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| Henry Williamson in Uniform |
As Christmas Day dawned on the Western Front in 1914, British and German soldiers put down their rifles, climbed out of their trenches and met in no-man's-land, that narrow strip of land between their lines, where they chatted, exchanged gifts, took photographs, and even kicked a football around together. This astonishing and totally unofficial truce, which has become legendary, lasted in some cases for several days. To the young Henry Williamson, who was then a private in the London Rifle Brigade, a Territorial battalion in the frontline trenches at Ploegsteert (popularly known as "Plugstreet") Wood, and who was present at the truce, the experience came as a revelation that changed his life.
Henry Williamson wrote about the truce several times over the course of his life. Below is a transcript of a letter that he wrote to his mother immediately after the event, giving an eyewitness account. It so moved his family that they sent it to the Daily Express newspaper which published selections from it on 5 January 1915.
26 Dec. 1914
Trenches
Dear Mother
I am writing from the trenches. It is 11 o'clock in the morning. Beside me is a coke fire, opposite me a 'dug-out' (wet) with straw in it. The ground is sloppy in the actual trench, but frozen elsewhere. In my mouth is a pipe presented by the Princess Mary. In the pipe is tobacco. Of course, you say.
But wait. In the pipe is German tobacco. Haha, you say, from a prisoner or found in a captured trench.
Oh dear, no!
From a German soldier. Yes a live German soldier from his own trench. Yesterday the British & Germans met & shook hands in the Ground between the trenches, & exchanged souvenirs, & shook hands. Yes, all day Xmas day, & as I write. Marvelous, isn't it? Yes.
This is only for about a mile or two on either side of us (so far as we know). It happened thus wise.
On Xmas eve both armies sang carols and cheered & there was very little firing. The Germans (in some places 80 yds away) called to our men to come and fetch a cigar & our men told them to come to us. This went on for some time, neither fully trusting the other, until, after much promising to 'play the game' a bold Tommy crept out & stood between the trenches, & immediately a Saxon came to meet him. They shook hands & laughed & then 16 Germans came out.
Thus the ice was broken. Our men are speaking to them now.
They are landsturmers or landwehr, I think, & Saxons & Bavarians (no Prussians). Many are gentle looking men in goatee beards & spectacles, and some are very big and arrogant looking. I have some cigarettes which I shall keep, & a cigar I have smoked.
We had a burial service in the afternoon, over the dead Germans who perished in the 'last attack that was repulsed' against us. The Germans put 'For Fatherland & Freedom' on the cross.
They obviously think their cause is a just one.
If you get a Daily Mail of Dec 23 & turn to the letter page you will see an article entitled 'Snapshots from the Front' & in the second snapshot an account is given of what we, with others, have done, and the identical apparatus is mentioned.
When you find a sentence or word 'blacked out' & not initialed by me, it is the work of the censor.
Many of the Germans here are, or were, waiters. [i.e. in England before the war.] Thank Efford for his chocolate. Auntie Belle for the cigarettes. I have had an awful time with swollen feet and my toes are frostbitten now.
But it is all in the days work, as is working all night at digging or etc & sleeping in wet and mud. Where we are billeted (8 of us in a cottage in a town which is shelled now and again) we have a good time. There is a family of Belgians here whose house has been destroyed, and the old mother, about 56 yrs old, is very jolly and resourceful, as well as comical. [Any further pages are missing.]
Twenty-three years later, an older and more pacifistic Williamson submitted a more detailed and reflective account of the Christmas Truce to the same Daily Express that was published on Christmas Eve 1937. I think I'll save that for another Christmas season, though.
Merry Christmas. MH
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