Christmas in the trenches

By A. C. Michael (Arthur Cadwgan Michael, 1881‒1965) - The Guardian [2] / [3]Originally published in The Illustrated London News, January 9, 1915., PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44234585

As you read this it will be Christmas day, or the day after Christmas. As it write it, it’s the 23rd of December, and we’ve made it to our kids’ house in Evansville IN.

I’m writing this early, to get it out of the way, so that I can enjoy Christmas with the family, and reflecting on Christmas past, long past, now. Specifically, 110 years ago.

In Flanders on the Christmas morn
The trenched foemen lay,
the German and the Briton born,
And it was Christmas Day.

The red sun rose on fields accurst,
The gray fog fled away;
But neither cared to fire the first,
For it was Christmas Day!

They called from each to each across
The hideous disarray,
For terrible has been their loss:
"Oh, this is Christmas Day!"

Their rifles all they set aside,
One impulse to obey;
'Twas just the men on either side,
Just men — and Christmas Day.

They dug the graves for all their dead
And over them did pray:
And Englishmen and Germans said:
"How strange a Christmas Day!"

Between the trenches then they met,
Shook hands, and e'en did play
At games on which their hearts were set
On happy Christmas Day.

Not all the emperors and kings,
Financiers and they
Who rule us could prevent these things —
For it was Christmas Day.

Oh ye who read this truthful rime
From Flanders, kneel and say:
God speed the time when every day
Shall be as Christmas Day.

Frederick Niven (1878-1944) wrote this in 1915

This was in the first year of the most horrible war the world had ever seen.

First Ypres had happened, as had the first battle of the Marne, (there were two, one in 1914, the other in 1918.) Paris, and France in general, had nearly fallen. The brutal trench warfare had started, poison gas had been deployed, the stupidest war the world would ever know was in full swing.

Captain Robert Miles, King's Shropshire Light Infantry, who was attached to the Royal Irish Rifles, recalled in an edited letter that was published in the Daily Mail and the Wellington Journal & Shrewsbury News in January 1915, following his death in action on 30 December 1914:

Friday (Christmas Day). We are having the most extraordinary Christmas Day imaginable. A sort of unarranged and quite unauthorized but perfectly understood and scrupulously observed truce exists between us and our friends in front. The funny thing is it only seems to exist in this part of the battle line – on our right and left we can all hear them firing away as cheerfully as ever. The thing started last night – a bitter cold night, with white frost – soon after dusk when the Germans started shouting 'Merry Christmas, Englishmen' to us. Of course our fellows shouted back and presently large numbers of both sides had left their trenches, unarmed, and met in the debatable, shot-riddled, no man's land between the lines. Here the agreement – all on their own – came to be made that we should not fire at each other until after midnight tonight. The men were all fraternizing in the middle (we naturally did not allow them too close to our line) and swapped cigarettes and lies in the utmost good fellowship. Not a shot was fired all night.

In some parts of the front, an impromptu soccer match was played. Booze and tobacco were shared, along with what special foods the troops had from home.

The truce was of course frowned upon by the generals, the field martials, and the politicians, in fact even by the citizens of the nations involved. They were sure that this could wind up with some sort of IWW type movement, and the take over by “world communism” from the troops.

Such a thing would never occur again, but it is oft remembered, and spoken of. Many songs have been written about it, and many different perspectives have used the event as an argument for their take.

My take is this:

That war was a disaster, a Family feud among the Royal families, all related to each other, and each certain that their claim to be the heir to Queen Vic, and the rightful rulers of the known world was the most reasonable. By the next year, the war would have a life of it’s own, and would be completely unstoppable, short of a total victory. The scars of evil behavior on all sides would be too deep, to brutal for anyone to ignore.

And yet, that truce should be a reminder to you that your enemy is human too, that he’s doing what he believes, or has been told is right and vital to his, his families, and his nations interests.

He may have been lied to, he may just be wrong, or he may be right, but his nations interests and your own may be so completely in opposition that no deal can be made…

The situation may be such that differing world goals, the views of ‘right and wrong’ are so foreign to each other as to be beyond the ability to find common ground. Such a condition exists between Israel and Iran and her proxies for example.

Still, it’s a thing worth keeping in mind, and exploring before going to war.

If war must still happen, you can then kill your enemy without hate, or vilification; and quickly.

Yet, while it may sometimes be unavoidable, it is never to be taken lightly.

Let violence be your last resort, understanding and negotiation your first consideration.

And may peace and plenty, freedom and the blessings of liberty, be our present to each other, on this most auspicious of days.

Yours in Service

William Lehman