The Scots soldier and the much-fabled Christmas Day Truce

From the Scot who took part in the so-called Christmas Truce to a fellow soldier who died with a Christmas card for home - never sent - in his pocket, the season of goodwill can be called into sharp focus through the lens of war.

Stories of the festivities on the frontline have emerged in a ten-year-project at Perth Academy where pupils have followed the lives of former pupils of the ‘Fair City’ to the battlefields of Europe - and sometimes home again.

The project, called Flowers of the Forest, has run with the support of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to connect young people to the stories of those that came just a few generations before.

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As the festive period approaches, those who served over Christmas have become of particular interest.

Former pupil John (Jack) Saunders, born in 1880 in Perth and who later lived in Abernethy, enlisted in Birmingham, close to where his brother lived, and served with the 1st Royal Warwickshire Regiment.

It is now known that Saunders took part in the much-fabled 1914 Christmas Truce when wartime hostilities eased along certain stretches of the Western Front when British soldiers came into non-violent contact with their enemy, in some cases.

From records, it would appear that Private Saunders was among them.

In a newspaper article printed in June 1915 that reported his death, it said: "The deceased, who was 35 years of age, was called up as a reservist, and went through the war for nine months without receiving a scratch. He was amongst those who fraternised with the Germans at Christmas.”

The Princess Mary Gift Tin, given at Christmas to all soldiers and sailors in the Brtish armed forces serving in World War One in 1914. Items in the tin, which for smokers were largely tobacco related, were reportedly swapped with Germans on the Western Front. | CC

A separate account from a fellow soldier in the 1st Royal Warwickshire shows the men were stationed in Bois de Ploegsteert in Belgium during Christmas 1914.

Machine gunner Bruce Bairnsfather wrote about the “truce” in his memoirs and recalled the tiny trench, three feet wide and three feet deep - “this horrible clay cavity” - where he and his men were contained “cold wet and covered with mud”.

About 10pm on Christmas Eve, the “murmur of voices” came from across the field “among the dark shadows”, with the sounds of Germans singing carols emerging. Some of the regiment sang back and, then, there was a call from the Germans to come over.

It is said men from two sides met halfway across No Man’s Land, with cigarettes, wine and song then shared.

Private Saunders died in a hospital in Boulogne six months later, likely from an assault at Shell Trap Farm during the Second Battle of Ypres, when the Germans used chlorine-filled shells in their attack.

Elaine Edwards, of the Commonwealth and War Graves Commission, said the Christmas Day Truce of 1914 was recorded on only certain stretches of the frontline. The slowdown in firing over Christmas was chiefly to allow barbed wire to be fixed and bodies to be recovered on both sides, she said.

Ms Edwards said the realities of the truce were removed from popular depictions of the event.

“There is the idea of the football match being played on the Christmas Day Truce, but research has said they probably didn’t have a match, but perhaps a kick about,” she said.

“Then of course, it wasn’t all the way down the line - so some officers were ‘absolutely no way are you doing that’. While the Christmas truce is a lovely idea, the primary purpose was to repair the barbed wire on both sides - and to recover the bodies.

“We do know, however, that gifts were exchanged.”

British soldiers got the Princess Mary Tin, a gift devised by the young royal “from the whole of the nation to every sailor afloat and every soldier on the front”.

For smokers, the brass box came with an ounce of pipe tobacco, 20 cigarettes, a pipe, lighter, Christmas card and photograph of the princess who had a fund set up in her name to provide the tins.

Non-smokers received a packet of acid tablets, a khaki writing case with pencil, paper and envelopes together with the Christmas card and photo.

Ms Edwards said: “On the German side, they were given gifts of things like schnapps and crystallised fruit and black forest sausages. We do know they were exchanging things like this.

“But the really sad aspect about this is that because a number of the bodies were able to be retrieved over this time - and on both sides, it would have been the same - come January, families were receiving those personal belongings back at the beginning of the New Year. The hope is gone.

“We also known one chap was going over to give a gift and they shot him. And they got back to his trench and his last words were ‘my God, they shot me’. He couldn’t believe it and he died from that gunshot wound.

“The shooting started again as the New Year turned and our side, apparently, were not shooting as it had not turned midnight. We were on a different time and the Germans fired an hour earlier.

“Come the next year, the authorities were having none of it.”

Ms Edwards said the project at Perth Academy, which has been led from the start by former technical teacher David Dykes, had been “amazing”.

She said: “I can’t overestimate how valuable it is. Learning about the war is obviously something that is on the curriculum, but I think if you can link it to personal experience, the students really start to relate to it.

“Students may or may not be interested in history, but I think if you get that real connection then suddenly it opens up. Suddenly these people on the memorial board are coming to life as individuals.”

Christmas postcard found in the pocket of Private John Alexander Veitch at the time of his death in November 1917. It was addressed to his father in Pitlochry but never sent. | Flowers of the Forest/Perth Academy

Private John Alexander Veitch was another former pupil of Perth Academy signed up with the London Scottish Regiment after relocating to the city to work for the Inland Revenue. He died at the Battle of Cambrai, a British offensive that used tanks for the first time on the Western Front, on November 25, 1917. He died just six months after his conscription, aged 20.

Private John Alexander Veitch, former pupil of Perth Academy, who died six months after signing up for World War One. He was 20. | Flowers of the Forest/Perth Academy

In his pocket was a Christmas postcard addressed to his father, John Veitch of Drummurray, Pitlochry. It shows three cartoon thistles on the the front with the caption “Na’body’ll sit on us”.

-The research by pupils at Perth Academy was uploaded onto the CWGC’s ‘For Evermore’ online resource so it is recorded digitally. Others can do the same at: https://www.cwgc.org/stories/create-a-story/