FIRST CHRISTMAS OF THE WORLD WAR Festivity amidst MUD and DEATH CHRISTMAS EVE LEGENDS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 150, 22 December 1938, Page 21 (Supplement)

FIRST CHRISTMAS OF THE WORLD WAR Festivity amidst MUD and DEATH

CHRISTMAS EVE LEGENDS

npWENTY-FOUR years ago there was celebrated JL a Christmas of laughter and good-fellowship

the most remarkable Christmas of our time, among men who the day before had been seeking one another's lives, a festivity amidst mud and death.

It was the first Christmas of the World War and also the most bitter. For the Germans, fighting in defence of their homeland against the Powers who had "ringed it in" and were supposedly jealous of the rise of a new nation, were rancorous towards their foes. The French feeling was inflamed against the invaders of Northern France, who had shot civilians in reprisal or by way of a warning, and who had deliberately shelled Reims Cathedral, and even the British had been steeled by the air raids on London, following the atrocities, real and imaginary, reported during the invaders' march through Belgium. Later, these men became hardened to the business of fighting, regarded themselves as part of a great machine, and killed without ferocity, wondering only when the grim business would end. But at Christmas, 1914,.there was still hatred, fierce contempt, as revealed by the French drawing a word from gutter slang to describe their German foes, the feeling that the Germans were outlaws, that the British were treacherous foes who had aligned themselves behind catspaw nations in the attempt to exterminate their greatest commercial rival. And this made the events of December 25 and 26 in Flanders all the more remarkable.

As the season approached, its nearness served to banish even the resentment against the Flanders mud. This sticky, creamy mud, imprisoning the feet, clinging to the spades of the trench-diggers, bogging men waistdeep in communication alleys, so that they dared snipers and walked along the

F II HERE are several exceedingly touching II legends concerning bells, which are heard -**- ringing from buried cities and villages at this season. One belongs to a village near Raleigh, in Nottinghamsire, and the story runs that once, where there is now but a valley, there was a village which, with every trace of life and habitation, had been swallowed by an earthquake; but ever since, at Christmas, the bells of the buried church are heard to ring as of old'

top rather than face the morass, made up the landscape. For winter swept down with bitter winds from the North Sea and the December rains drowned the land. Water lay everywhere, the trenches constantly collapsed, some of them became mere ponds and had to be abandoned, others, built up at the cost of infinite labour, held corpses in their parapets, while bodies emerged from the slime about the feet of the men-, and were strewn about no man's .land. On this desolate Flanders

B y C. Q. POPE

plain, a place of isolated and squalid farms, cut by canals and ditches, set with isolated poplars and willows, every house was a target .for the German guns; the best shelter for which a man could hope was some dank cellar or a dug-out scooped in a railway embankment or sunken road. The men who populated the place were lightly and absurdly clad. No steel helmets had yet been devised to protect the head against the too-frequent shrapnel wound, the French poilu still clung to his absurd red trousers and ineffective jacket, the cavalryman actually wore horsehair plumes. The men had made use of stocking caps and woollen vests, leather coats, and improvised helmets^ oddly contrasted with their uniforms, in the effort to escape something of the biting cold. Within a few days of Christmas these strangely-clad British began to hoist notice boards inscribed with sarcastic greetings to their enemies. Patrols would plant these boards in no man's land. Gunners would

A similar legend is told of Preston, in Lancashire, and yet another and more moving one comes from the Netherlands. It is said that the city of Been was notorious for its black and shameless sins, as well as renowned for its beauty and magnificence. To the Sodom of the Middle Ages came our Saviour on one anniversary of His birth, and went as a beggar from door to door, but not one in all that Christmas-keeping city gave the Master of the abundance. Sin He saw ram-

chalk facetious messages on tha shells they slipped into the breeches of their guns. On Christmas Eve the Royal Flying Corps at Bailleul went one better. It dropped a carefuly-wrapped plum pudding oa the German flying field at Lille, and next day was rewarded with a bottle of rum.

