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One hundred years ago, on Dec. 25, six months into the Great War (WW1), some British, German, Indian, Austro-Hungarian, French and Russian soldiers along parts of the Eastern and Western Fronts in Europe observed an unofficial Christmas truce.
The truce was not the first unofficial cessation of hostilities in World War I, but it was unparalleled in terms of scale and spontaneity. Truces and cease-fires have been a part of warfare for as long as there has been conflict, but as World War I continued, the belligerents became increasingly war fatigued and unsympathetic, worn down by the conflict's magnitude and the horrors that were exacerbated by advances in industrial warfare.
The Christmas truce was an impromptu agreement between combatants. A century later, truces and tenuous cease-fires are mostly negotiated, often influenced from outside powers, and generally bitterly accepted by the belligerents. Nonetheless, temporary cessations of hostilities still happen, and enemies sometimes abandon attacks for a night of calm, if only for a brief period.
By December 1914, the maneuver phase of World War I was over for the Western Front. The German advance through Belgium into France had been halted, the mighty British Expeditionary Force had blunted itself in the bloody havoc of the Belgium's Ypres Salient and the Race to the Sea in northern France had left two staunchly defended lines running from the Swiss frontier to the North Sea. The opposing powers dug in for the approaching winter, acquiescing to the increasingly immobile nature of positional warfare. Unable to outflank each other and lacking the means to decisively break through enemy front lines, there was no choice but to establish layered defensive positions with fixed killing areas covered by machine guns, mortars and artillery.
Unofficial truces had been agreed to prior to Christmas, mainly driven by the forces of circumstance and the need to retrieve the dead and wounded. Yet, unofficial cease-fires were frowned upon within the upper echelons of the army, and fraternization was expressly forbidden. Early in December, Gen. Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, British commander of the II Corps, prohibited any friendly encounters or unofficial truces with the enemy. An experienced soldier, Smith-Dorrien understood that soldiers fighting in close proximity to each other might begin to suffer from lethargy, or even sympathize with the shared plight of their enemy, possibly encouraging a "live and let live" mentality among the troops. He was keen to maintain the offensive spirit that was a cornerstone of the British Army.
Smith-Dorrien's instincts were not far off the mark. Given the closeness of the defensive lines, opposing troops were often within earshot of each other. As the war settled into a grisly stalemate, living in a filthy labyrinth of dugouts, trenches and forward listening posts became the norm. Outside of periodic planned offensives, intense defensive fighting and incessant artillery bombardments, the greater part of soldiering on the Western Front was simply following a daily routine. Regardless of which side of the conflict a soldier was on, an average day started with reveille and revolved around meal times, sentry duty, work responsibilities, personal administration, weapon cleaning and any number of mundane or stupefying tasks. A hostile act by the enemy disrupted the routine like nothing else, and a practical mentality came to be shared by participants on either side of no man's land.
Unofficial agreements sprang up across the Eastern and the Western fronts out of respect for certain boundaries, such as avoiding contact at meal times or allowing for brief intervals to recover the fallen. Nothing unites men like hardship, and certainly there was a shared suffering among the soldiers that held their respective lines. Following the attrition of the opening months of the war, millions of men were drafted to fight. Having largely inexperienced combat troops thrown forward changed the perception of soldiering. It became less of a professional career and more a game of survival. They were not oblivious to the fact that they were the ones in the trenches with the rats and the sludge and the lice, while elsewhere to the rear or back home, people slept soundly and warmly in clean beds, including their senior commanders.
How the Other Half Lived
Aside from fearlessness, curiosity is an age-old characteristic of a soldier. It is one thing to be a young man undergoing training, reading newspaper reports of enemy atrocities and soaking up the inevitable propaganda that seeks to demonize an enemy, but it is another to live directly opposite an opponent. It is hard to fully dehumanize an enemy when they can be heard singing or laughing — or when the smell of their cooking or continental cigarettes drifts over. As the soldiers realized the war was not going to be over by Christmas as promised, they also began to see that, regardless of which flag they fought under, soldiers at the front were slaves to circumstance. The more seasoned soldiers and intellectuals among them rationalized the struggle, saving their most candid vitriol not for their immediate opponents, but for the politicians and generals that planned and propagated the conflict.
This is not to say that there was not bitterness, resentment or the desperate biting sense of loss when comrades were killed or evacuated as casualties. However, the British in general, and some Germans, particularly those from Saxony or Bavaria, seemed more amenable, much to the chagrin of their French, Indian, Prussian or Belgian counterparts. That said, some British units appear to have quite firmly and independently objected to any attempt to exchange pleasantries, going so far as to engage the enemy with rapid fire when they attempted to make truce. Even when soldiers did meet and exchange pleasantries, an underlying paranoia remained, with soldiers and officers mentally mapping the layout of the opposing defensive positions.
