Tale of 1914 Christmas Day Truce Is Inspiring, Though Hard to Believe

[This famous scene took place 100 years ago today, on Christmas, 1914.]

By Rob Hughes  Dec. 23, 2014

LONDON — The Christmas Truce, when British and German soldiers were said to have suddenly stopped fighting on the Western Front for a few hours on Christmas Day 1914, is written in history.

What started with the singing of “Stille Nacht” on the German side, followed by a response of “Silent Night,” was said to have included an impromptu soccer game on the No Man’s Land between the opposing trenches.

“We all grew up with the story of soldiers from both sides putting down their arms on Christmas Day when gunfire gave way to gifts,” Prince William said at a ceremony in England two weeks ago to unveil a memorial to the event.

“Football,” the prince continued, “has the power to bring people together and break down barriers. It is vital that 100 years on, we keep the Christmas Truce story alive. It remains wholly relevant today as a message of hope and humanity, even in the bleakest of times.”

Hope and humanity and perhaps, ultimately, futility.

Soccer is a remarkable game that crosses boundaries around this world. But whatever took place on that day a century ago did not stop the carnage that took an estimated 16 million lives, nor did it break down barriers to prevent wars today.

“Sport, not war” has to be among the most contrite of phrases.

The sculpture unveiled by Prince William was designed by a 10-year-old boy, Spencer Turner. It depicts two hands clasped in friendship inside the outline of a ball. It is simple, brilliant and full of boyish hope.

And grown men are running with that hope. There have been re-enactments of the reported No Man’s Land game, including a match between the British Army and German Army teams in Aldershot, England, and a game in Belgium this week near the Flemish field where the truce happened.

UEFA, the European soccer authority, put together a short video in which former stars — England’s Bobby Charlton, Germany’s Paul Breitner and France’s Didier Deschamps — read a narrative and current players — Wayne Rooney, Philipp Lahm and Hugo Lloris — read aloud soldiers’ letters from the front lines in 1914.

All of it is heartfelt. For the record, Germany, the current world champion, has won four World Cups to England’s one in the sport now played by 209 national associations.

The brief cease-fire on the Western Front in Belgium followed a published letter from women’s suffrage advocates in England calling upon “the Women of Germany and Austria” to demand peace at Christmastime in 1914. Undoubtedly, some men on the front lines did leave their frozen, muddied trenches to not only bury their dead, but to exchange gifts of tobacco or even tunic button.

Henry Williamson, then a 19-year-old private in the London Rifle Brigade who survived the war to become an author, sent a letter from the front to his mother. “In my mouth,” he wrote, “is a pipe presented by the Princess Mary. In the pipe is German tobacco. Ha ha, you say, from a prisoner or found in a captured trench, Oh dear, no! From a German soldier. Yes a live German soldier from his own trench. Marvelous, isn’t it?”

Other letters, published in The Times of London, alluded to the game or games that broke out. Some suggest that they were kick-abouts, mainly between English soldiers using made up balls — some say a can of corned beef served as a substitute.

Fewer accounts came from the German side, although Richard Schirrmann wrote the following December that his regiment, which was holding a position in the hills of occupied Belgium, received a request from Belgian troops to be allowed to send letters to their families. “Something fantastically unmilitary occurred,” Schirrmann reported. “German and French troops spontaneously made peace and ceased hostilities. They visited each other and exchanged wine, cognac and cigarettes for Westphalian black bread, biscuits and ham.”

Schirrmann survived the war and set up the German Youth Hostel Association in 1919.

By the following Christmas, the truce was banned under threat of a court martial for any soldier on either side who dared to fraternize with the enemy.

The story of the Christmas Truce, and soccer’s part in it, became gilded over the decades. It is implausible, but not impossible, that any soldier smuggled a leather ball — or even the inflatable pig’s bladder inside the casing — to the trenches. But that is how it has become depicted in accounts fictionalized and made more beautiful.

Robert Graves, the British poet and writer, in 1962 reconstructed a story of the event, with Germany’s 133rd Royal Saxon Regiment taking on what he called Scottish troops. In Graves’s account, the Germans won, 3-2.

In the match between the British and German army teams last week in Aldershot, the British won, 1-0.

Soccer and war have intersected again over the past century. Perhaps the most evocative of triumphs was strife-torn Iraq emerging as the winner of the 2007 Asian Cup that was played across four countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.

Soccer can indeed survive hostilities. But only at Christmastime will a story be believed that both sides would put down their arms to meet in No Man’s Land. A beautiful memory, made more beautiful in the subsequent years of man’s imagination.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/24/sports/soccer/tale-of-1914-christmas-day-truce-soccer-game.html?_r=0