History Book: Christmas on the battlefield

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, December 23rd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, the WORLD History Book. On this day during World War I, the evening peace began to break out. And another story of the transcendent power of Jesus Christ on a Christmas eve during World War II. Here’s WORLD’s Paul Butler.

PAUL BUTLER: On Christmas Eve in 1914, a battlefield falls silent. Allied soldiers hunker down for the night. Across no man’s land, Germans do the same, trying to keep warm. The fighting had stopped hours before. German officer Walther Stennes remembers the day. Audio from Imperial War Museums.

WALTHER STENNES: Of course it was unusual that the opposite side also ceased fire. Then my officer controlling the sentries came in and said ‘Do you expect a surprise attack? Because it’s very unusual, the situation.’ I said, ‘No I don’t think so.’

Pauses in the fighting happen occasionally during the first five months of World War I. Enemies silence their weapons and let each other recover and bury the dead. Sometimes the sides even exchange souvenirs. Fraternization and random truces take place all along the Eastern Front. But they are highly localized and end as quickly as they start, and soldiers fight each other again as if nothing happened.

At the end of 1914, the Allied and Axis powers are at a stalemate on the Western Front in Belgium. Stuck in muddy trenches, hungry and cold, both sides deafened from bomb explosions and fierce gunfire.

But as night falls on December 24th the Allied soldiers hear a very different sound. Audio from Sainsbury’s.

COMMERCIAL: GERMAN TROOPS SINGING

The British join in:

COMMERCIAL: ENGLISH SOLDIERS JOIN IN

Both sides sing Christmas carols together. British private Marmaduke Walkinton, stationed close to the German trenches, yells some jokes across the divide. And the Germans yell back. Then one German soldier says:

MARMADUKE WALKINTON: ‘Tomorrow, you no shoot, we no shoot.’ And the morning came and we didn’t shoot and they didn’t shoot. So then we began to pop our heads out of the side and jump down quickly in case they shot but they didn’t shoot.

Audio there once again from Imperial War Museums. Further down the Front, Germans extend the same offer. The officers refuse, thinking that the request is a trap and the troops will be massacred.

But on Christmas Day, they reconsider and give their men the go-ahead. Allied soldiers walk slowly into no man’s land, where Axis soldiers are waiting. They exchange tins of food, cigarettes, and season’s greetings. Teams form to play soccer. Others join in prayer over the dead. Audio from an interview with soldier J. Reid.

J REID: We were swapping tins of bully for their tins of meat and the padre was out having a talk with them, they were burying any dead that was there and we were burying any dead – this carried on for about a couple of days.

When high command hears of the truce, they order the men back to the trenches. Gone are the carols. No more “peace on earth, good will toward men.” Machine guns open fire once again.

The event becomes something of a legend in military history. Official reports say as many as 100,000 men put down their weapons to celebrate Christmas together that day… but some skeptics wonder whether it really happened on such a large scale.

The next year, officials on both sides preemptively forbid any kind of Christmas ceasefires. Soldiers are told they will be charged with treason if they try to communicate with the enemy. But despite the order, some soldiers still extend peace on Christmas.

Next a lesser known Christmas truce, it’s 30 years later as World War II rages on—and unity is a thing of the past. The German army invades a thin line of American soldiers during the Battle of the Bulge. At one point, three allied soldiers lose sight of their battalion and they wander for several days—one of them with a bullet wound. On Christmas Eve, they stumble upon a house in the forest.

A German woman answers the door. Her son, Fritz Vincken, remembers it clearly. He later writes about it in his short story: Truce in the Forest. Voice actor Jon Gauger.

JON GAUGER: Outside, like phantoms against the snow-clad trees, stood two steel-helmeted men. One of them spoke to Mother in a language we did not understand, pointing to a third man lying in the snow. She realized before I did that these were American soldiers. Enemies!

She lets them in. The Vinckens start preparing roasted chicken with potatoes … then there’s another knock at the door. Four German soldiers have also lost their way, and need a place to stay. Fritz’s mother allows them to come inside: on one condition. She says, “This is Christmas Eve, and there will be no shooting here.”

The soldiers agree, and throw their guns on a nearby woodpile and sit with the Americans. As Fritz’s mother sets the food on the table, she says a prayer, with tears in her eyes.

JON GAUGER: As I looked around the table, I saw tears, too, in the eyes of the battle-weary soldiers, boys again, some from America, some from Germany, all far from home.

The next morning, Christmas Day, a German soldier takes out a map and shows the Americans how to get back to their battalion on a map. They shake hands,and go their separate ways.

According to the story, Fritz walks back into the house after saying his farewells. And he notices his mother with the family Bible on her lap.

JON GAUGER: I glanced over her shoulder. The book was open to the Christmas story, the Birth in the Manger and how the Wise Men came from afar bearing their gifts. Her finger was tracing the last line from Matthew 2:21, “…they departed into their own country another way.”

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Paul Butler.

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