Behind the lines the Christmas spirit began to appear. While Christmas cards and sprigs of holly decorated the dugouts and bottles of wine were saved against the great day, an avalanche of parcels, descended upon the British Army, and one day at Ypres, as the German "coal boxes" crashed round about, marching troops were startled by the sound of "Oh, Come All Ye Faithful" played on the organ in the ruined cathedral. Christmas Eve was celebrated by the French in their usual way; this is the time they mark the feast which they know as reveillon. There had been days of rain, but on Christmas Eve the night was clear and dry and at midnight you might have seen mea not on duty in the front line gathered around one of their number—a priest called up for service in a line regiment—who: had slipped a white stole over his uniform. All the way back to the reserve areas the same ceremony was being observed, with increasing elaborations, and at one village church a tenor from the Paris Opera sang the traditional French chant—"Minuit, Chretiens!" Along the German lines there were odd triangles of light; Allied officers scanned them long before they realised that they were lighted Christmas trees. For Christmas is the great festival among the Germans, too, and to mark the occasion for the troops in the front lines, regimental bands, ' moved up to reserve areas, made the night resound with "Stille nacht. heilige nacht," and other Christmas hymns. !

The magic had its effect. For as Christmas morning dawned clear, with a powdering of snow, the German guns did not deliver their customary morning bombardment, and no British rifle* sounded. The men on the firestep could hear the twittering of the sparrows, so quiet it was. And then began a series of incidents which made fhe day notable. No one seems to know just what happened first. The officers of a London Territorial battalion declare that their men had been holding a carol-singing festival with the Germang all night. The Irish Guards, on their left, were slower to come to an understanding with their foes. But at last some grey figures appeared above the wire. They waved friendly hands, and called Christmas greetings in halting English. And before much time had passed men from both sides had leapt from the trenches, laughing, singing, and cheering, were halting to scrutinise one another in no man's land, and finding German field grey and British khaki much alike under the plastering of Flanders mud, were grasping hands and exchanging cigarettes and souvenirs. At that moment the barriers between the two peoples were forgotten and they joked together about the war in which they had engaged, exchanged boasts, and began, once again, to entertain one another with their favourite carols, "Heilige nacht" and "O Tannenbaum," and "Good King Wenceslas." The British asked for the "Watch on the Rhine" and the Germans for "Tipperary," and one , Scottish battalion endeavoured to persuade their foemen to join them in singing "Auld Lang Syne." It was a strange moment, with men who were to kill one another in the next few days, forgetting everything under the influence of the all-pervading; Christmas magic. -' . ,

Christmas dinner took these fighting men baclc to the tranches, but in the afternoon the truce continued. In one sector a British officer asked permission to bury the British dead, killed in a local attack a week before. The Germans agreed, aided in the task, and at the end of it a German officer gave a British subaltern his hand, murmuring "Les braves! C'est bien dp'mmage!" At one point a band of officers, shouting madly, slid in the mud in pursuit of a hare. From another sector ♦came stories of a football match in progress. Fraternisation went on, with English-speaking Germans acting as interpreters or the British using their "soldier French," and with hearty laughter at the attempts of both sides to make themselves understood. And as Christmas night faded into Boxing Day there was still no attempt to resume the work of death. But the next day warfare was begun again, there were stern reprimands for the British officers who had permitted this remarkable state of affairs to come into being, and never again during the war years did the spirit of Christmas walk in no man's land. But looking back on these events twenty-four years later, in a 'world. arming for a fresh conflict, one wonders —when such things as this are possible are the peoples of the world ever really willing to march the road to war? . . ' ■

pant on every side, but not a trace of Christma* bounty and goodwill, and He called to the sea, which, as-of old, obeyed His voice, and Been, the city of sin, was buried deep, clean out of sight beneath the waves. But ever at Christmas up. from beneath, the coveting waters comes the sweet calling of-church bells, buried in Been. It is a legend which appears to tell in parable that nothing which ever belonged to Christ, and was dedicated to His service, is ever wholly lost from Him and alienated from service; that ever and again something of their inherent beauty and compelling sweetness rises from the depths through all seeming ruin. ■