Crossing no man’s land one silent night
Christmas Eve, 1914, the Western Front, First World War.
For the previous four months, this had been the deadliest place on Earth.
Stretching some 700 kilometres from the North Sea to the Swiss border, the Western Front was a string of trenches and barbed-wire fences that, by December 1914, constituted a faceoff between the king and kaiser and their respective allies.
The stalemate had been annealed in blood that autumn at the First Battles of the Marne and Ypres. At Ypres alone, the British forces sustained 59,000 casualties, including 6,500 Canadians.
Divided by a no man’s land littered with corpses and shell craters, the Western Front was scarred by miles of fortified trenches. Calf-deep mud, pooled water, and exposure to rain, sleet and snow rendered these ghastly sluices the epicentres of human misery. From November 1914 to January 1915, more soldiers died from frostbite, trench foot and gangrene than from enemy fire.
As December 1914 approached, it was clear no one was going home for Christmas.
As darkness deepened along the front that Christmas Eve, British troops heard something peculiar. It was a sound previously unheard along that particular perimeter of death. It was the sound of voices singing: “Stille Nacht, Helige Nacht.”
British Private Frank Sumpter was among the first to recognize “Silent Night” wafting across the no man’s land from the German trenches.
In an interview decades after the war, Sumpter recalled, “We heard the Germans singing ‘Silent Night, Holy Night.’ ”
“Our boys said, ‘Let’s join in,’ ” Sumpter recounted. “So we joined in with the song.” “All is calm, All is bright.” Private Sumpter and his band of mudcaked comrades sang in unison — different lyrics, same melody — with their enemies. Their voices met across the killing fields, now being fitfully and eerily illumined by small candlelit Christmas trees atop the German trenches.
Similar scenes were being played out across the Western Front, with other soldiers singing with their German counterparts, “trading” Christmas carols, with German soldiers singing “O Tannenbaum” and then listening to their antagonists’ musical reply in English, “O Christmas Tree.”
An unlikely, spontaneous Christmas truce had begun. According to Malcolm Brown and Shirley Seaton in their book, Christmas Truce, by the next morning, and across nearly two-thirds of the British sector, soldiers cautiously crawled out of their trenches. Weaponless, extending their hands in peace, the warring sides met each other across the slaughter zone.
British Private Leslie Welkington, seeing the Germans emerge from their trenches, started to get up when his sergeant ordered him to get down. Welkington replied, “C’mon, Sarge, it’s Christmastime. If they can do it, we can do it.” His regiment then all got up and greeted the Germans between the barbed-wire battlements.
Greetings of “Merry Christmas” and “Fröhliche Weihnachten” were exchanged, along with chocolate, biscuits, cigarettes and cigars. In some areas, according to veterans’ letters, a makeshift soccer ball was produced and both sides shared in a frolicsome kickabout. In one poignant moment, German troops helped British soldiers bury a slain French comrade, a German officer holding service over the grave.
While in some areas the truce lasted only through Christmas Day, in others it extended to New Year’s. The commanders on both sides were not pleased, concerned that such gatherings would undermine the will to kill. The British leadership thus ordered a cessation of the truce under penalty of court martial and/or execution.
One hundred years later, as we mark the centenary of the Great War’s conclusion, what do we make of this extraordinary incident?
What can a war story tell us about Christmas?
To some it may read like a bizarre love blip on a historical canvas dominated by war and violence.
And perhaps not surprisingly, the Christmas Truce has not gotten a lot of air time. Like the Christmas narrative itself, it is particularly upsetting to those who conjoin power and violence. (Recall King Herod and the massacre of the innocents.)
Yet in the midst of the most deadly war humanity had experienced until that time, enemies shed their weapons and their hatred to celebrate the Christmas promise of peace. In a sense, then, both the Christmas Truce of 1914, like the Christmas event itself, represents a cosmic in-breaking of good will, or what might be seen as an “apocalypse of peace.”
While the truce did not last — it did happen. It is part of our historical con- sciousness and heritage. In the midst of war, the troops along the British sector of the Western Front profoundly challenged hate by choosing to celebrate the message of love and peace at the heart of the Christmas tradition. United by the shared misery of trench warfare, they broke the code of war and stepped out onto no man’s land and transformed it into graced ground. A century later, the message of these courageous men seems as fragile as the Christmas story of a baby born in a stable, and yet it is just as profound.
Fast forward to our current no man’s lands. Today, it’s just as difficult to believe peace is possible, and just as seemingly impossible to turn our contemporary death zones of war, enmity, racism and economic disparity into the common ground of equity and friendship.
We too have “sergeants” instructing us “to keep our heads down.”
But do we not also have our “angels” with a different message?
“And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.
And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you ...” (Luke 2: 8-14).
“C’mon, Sarge. It’s Christmastime. If they can do it, we can do it.”