Christmas truce was common in First World War, letters reveal
Historian finds famous football match ‘one of many’
IT was one of the most enduring images of the First World War but research has revealed Christmas Day truces were common during the conflict despite official attempts to stop them.
The most famous incident was the truce of 1914 when British and German troops played a football match in “no man’s land”.
But Professor Thomas Weber of Aberdeen University has been given access to a large number of family memories of the war which show this was far from a one-off.
He said: “In the course of research for a previous book I came across a surprising number of references to Christmas truces well beyond 1914.
“I wanted to develop this further, as it goes against our standard understanding of the war, and was fortunate to be given access to many private accounts of those who fought in the trenches.
“As a result it has become clear we need to reconsider the view that combatants during the Great War were driven by a brutalising and ever faster spinning cycle of violence which made this type of truce impossible after 1914.”
One example is a truce between German and Canadian troops at Vimy Ridge in 1916. The official version recorded by the Canadian Regiment, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, said Germans tried to interact and no-one responded. But Ronald MacKinnon, of Levenseat, near Fauldhouse, West Lothian, wrote: “Here we are again as the song says. I had quite a good Xmas considering I was in the front line. Xmas eve was pretty stiff, sentry o up to the hips in mud of course … We had a truce on Xmas Day and our German friends were quite friendly. They came over to see us and we traded bully beef for cigars. Xmas was ‘tray bon’ which means very good.”
Another participant in the truce, Sgt AC Livingston, a US-Canadian dual nationality citizen of Washington State, who served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, shared a similar account with his daughter Pat later in his life.
By that time living in British Columbia, his eyes teared up every time he recalled that opposing troops “exchanged gifts of cans of ‘bully beef’ for cigars and thought they were coming out ahead on the gifts as the main thing they used the bully beef for was to line the bottom of the trenches to keep them out of the mud” and “strains of ‘Silent Night’ were sung across no-man’s land in German and English.”
Arthur Burke, a Private in the 20th Battalion Manchester Regiment, wrote home to Salford at Christmas 1916, saying: “It got so frequent it had to be stopped and even after our order to quit, two of our boys got 28 days for going out and meeting them half way for a chat … There’s never a rifle or machine gun shot fired by either side for many days. Although we got orders to fire we knew it was hopeless to do so so we didn’t.”
Professor Weber said incidents were rarely reported to HQ due to fears the officers would be court martialled. Official accounts were purged of any mention.
He said: “The general view is that after the first Christmas there was no repeat because of the cycle of violence and its ensuing bitterness that then set in. In fact, what we see is that soldiers never tried to stop fraternising with their opponents not just during Christmas but throughout the year.”
‘‘ We had a truce on Xmas Day and our German friends were quite friendly. We traded bully beef for cigars
The book, Islands of Peace, looks set to be published in 2018.