ARTICLE: Christmas in Wartime

I wanted to give you Christmas with a difference, and so I have dug out a handful of accounts from very different people, during very different wars.

First off, let’s get it out of the way. The Christmas Truce of 1914. There is so much bullsh*t doing the rounds about this, that I thought I would bring you just a normal, every day soldier in the ranks talking about what actually happened in his sector, and how it made him feel.

His name was Ernie Williams, and he was a nineteen year old serving with the Cheshire Regiment.

Christmas Eve, there was no shooting at all. We didn’t fire a shot Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, in fact for a few days after that. We was in the line just to the left of Ypres and suddenly across no man’s land it was quiet… there were a couple of hundred yards in between the two lines, then there was the sound of singing…Naturally we followed suit and we passed the night away like that.

When the morning came, looking over the top of the trench you could see… four figures in the mist. Then, gradually from right and left there was a swarm out of the lines to join them from both sides… We had a great big mass of soldiers. The officers, when we started doing over the trench tried to rush us back, they didn’t want us to go… they shouted ‘get back you bloody fools’ and all that sort of thing…

A depiction of the Christmas Truce that is more realistic than some…

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