The day peace broke out
BRITISH and German troops were bogged down in rat-infested trenches filled with mud that left everyone permanently cold and wet. Soldiers knew they could be sent “over the top” at any time to attack enemy lines as they waited, with the bodies of the dead lying in No Man’s Land between the two armies.
The First World War battlefield on the Western Front was a dismal place and writer Ernest Hemingway later wrote: “World War I was the most colossal, murderous, mismanaged butchery that has ever taken place on Earth.”
But even in this hellish landscape the spirit of Christmas was felt when soldiers from both sides stopped fighting to play football.
News of the 1914 Christmas Day football match spread like wildfire through the trenches and General Walter Congreve VC, who led the Rifles Brigade, later wrote in a letter to his wife that it was the Germans who had called for a day’s truce and one of his men bravely came out of the trenches to agree to it.
“I was invited to go and see the Germans myself but refrained as I thought they might not be able to resist a general,” he wrote.
“My informant, one of the men, said they he had had a fine day of it and had smoked a cigar with the best shot in the German army, then not more than 18.”
Officers and men on both sides met in No Man’s Land – in between the opposing trenches – and shook hands and exchanged cigarettes and cigars.
Further down the line, German and British soldiers organised a game of football in a field near Frelinghien, in northern France.
The famous Christmas Truce is believed to have taken place on Christmas Eve and lasted for around 48 hours.
Of around 15 games believed to have broken out across the frontline, the Germans are known to have won three 3-2 and lost one 4-1 to the Scots Guards.
Many of the footballs are thought to have been donated by the Daily Mirror who sent them to the Front to help raise morale among the British troops.
Johannes Niemann, platoon commander of the German Third Battalion, later recalled: “Suddenly a Tommie came with a football, kicking and making fun and it then became a football match.”
He said: “Our solders soon saw that the Scots wore no underpants under their skirts, so that their bottoms were clearly visible when their skirts fluttered. This amused us and at first we could not believe it.”
He said the teams marked the goalposts with their caps, but it was hard to play at times because the ground was so frozen.
The soldiers also showed each other photographs of their families and loved ones and there were even reports of the sides cutting each other’s hair.
The soldiers were even entertained by a German juggler who had once performed in London.
Field Marshal Sir John French, who was commander of the British Expeditionary Force from 1914 to 1915, had said “it will all be over by Christmas”. But come December the war was still waging and losses were disastrous. The Christmas Truce was a moment of humanity among the onslaught, but the British High Command were unimpressed by the fraternising with the enemy and frowned on the encounters.
It is said German troops began decorating their area around their trenches in the region of Ypres in Belgium on Christmas Eve.
They placed decorations on trees then continued the celebration by singing Christmas carols, most notably Silent Night. The British troops in the trenches across from them responded by singing English carols.
The two sides continued by shouting Christmas greetings to each other and then there were calls for visits across No Man’s Lands.
J Reid, of the 6th Gordon Highlanders, later told the Imperial War Museum: “The Germans stopped firing, we stopped firing. And we came out of the line. And we were swapping tins of bully for their tins of meat and the padre was out having a talk with them.”
And Frederick James Davies, a private in the 2nd Battalion Royal Welsh Fusiliers, described Christmas Day 1914 in a letter he wrote to his mother from the front: “They were only fifty yards away from us in the trenches. They came out and we went to meet them. We shook hands with them. We gave them cigs, jam and corn beef.
“They also gave us cigars but they didn’t have much food. I think they are hard up for it. They were fed up with the war.”
It ended all too quickly for the troops and soon it was back to the trenches. Sadly, the Christmas Truce never occurred again during the First World War, but the momentous event was never forgotten.
MARION McMULLEN looks at how soldiers forgot the horrors of the First World War on Christmas Day 1914