, cut down by the artillery; and
everywhere a sea of yellow mud. Everywhere, too, were the dead--the dead
of a month ago, the dead of last night. The dead were buried in the
parapets of the trenches where the soldiers stood. They lay strewn in
dreadful litter over No Man's Land, and clung like scarecrows to the
barbed-wire defenses of both armies.
Then came Christmas Eve, the Night of Nights, the night on which our
Savior was born. Standing on their platforms in the hostile trenches, the
men in gray and the men in khaki watched for an attack of the enemy. But
no attack came that night. At length the night passed, and the December
sun rose. It was Christmas Day, the day of our Savoir, the day of the
Prince of Peace.
At stand-to in the morning, the British soldiers on the alert held their
rifles with numb fingers and waited and watched, the frost and steam from
their breath rising like a cloud on the cold winter air. Every morning
they had heard a hymn of hate from the German trenches in the loud music
of a burst of artillery fire. But this morning the hymn of hate did not
rise. The guns back of the German trenches were silent. A great stillness
came down over both lines of battle. What was to happen that Christmas
morning? Suddenly the British soldiers saw three gray-clad soldiers ris
out of the German trenches. This time they came without bayonets and hand
grenades. Slowly, cautiouwly, and at first with pathetic hesitation, the
approached and passed the line of their own barbed wire, and stood
unprotected in No Man's Land. In a moment, before the officers realized
what was happening, men by the hundreds were scrambling out of the German
trenches and the British trenches, and running forward into No Man's Land.
The mud of Flanders had covered the German gray and the British khaki
alike, and given to all a common uniform. The soldiers who yesterday were
seeking to kill one another now put out their hands in friendly clasp and
greeting, and wished one another in broken English and in broken German a
Merry Christmas. Then songs were called for. The Germans responded with
"Die Wacht am Rine," and the English with "Tipperary," and the Scotch
with "The Boys of Bonnie Scotland." Then the Germas began to sing,
"Heilige Nacht," and "O Tannenbaum!" and the English answered with the
Christmas song of England. So passed the morning and the afternoon of
Christmas Day in brotherly friendship and mutual songs and the exchanging
of gifts. Then the light of Christmas Day faded, and the men in gray and
the men in Khaki went back to their dismal trenches and took up once more
the instruments of death.
Only an interlude, that was, in the chorus of war; only one incident on
that far-flung battle line. But it was one of those incidents which
create hope within the breast of man, whick make us believe, in spite of
the clouds of war and hatred that now infest our planet, that love is
stronger than hate, that light is stronger than darkness, and that with
the birth of Christ there came into the world a power which shall one day
overcome the powers of darkness and bring in everlasting light and
everlasting peace.