IN THE TRENCHES.

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXII, Issue 11404, 3 January 1931, Page 11

IN THE TRENCHES.

yuletide memories

(By Sir Philip Gibbs in “The New York Times Magazine.”)

MOW that the world has peace again, the spirit of Christmas lias no bitterness, and the old message ot good-will and Christian charity does not clash with the propaganda of hatred and the business of killing; orfe’s fellow-men. During the Great War which ended 11 years ago it was difficult to reconcile the moaning of Christmas and its message of love and pity, and its old tradition of gladness, with the death and desolation upon which millions of men looked out across the trenches. General headquarters did not indulge in sentiment; “business as usual” was the order of the day. Christian charity and all that old stuff could not be allowed to interfere with a really good war. But up in the lino and in the billets behind the line, the fellows who had to do the. fighting and the dying were tempted to take a day off and celebrate Christmas by something like a truce with those Johnnies on the' other side of No Man’s Land. They were simple souls, many of those lads who looked across the parapet- under steel hats. Only a few years before, not more than five or six. perhaps, they had been playing with the kids in nice little nurseries, winding up -mechanical toys which they had found in their stockings ns Christmas presents. Tn country villages they bail listened every night to Christmas carols, and walked across the snow or wet fields to little old churches decorated with evergreens, where the service and singing gave them a pleasant feeling about this day of human kindness — the kid’s day—the feast day—of the Christ child.

God bless tern, merry gentlemen For Christ our King is horn.

Queer -to think that only a few years ago they were pulling Christmas crackers across the dining-room fable without a guess that they would ever wear a steel hat and a gas mask, with the stench of dead bodies in their nostrils! Now there were other kinds of Christmas crackers, more noisy, and much more dangerous, and Christian sentiment was not encouraged by G.H.Q. Still, up in the line, it would he rather a lark to pretend that for one day in the year it was not strictly necessary to hate the fellows on tho other side of the barbed wire. Why not wish them ■‘A Merry Christmas” before- sticking them in the stomach with a bayonet, or blowing them to hits after. Christmas Day—-with hand grenades or other methods of disintegration? On Christmas Day of 191-3 this idea —very scandalous to G.H.Q. and unite contrary to all rules of warfare—got into the heads _of many English and German soldiers. The batteries on each side of the line fired off n few rounds, as a matter of form, and then wore silent. Even the gunners were thinking of the Christmas plum pudding that had come up with the rations. There were places where the trencher were very close together, up in the- Ypres salient, and further north by Festubert; voices carried across the narrow No .Man's Land. Perhaps it was the Germans who began it first. A German soldier who had been a waiter in the Hotel Cecil stood up above the sandbags and shouted a few words —“Don't shoot ... A Merry Christmas! . . Come and have a talk 1” ‘‘Shoot the swine!"

Somehow it didn't seem playing the game to shoot' him after that greeting of a Merry Christmas. A sportsman, anyhow. Some of the English lads showed themselves a hove 'the sandbags. "Hello Fritz! . . . (lot any Christmas putting?’' Some* of the younger officers—the second lieutenants who had been schoolboys a year or two before—rather enjoyed' this Christmas joke. Why not. after all? They strolled out into No Alan's Land with some of their men. and met ‘‘Fritz” in the wet mist. There was an exchange of souvenirs cigarettes. postcards, pipe lighters. “A damn silly war! "What’s it all about ? When is it going to finish?” Roars of laughter out there in No Man's Land. Some of those Fritzes snoke remarkably good English. ’ "Well, a Merry Christmas, and now we had better got hack before the Colonel gets fussed. . . ” It caused an awful scandal at G.H.Q. Tt made a mockery of the war. “No fraternising,” came the order to brigade headquarters. A court-martial offence if it lutpftons again. It happened again in 1!)1G. The guards had their little hit of fun somewhere in the neighborhood of Loos. They practiced orchestral music with mouth organs, combs with tissue paper, and whistles. They were pretty good at harmonising. They played some of the old Christmas carols or songs from “The Students’ Song Book,” and laughed heartily when they heard clapping from the German trenches. Much appreciated by that audience beyond the barbed wire] t A voice called out in English. "Play ‘Annie Laurie’l” They played^‘‘Annie .Laurie” with tender harmonies, and a tall German stood up on the sandbags, full in the open, and sang the old song—the loveliest song in the world—with a magnificent voice and deep emotion. Ho was encored by 'the Guards. Some of them were deeply moved by that voice across No Man’s Land. It was a pity that a few days later thev had to get back to business and make a raid on that part ot the'line and kill the fellow who had sung “Annie Laurie’’ and lots .of others "'ho had clapped their music. Very ironical—that war! Not easy to reconcile with Christ’s message, ot love and peace. All very comical as long as we could keep a sense of humor and laugh like hell at the grim joke l of it all 1 1 think it must have been the Christmas 0 f DlG—though I am getting a little vague m my dates now —when I went up to the trenches hevond Merville to take Christmas messages to some officers 1 knew in one of "the battalions. It was a had part of the line in. water dogged country after heavy rain. The sand-baggecl parapets had slipped down here and there, exposing the men to machinegun lire, and the communication tranches were knee-deep in mud and water. The dug-outs .were very uncomfortable, being Hooded so that even their walls oozed with water. It was a dank day with a heavy grey mist through- which we could see, a. lew strafed trees, and the eiioni? s barbed wire, ancl some dead bodies lying out there in No Man’s Land. It was all very silent. Hardly a o-un fired, and on both sides the.ro was a gentlemanly agreement to avoid unpleasantness for twenty-tour hours. Our men—English Tommies from the Midlands —looked rather miserable and cold. Most of them vended about in long gum-boots served out. to save them from “french feet.” which wrff a malady rendering them unfitservice. But outside ono of tk&r dug-outs twp humorists had luw#g up these big boots as chudrenJSSng up their stockings for Santjjnjlaus. >/ : ” bleeding luck,” they explained when I ■ noticed this joke. Old Father Christmas stays well behind the front line. There, ain’t no Christmas, gifts for .the. likes of us.” ' But they were mistaken, for presently the rations came up with mail hags crammed with letters and presents, and in those front line trenches where the fury of war had. switched off for *a little while there were shouts of laughter from muddy men I

