《闲话英伦》暖心故事：战场上的圣诞停火（安澜的温柔英音陪你入眠）

Britain under the Microscope – The Christmas Truce

As we are now approaching Christmas, some of you might have heard of the expression “The Christmas spirit”. It means to be kind, charitable, forgiving and generous to all people. This can be summed up in the traditional Christmas saying “Peace on Earth and goodwill to all men”

In one of our previous episodes, we talked about the First World War from 1914 to 1918. It was the Christmas of 1914 during which one of the most famous Christmas stories took place. It was only a few months after the start of the war. British and German soldiers were facing each other, fighting against each other in the trenches and watching their friends being killed. Then, on Christmas Eve, something magical happened as one soldier remembers…

“It was Christmas eve. There was white beautiful moonlight, frost on the ground – almost white everywhere. And round about – I should think - 7 or 8 in the evening we heard this singing and a lot of commotion and we saw some lights. I don’t know what they were – some lights – and later we heard them singing ‘Silent Night’ – ‘Stille Nacht’ – I shall never forget it. It’s one of the highlights of my life absolutely to see them. I thought what a beautiful tune.

I thought well a very different Christmas this is going to be from any I’ve spent up ‘til now - feeling pretty miserable all together. Then all of a sudden lights appeared all along the German trench and I thought ‘There’s a funny thing’ and then the German’s started singing ‘Stille nacht, heilige nacht’. I woke up – well all the other sentries did the same thing – we all woke up the other people to come along and see this – what on earth’s going on.

They finished their carol – we applauded them then we thought we must retaliate in some way so we replied with ‘The First Noel’. When we finished that they all began clapping then they struck up their other favourite carol of theirs ‘O Tannenbaum’.

So we went on – first the Germans singing one of their carols then we’d sing another of ours. Then we started up ‘O come all ye faithful’ and the Germans immediately joined in singing the same thing to the Latin words of ‘Adeste Fideles’. Well I thought this was rather an extraordinary thing really – to think of the two nations both singing the same carol in the middle of a war.”

On Christmas Day, in many areas of the frontline in France and Belgium, the soldiers held a truce for the day. British and German soldiers got out of their trenches and talked to each other. They showed photographs of loved ones, many Germans who lived in Britain before the war talked about their lives before. Many gave each other gifts and shared their food, some even played football with each other! But during the ceasefire, many took the time to give their dead comrades a proper burial, British and German troops came together to help bury their dead friends and remember them.

The generals were very angry that their soldiers stopped fighting and the truce soon came to an end. As the war continued, this Christmas ceasefire never happened again. But it was never forgotten, people still remember this moment of peace during a terrible war and this is what Christmas truly means, “Peace on Earth and goodwill to all men”.

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