Christmas 1914 - Jocko Willink

so by early December 1914 the punishing advance of the Germans have been stopped by the Allies before the Germans made it to Paris but had been stopped at a great cost a sickening cost but now the armies had settled into the trenches and we know what the trenches were hell not some metaphorical approximation of hell but actual hell hell on earth artillery mortars machine gun fire snipers shrapnel screams of the wounded and dying and on top of that the environment rain and sleet and snow and flooded trenches and freezing cold and of course death was

everywhere everywhere and there seemed no end to the horror but on Christmas Day 1914 the horror did stop if only for a short time while men for a moment recognized the men they were fighting against as other men as other men with the same hopes and dreams and desires that they had themselves and the chief of all hope where's peace and this is an excerpt of how the Christmas truce unfolded according to Henry Williamson a British Army officer who is there and here's what he wrote four weeks we had lived in flooded trenches the Germans

were 80 yards away our trench was and fellated we lost many men shot by snipers night after night since the tailing off the Battle of Ypres x' we had toiled in the parapets filling sandbag with clay mud squelched through muddy lagoons of woodland tracks carrying rations duckboards pumps and ammunition we were volunteers rushed out to help general French's shattered Expeditionary Force a few weeks before we had been schoolboys bank clerks undergraduates medical students now our lives were ravaged some of us the young ones who thought of their mothers were near to despair we were without

hope without horizon at first trench life had been interesting even enjoyable it was fun cooking our own bacon and making tea in the wood while shrapnel cracked overhead good sport stalking the wild geese in the marshes satisfying to feel the soft hairs of our unshaven chins the regulars were decent chaps heroes of Mons but the rains fell and the trenches filled almost waist high after a few days we could scarcely move our legs nor did we seem to need food at night we dragged ourselves out of the ditches and moved about uncaring of bullets aimed

at random in the dark all night we worked carrying parties pumping fatigues parapet building at dawn we slid in the water again and set ourselves to endure the gray daylight even now so long afterwards when I hear rain on the tiles overhead the ghost of that time makes me draw the blankets closer around my neck on Christmas Eve of 1914 we were in the support line about 200 yards inside the plug stared wood it was freezing our overcoats were as stiff as boards our boots were too hard to move but we rejoiced as the mud

was hard too also happy thought we would be able to sleep that night inside a new block house of oak boughs and sandbags called Piccadilly Hotel no bed but the cold earth no blankets even but sleep sleep then came a message from brigade headquarters broad I think by second lieutenant Bruce Barron's father of the Warrick's wiring parties were required in no-man's land all night and there would be a moon we would have to work only 50 yards from the German machine guns in the white house opposite the eastern edge of the wood two hours later

we filed out of the dark trees into the naked moonlit terror of no-man's land holding our shovels besides our faces in hope of protection against the expected mortar blast the moon was high and white among the frozen clouds we were visible someone slipped with a Clank of a spade or rifle we flung ourselves on our faces and waited but the battlefield was as silent as the moon for an hour we worked in silence in a most mysterious sound lessness what had happened we began to talk naturally as we drove in stakes and pulled out concertinas

of prepared wire there was no rifle fire either up or down the line from way up north beyond appraise to south beyond our mentiras and the French army at midnight we heard laughing as we worked we heard singing from the German lines carols the tunes of which we knew I noticed a very bright light on a tall pole raised in their lines down opposite the east lanx trench in front of the convent a Christmas tree with lighted candles was set on their parapet the unreal moonlight life went on happily cries of c'mon over Tommy we

won't fire at you a dark figure approached me hesitatingly a trap I walked towards it with a bumping heart Merry Christmas English friend we shook hands tremulously then I saw that the light on the pole was the morning star the star in the east it was Christmas morning all Christmas Day gray and khaki figures mingled and talked in no-man's land the picks and spades rang in the hard ground it was strange to stare at the dead we had only glimpsed at swiftly from the trenches the shallowest graves were dug filled and set with crosses knocked

together from lengths of rationed boxwood marked with indelible pencil for king and country for fatherland own free height fatherland and freedom freedom freedom how was this we were fighting for freedom and our cause was just we were defending Belgium civilization these fellows in gray were good fellows they were strangely just men like ourselves how can we lose the war English comrade our cause is just we are ringed with enemies the war was thrust on us we are defending our parents our homes our German soil the most shaking staggering thought that both sides thought they were

fighting for the same cause the war was a terrible mistake people at home did not know this then the idea came to the young and callow soldier that if only he could tell them at home what was really happening and if the German soldiers told their people the truth about us the war would be over but he hardly dared to think it even to himself the next day was quiet and the next waving hands from the trenches by day singing and reflected blaze of trench bonfires at night it was a lovely time on the third

afternoon came a message from the Germans at midnight our staff officers visit and we must fire our automatic pistol on but we will fire higher nevertheless please keep undercover at 11 p.m. Berlin midnight we saw flashes going away into the air two days later an army order came from GHQ to the effect that men found fraternizing with the enemy would be court-martialed and if found guilty would suffer the death penalty and again in that place the very lights soared over no man's land at night then bullets cut showers of splinters from trees and sometimes human

flesh and bone so hope sank into the mud again but did not die despite a withering anew as each or human unit fell in machine gun and mortar blast and colossal reverberating rending of the shells of those four years the years whose truth seems to be in communicable sometimes as one listens to what people say here in the England a generation died for it seems like almost pre-war again can it be that we lack imagination to see the other fellow as ourselves Henry Williamson continued to fight he was eventually wounded by gas then when he

was declared unfit to serve in the army he then volunteered for the Air Force to see if that could get him back to the front but he didn't make it back to the front luckily because the war ended the war ended but not before 20 million were wounded and 17 million men were killed men just normal men gone so this holiday season please think of those men and women around the world in the trenches now risking life and limb for what they believe in for freedom and think of the civilians trapped in those hellish places

suffering in the merciless paths of war and finally as Henry Williamson asked let us not lack the imagination to think to think of other men as men men like ourselves men like us you Merry Christmas to all and may there be peace on earth