who found knitted'vests and Christ- . mas cards and even some Christmas *

crackers in their packets from home. I remember a. lad with a mouth organ who sat inside his dug-out playing ‘Good Kino- Wenceslaus’ and other old tunes appropriate to Christmas Day. Even up tliero in the mud and the slime the spirit of Christmas was not quite forgotten. Behind the -lines in old French villages where battalions had the luck to be- billeted at Christmas time the old feast day was kept with traditional merriment and extra rations. Every battalion mess had its plum pudding’ served up with flaming brandy, and young officers decorated their billets and battalion headquarters with holly and green stuff. I had the honor to he invited to two Christmas feasts, one with some gunners and the other with some Highlanders. I had the idea that I might cut one of these banquets and go in for a friendly drink with my Scottish friends. Bat having eaten heartily with the. gunners and taken a second helping of their Christmas pudding, I arrived at the Highlanders’ mess just as they were sitting down to their meal. No excuses and no entreaties on my nart were of the slightest avail. I had to begin ail over again with roast turkey, sausages, and plum pudding. it was my most heroic feat in the war, and I suffered severely for a week afterward. But I. encountered greater danger when I accompanied a Scottish Colonel on New Year’s Day when lie visited every billet of his battalion to make a little speech to his men and drink their health- in a tumbler of whisky. Being his guest, I had to drink every time lie raised his glass to the honor and glory of Scotland. ; After visiting eight billets I wonke '.ed, much to the surprise of the Colonel, who didn’t turn a hair. “A wee drop ’of Scotch couldna hurt a blue-eyed bairn,” he protested. “Drink tip. mon!” On the way back from those billets I remember singing “Auld Lang Syne” with considerable enthusiasm, hut my remembrance of what followed is rather blurred- So also is rny memory of a Christmas party given by some Highland officers of the famous Fiftyfirst Division. They had the pipers plaving round the table, and a French officer who had joined me* as a guest was so overcome by this wild music that- he fell off his chair in a kind of swrton. to the great hilarity or the Gordons, who thought this a wonderful tribute to the powers 0 f their pipers. Perhaps Scotch whisky had something to do with it. Later’ in tho evening the Gordon Highlanders took off their hoots and danced a reel or two on the hare boards of an old house in Arras. There have not been many years of peace since then, hut sometimes it seems only the oilier day. and sometimes like a hundred years, since Christmas in wartime. Our minds have changed . with those years. It is difficult to get back to that old mentality of ours. There is no longer the ironical contrast between the spirit of Christmas and the grim work of war. which seemed to make a mockery in some minds of all that is meant hv the Christian feast day. To some of my war friends at least this thought was perplexing and found vent in ironical comments which would no v .- seem blasphemous. But perhaps they were emotional minds, and the majority of. fighting men took war as they found it and faced death when it came without wondering whether it clashed with the Christian ideal, or were happily convinced that God was on their own country and their own side of the barbed wire. We are not so- sure now. Things have become so mixed ut>! But those of us who remember Christmas in war time are believers in the okl message which called for peace on earth to men -ff goodwill.