On the evening of 24 December 1914, along parts of the Western Front in Flanders and northern France, the firing died away. German soldiers set up Christmas trees and lights on their parapets and sang carols, British soldiers sang back, and men shouted greetings across no man's land. In some places a truce began that night, in others on Christmas Day. It was never general and never official, but for a day or two many soldiers on both sides stopped fighting.
Christmas Eve in the trenches
By December 1914 the war that many had expected to be over by Christmas had settled into the trenches, with rain, frost and miserable living conditions on both sides of a no man's land that in places was only a few dozen yards wide. The Imperial War Museums' account says the change began with the Germans singing carols and putting up Christmas trees on top of their parapets. One British officer quoted by the National Army Museum wrote that on Christmas Eve the enemy began to blow bugles and set up candle illuminations.1
A British veteran, Marmaduke Walkinton, remembered both sides singing and shouting to each other until a German called out, "Tomorrow you no shoot, we no shoot". Some truces started that night and others on Christmas Day.2
What happened next
Where the truce held, soldiers met in no man's land, exchanged cigarettes and food, and used the pause to collect and bury their dead. In a few places a football appeared and men had a kickabout, which veterans described as a game for everyone rather than a match between teams. It was far from universal. Elsewhere the fighting went on, and the Imperial War Museums quotes a soldier who was ordered to open rapid fire when the Germans opposite raised lights above their trench. Senior officers disapproved of fraternizing, but some of the ceasefires lasted until after New Year's Day.3
Letters home and photographs taken on soldiers' own cameras reached the newspapers in early January 1915. Nothing like it happened again on the same scale. Christmas Day and the famous football are covered in our full article, The Christmas Truce of 1914, which also weighs the evidence for an organized match.4
Also on this day
- 1806: Battle of Czarnowo. French troops of Davout's III Corps, watched by Napoleon, forced a night crossing of the Wkra against Russian forces under Ostermann-Tolstoy at Czarnowo, north of Warsaw, in the War of the Fourth Coalition.
