629. WWI: The Christmas Truce
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What is the Christmas Truce and did it really happen?
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Dear mother, I'm writing from the trenches. It is 11 o'clock in the morning. Beside me is a coke fire. Opposite me a dugout with straw in it. The ground is sloppy in the actual trench, but frozen elsewhere. In my mouth is a pipe presented by the Princess Mary. In the pipe is tobacco. Of course, you say. But wait. In the pipe is German tobacco. 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. Yesterday, the British and Germans met and shook hands in the ground between the trenches and exchanged souvenirs and shook hands. Yes, all day, Christmas Day and as I write. Marvellous, isn't it? So that was the 19-year-old Henry Williamson of the London Rifle Brigade writing to his parents in southeast London on the 26th of December 1914, about the previous day, Christmas Day 1914.
And Dominic, what could possibly be more festive than this topic? You're right, Tom. So he's describing the Christmas truce. And Henry Williamson, some of our listeners may be familiar with that name because he is the author of a book called Tark the Otter, a nature classic that I think was published about a decade after the First World War and has never been out of print since then. A real kind of perennial children's classic. Ring of Bright Water was the film, wasn't it? That's right, yeah, Ring of Bright Water, exactly. So he's describing there a story that I think most people would rank as one of the most poignant of the 20th century. So it's the informal truce between British and German soldiers in No Man's Land on Christmas Day, 1914.
And I think we always imagine it as this sort of precious oasis, this moment of peace amid the slaughter, hope amid the horror, the very best of humanity, Tom, in the grimmest circumstances in human history. And Dominic, your tone, your tone there. I'm fearful of where you may be heading with this. With this festive episode. Where am I going to take it? I mean, actually, who cares about what I think? Because what people really think when they think about the First World War is, what does Paul McCartney think? I'll tell you what Paul McCartney thinks. He lights a candle to our love. Because in love, our problems disappear. Yeah, of course. And that's from the Pipes of Peace, 1983, which was, I think, a number one in Britain.
And in Ireland, but not in America, which is sad from the Americans. Well, Paul is playing both a British officer and a German officer on either side of the trenches. And they get up and they exchange photographs, don't they? That's right. Yeah. And there are some examples. So the Christmas truce often appears in popular culture. So for younger listeners in Britain, there was a very celebrated ad, an advert for Sainsbury's, the supermarket in 2014, which a lot of people may remember. Which was the centenary of it happening. Exactly. And it's one of those ads that kind of went viral and that had the soldiers playing football between the trenches. And we'll come to this issue, whether or not they played football.
People who like Doctor Who, the very last Peter Capaldi story was set in No Man's Land on Christmas Day.
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