How festive spirit halted Great War

They were on the Western Front, near Lille. Baffled, they held their fire but the Germans came right up to the trench and offered cigars. It was 1914 and the near-mythical Christmas truce had begun, when men laid down their weapons, shook hands and embraced the season’s message of peace on earth.

If it seems incredible to us, to the men themselves it seemed beyond comprehension.

There were plenty of reasons why the truce should never have happened - explicit orders, wartime hatred and good military sense - but there were many reasons which fostered precisely the opposite. Extraordinary circumstances often lead to extraordinary events.

The first Battle of Ypres in October and November had brought horrific casualty figures. The British lost more than 50,000 men and the Germans perhaps twice as many, but a lull followed as both sides awaited replacements for the savage losses.

The huge armies dug in and watched each other as close neighbours, able to hear one another’s chatter and smell their cooking.

The lull brought an inertia and a curiosity about the enemy. Did he too have rats, lice and floods? What of his food? What was he really like? These were the first stirrings of fellow feeling brought about by isolated men sharing extreme circumstances.

Back home both Britain and Germany were thoroughly enjoying the war and, by way of participating, swamped the mail with presents for the troops. In fact the public went berserk.

In the six days preceding Christmas every soldier, sailor and nurse was sent cards by the King and Queen, plus a present from a special fund associated with Princess Mary, the 17-year-old daughter of George V. This dislocated distribution systems in three countries - ammunition and food were delayed because of it. Christmas had become an obsession.

Germany’s deep love for Christmas manifested itself in swamping their supply lines with half a million fir trees, a commodity particularly suited to fouling up any postal system. The spirit of the season was, though, unstoppably afoot.

The final attack by the British, on December 19, at Ploegsteert Wood, ended in a local armistice in which both sides helped each other bury their dead.

The British High Command took fright that the Christmas wind-down might be a fiendish Hun trick and warned "the enemy may be contemplating an attack".

That this was applicable to every single other day helps explain why it was ignored. The Germans, too, issued identical warnings.

On Christmas Eve, frost hardened the mud and froze the pools. When night fell, almost simultaneously, the Germans mounted trees on their parapets and lit candles and lanterns.

Thousands of British watched in fascination as the wondrous sight was joined by the distant haunting sound of men singing Stille Nacht.

THERE cannot have been a moment like it in either the history of war or in the performing arts. Every survivor spoke of the abiding impact of that one carol.

In many cases the British responded with a carol of their own, applause or calls for more. Almost always the second was Tannenbaum. When the British sang O Come All Ye Faithful the Germans accompanied with the Latin version, Adeste Fideles.

Seaforth Highlanders, just to the north of Ploegsteert Wood were, unusually, the first to begin the singing but were "spellbound" with the returned carol. A Corporal Ferguson led most of his company into no man’s land for cigarettes and handshakes - accompanied by calls of "Fergie, Fergie?" so that the Germans imagined this to be a Highland greeting and politely repeated it.

Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders near Armentieres initially agreed that only two from each side should meet but quickly changed their minds.

The Belgians and French, holding more than 400 miles of the front, shared the same experiences but very much at arms’ length - the invader was on their soil and more than 300,000 French had fallen in August alone.

Christmas Day dawned calm, still and very cold. Services were held but the singing was muted for fear that the night before’s truce was an aberration, but the process quickly repeated itself. Almost all accounts suggest the Germans initiated the moves. The day was spent identifying and burying the dead.

The Rev Esselmount Adams, chaplain to the Gordon Highlanders, organised a joint service in no-man’s land with prayers in German and English. Both sides wrote home using phrases like "fairytale", "day of fiction" and "extraordinary".

Rations and cigarettes were swapped even though the British hated the German tobacco. Buttons and regimental flashes were exchanged, the ultimate souvenir being a pickel-haube (the spiked helmet).

The romantic notion that a game of football was played has a weak basis in fact. There are references to how neighbours played but nothing states who and where.

In frozen churned-up mud nothing more than a kick-about could have been possible anyway, but it represents the ultimate - akin to the ancient Greeks laying down arms for the sacred Olympics. In this context it may be a powerful folk memory which transcends the facts - it should have happened but didn’t.

IN some areas the truce continued until January 10, but it couldn’t last. At its simplest it was a triumph of the human spirit, when the ordinary soldier called off the conflict for Christmas, when the will for peace prevailed over the might of war.

In the year that followed, poisonous gas was introduced, Zeppelins bombed London and one of the first U-boats sank the Lusitania.

When Christmas came there were numerous orders forbidding fraternisation. There was no truce in 1916 and a heavy military bombardment ensured no-one attempted one.

By 1917 friendly meetings were unthinkable. By 1918 the Armistice had been signed and the memory of the Christmas truce of 1914 slipped into legend, a moment from the forgotten golden age when even the participants suspected it never happened.

But it did happen - when man’s fundamental decency surfaced briefly in the midst of hell - and should never be forgotten.

Neil Griffiths is the press officer of the Royal British Legion Scotland.