Astonish, Bewilder and Stupefy

« Army Times Review | Main | New Website »

November 21, 2005

Image of the Week: Christmas Truce

A story in the news that the last surviving veteran of the World War I "Christmas Truce" died today. Here's an excerpt from the Retuers wire story:

LONDON (Reuters) - The last known surviving allied veteran of the Christmas Truce that saw German and British soldiers shake hands between the trenches in World War One died Monday at 109, his parish priest said.

Alfred Anderson was the oldest man in Scotland and the last known surviving Scottish veteran of the war.

"I remember the silence, the eerie sound of silence," he was quoted as saying in the Observer newspaper last year, describing the day-long Christmas Truce of 1914, which began spontaneously when German soldiers sang carols in the trenches, and British soldiers responded in English.

I write about the Christmas Truce in my new book. Some people think it is a myth, but it really happened--and many of the soldiers involved took photographs of themselves with the enemy to prove it,like the picdture at right from the Imperial War Museum.

It was early in the war, and the message of "hate your enemy" hadn't quite been drilled into the two armies. Soldiers came out of the trenches to exchange toasts, trade cigarettes and liquor, even play soccer games. The men themselves were as surprised as anyone at the sudden outbreak of peace. "Most peculiar Christmas I've ever spent, and ever likely to" wrote one British soldier. "Fancy a German shaking your flapper...and then a few days later trying to plug you" said another. One German soldier wrote in delight about a soccer game played between the two armies: "We Germans really roared when a gust of wind revealed that the Scots wore no drawers under their kilts."

The next day, they got back to the important business of killing each other.

Posted by rickbeyer at November 21, 2005 12:37 PM

Comments

Post a comment