At the 1st North Staffordshire Regiment trenches at Rue du Bois, France, the truce was observed on Christmas morning. Initiated by the Germans, soldiers from both sides tentatively emerged from their positions, sizing up each other before exchanging gifts of cigars and cigarettes, sweets from home and sundries like stationary or handkerchiefs. A soccer ball was even produced and, according to the letters of a senior officer, a kick-about took place.
At Ploegsteert Wood, a relatively quiet sector south of Ypres, known as "Plugstreet" Wood by the British, men from the Royal Warwickshire Regiment observed an unofficial truce with the Germans for at least two days. In some places, the German lines were less than 100 meters away, and the sound of singing clearly travelled across the crisp winter night. There are conflicting reports of a soccer match; some sources tell of a structured game that resulted in a 3-2 victory for the Germans, while others reported that troops kicked around empty ration tins or makeshift balls. All are agreed that the frozen mud, twisted metal and shell craters of no man's land made for a poor field, though apparently the working-class solidarity expressed through soccer transcended poor playing conditions as well as national differences, if only briefly.
Not All Good
Although the unofficial truce was observed sporadically across the Western Front, elsewhere, and for the men of the 1st Battalion, the Hertfordshire Regiment close to the French village of Festubert, the day was business as usual. A young private manning a forward listening post was killed by a German sniper on Christmas morning, prompting his incensed platoon sergeant to take his place. He quickly identified the enemy sniper and killed the German with a single shot. The sergeant was himself shot and killed moments later. No truce was observed by the Hertfordshire soldiers that day.
Moreover, there was a more somber reason for the cease-fire than exchanging gifts and banter: It was an opportunity to repatriate the men from both sides who had fallen in combat. Although festive truces are most commonly associated with the Western Front, they occurred along the Eastern Front, too, with Austrian and Russian soldiers agreeing to not fire unless fired upon, which led to eventual unauthorized meetings and the exchanging of gifts: Austrian tobacco and schnapps for Russian meat and bread.
Word of the truces spread back home, a momentary reprieve from reports of fighting and the conditions in the trenches. There was something profound, almost miraculous, about mortally opposed fighters setting aside their differences, if only for a day. It spoke to the seasonal message of peace on earth and goodwill to all people.
The Christmas truce has become elevated to an almost mythical status. The centenary affords a more pointed moment to reflect, if only to consider that, against the scale of the conflict, a Christmas cease-fire was little more than a single candle burning in a dark cathedral. But, sometimes, it is easier and more comforting to reflect that hope and the inherent goodness of the participants of war might win out, as opposed to the abstract and bureaucratic nature of armed conflict itself.
Epilogue
A century to the day after the Christmas truce, two lines of opposing forces in eastern Ukraine will maintain a negotiated truce. A summer of brutal fighting between combatants loyal to Kiev and pro-Russian separatists has left almost 5,000 dead — a paltry sum compared to the death toll of the Great War, but an intense loss for a country fighting what is essentially a civil war. Whether known or unknown to the soldiers on the front lines, the specters of larger powers overshadow the battlefield, for Ukraine has become key terrain in a rekindling of a timeworn antagonism between East and West.
Following the ouster of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich, Kiev leaned toward and accepted support from the West. The separatist movement, spurred by Russia's annexation of Crimea, has received overt and covert support from Moscow. Although they have proposed an eventual settlement to the conflict, these opposing blocs — the United States and Europe on one side and Russia on the other — willingly or unwillingly stoked the fires that have blackened eastern Ukraine in 2014.
An early September cease-fire, prompted by the outside players but negotiated by Kiev and the separatists, resulted in a stormy, semi-rigid contact line. Both sides consolidated their positions; the separatists centered themselves in main defended areas such as Donetsk, Luhansk and Donbas. For their part, Kiev's forces established overwatch and prepared to continue the fight. To call the agreement a cease-fire is oxymoronic because fighting has continued on the front lines, albeit on a reduced scale. Still, further attempts to reach a truce have continued into December. On Dec. 16 the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic declared that the so-called "regime of silence," established a week before, was holding with no reported fatalities and limited use of heavy weapons or artillery. The truce is expected to hold through Dec. 25.
The conflict in Ukraine is not the Great War, but for the drafted, battle-weary soldier manning his position on a frozen night, the clock might as well have stood still.
Courtesy : Stratfor (www.stratfor.com)