Memorial Christmas Truce 1914, Comines-Warneton Belgium, December 2018.
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Memorial Christmas Truce 1914
British and German Soldiers Arm-in-Arm Exchanging Headgear: A Christmas Truce between Opposing Trenches from The Illustrated London News, January 9 1915. - Image Wikipedia.
Captain Robert Patrick Miles, attached to the Royal Irish Rifles, wrote on December 25 1914:
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.
Numerous truce events broke out all along the Western Front in the week leading up to Christmas Day. Neither the Allies or the Germans thought that the war would last this long and they had been sunk in their trenches at stalemate for over a month already. While fighting continued in some areas, French, British and German soldiers all ventured out into No Man’s Land to exchange holiday greetings, exchange food and souvenirs and bury the dead. Stores tell of many games of football that took place between British and German soldiers.
In the Comines-Warneton, south of Ypres Belgium, the Germans began to decorate the area above their trenches on Christmas Eve. First with candles, then Christmas trees were placed on the parapets above their trench walls. The Germans then began to sing carols. British soldiers responded by singing carols of their own and then both sides shouted Christmas greetings to each other. Soon the men on both sides were out of their trenches and greeting each other. The soldiers were tired of war and being away from home for the holidays was especially melancholy for both sides.
Little did they know that three more Christmas days would pass before the fighting would stop. For some, in fact, the holiday season would not end before the violence would begin again. Captain Miles, the author of the letter mentioned above, was killed in action five days after he wrote his letter. The commanding officers, horrified at the idea of their men fraternizing with the enemy, would ban all future Christmas truces and in many cases order an increase in hostilities during that period.
The memorial at Comines-Warneton honors the men who fought in the Great War and celebrates the peace of the 1914 Christmas Truce. A reconstruction of the opposing trenches is included at the site along with a display of footballs recalling the games between the British and German soldiers from that day. Less happy reminders of the Great War are close at hand however. A German concrete bunker from the war sits at the back of the site and right next to the memorial is the Commonwealth Prowse Point Military Cemetery and the remains of 233 Allied soldiers. The first solider buried at Prowse Point was interred in November 1914. The last was Private Richard Lancaster, killed in action that same month, but whose remains were not found until April 2006. Lancaster was laid to rest at Prowse Point on July 4 2007. His named was removed from the Ploegsteert Memorial to the Missing and he lies today under a Commonwealth headstone that bears his name.
Merry Christmas to all today.
December 25, 2019
