Category: Seasonal

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

It came upon a midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
When angels bent down to the earth,
And changed machine guns into harps,
And turned leaden bullets into golden carols
That drifted across no man’s land,
And choirs of soldiers joined the angels
In a cease-fire of exultation,
While all the bloodied uniformed citizens
Of heaven above watched as silent knights,
As helmets and caps and whisky and schnapps
Were passed from frozen side to frozen side,
When a Tommy kicked a football up into the air,
And there it stayed, suspended high up in the sky,
Shining for ever in a continent’s memory;
A star of peace in a bleak midwinter’s century.

It came upon a midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
When angels bent down to the earth,
And changed machine guns into harps,
And turned leaden bullets into golden carols
That drifted across no man’s land,
And choirs of soldiers joined the angels
In a cease-fire of exultation,
While all the bloodied uniformed citizens
Of heaven above watched as silent knights,
As helmets and caps and whisky and schnapps
Were passed from frozen side to frozen side,
When a Tommy kicked a football up into the air,
And there it stayed, suspended high up in the sky,
Shining for ever in a continent’s memory;
A star of peace in a bleak midwinter’s century.

North and South

There, on the one hand, St. Pancras and Paris;
And there, on the other, Kings Cross:
Gateway to the LNER,
And night mails crossing the border,

And gateway to a world we have lost:
Pit heads and winding gear, tram-roads and collieries,
And curling smoke chimney stacks:
The world of the North,

The canvas telling the truth,
Up there in the Mining Art Gallery,
At Bishop Auckland:

A terrible beauty down there in the dark depths,
And a beautiful harmony up there in the streets
And homes and chapels and clubs and pubs:
The stippled mist-light of the pit village,
The twisted sinews in the eighteen inch seam,
Ears keening with the creak of each pit prop,
The mind tracking the echo of dripping water,
And the whisper of each rock –

There, on the one hand, St. Pancras and Paris;
And there, on the other, Kings Cross:
Gateway to the LNER,
And night mails crossing the border,

And gateway to a world we have lost:
Pit heads and winding gear, tram-roads and collieries,
And curling smoke chimney stacks:
The world of the North,

The canvas telling the truth,
Up there in the Mining Art Gallery,
At Bishop Auckland:

A terrible beauty down there in the dark depths,
And a beautiful harmony up there in the streets
And homes and chapels and clubs and pubs:
The stippled mist-light of the pit village,
The twisted sinews in the eighteen inch seam,
Ears keening with the creak of each pit prop,
The mind tracking the echo of dripping water,
And the whisper of each rock –

The unspoken fear of entombment,
The threat of explosion;

Eyes quick and darting,

The scent of fire damp,
Methane in the air;

And then there, on another broad canvas,
The women in the kitchen, curlers in the hair,
Stoking up the fire, preparing the bait,
Eyes smarting in the washday steam;

Out there,
Pigeons and whippets and ponies in the field,
Spuds for sale with the Christmas wreaths,
Communal allotments and shared apple trees,

The colliery football teams,
Like West Auckland,
Winners of the first World Cup in 1908 –
They beat Juventus and all,
But didn’t get paid while they were away,

But at least their wives and mothers and sisters
Weren’t grieving at the pithead though,
Grieving for their menfolk,
Trapped down there below,
Bodies trapped and wrapped by the black gold,
The black gold that heated the homes and mansions,
The factories, warehouses, palaces, stations and offices,
The black gold
That powered the smiths, and forges and furnaces,
That powered the trains and shipping lines,
The battleships and the dreadnoughts.

But we were now gazing at a sunset smelted sky
Flaming out over drystone walls and snow capped hills,
And the tumps of old lead mines,

While Christmas lights blazed in the villages,
While pub windows glowed orange in the twilight,
Beyond the nail parlours and tattoo shops,

While we tracked the paths of Charles Dickens,
Wackford Squeers, Smike and Nicholas Nickleby,
Through Barnard Castle and thence to Durham,
Where men and women swopped tales of football,
And where three pints cost six quid,
And where we were allowed to serve ourselves,
While coal, not dole, fires roared in Victorian grates,

Until we went to the People’s Bookshop,
Where books to inspire and educate and value
All line the shelves,
Not priced, but there for a donation,
What you could afford –

And where we talked of a divided ruling class,
And where we talked of victory,
Victory for the working class,
Victory at the next election,
As the sun once more sank in the west;

And so to the Pitmen’s Parliament,
Where a vast audience gathered
Beneath the banners of past struggles and victories,
For a class struggle film of Dennis Skinner,
And talk not just of class,
But of race and gender, too,
Where the ghosts of Socialism past,
Embraced those of Socialism Present and Future,
A world not so much as lost,
As a paradise waiting to be regained,
A union of North and South:

‘Oh, Jeremy Corbyn.’

‘In the bar room, in the bar room,
That’s where we congregate,
To drill the holes, shovel coals and shovel up the slate,
And for to do a job of work,
Oh, I am never late,
That’s provided we can do it in the bar room.’

The Pilgrim’s True Path

It started with a glance out of the bus,
A blood red disc of a sandstorm sun,
It was ten past ten.

The light numinous rather than luminous,
As we opened the door to leave Bisley church,
Emigrant-ghosts waiting for the Bristol cart,
And a six week voyage to New South Wales.
It was twenty to eleven.

We walked through deep, shadowed holloways,
Walking the Bisley Path,
High above the valley marshlands,
Through woodland shrouded in the strange glow
Of another world’s grey-green light,
The harbinger of Hurricane Ophelia,
The wind now shrieking through the creaking trees,
Leaves falling like some autumn snowstorm.

Thanks to Mark Hewlett and Andrew Budd for the above images.

It started with a glance out of the bus,
A blood red disc of a sandstorm sun,
It was ten past ten.

The light numinous rather than luminous,
As we opened the door to leave Bisley church,
Emigrant-ghosts waiting for the Bristol cart,
And a six week voyage to New South Wales.
It was twenty to eleven.

We walked through deep, shadowed holloways,
Walking the Bisley Path,
High above the valley marshlands,
Through woodland shrouded in the strange glow
Of another world’s grey-green light,
The harbinger of Hurricane Ophelia,
The wind now shrieking through the creaking trees,
Leaves falling like some autumn snowstorm.

We were dry-shod, however; the leaf-path
A russet covered rustling track-way,
Until we descended to the spring line,
Thence to cross the Slad Brook’s hidden bridge,
Where medieval pilgrims, too, once crossed,
Travelling to Gloucester Abbey.

At Shepescombe Green, Reformation revenants
Dangled from the crossroad gallows:
We sought solace and succour at Dells Farm,
At the Quaker burial ground;

Blue skies rushed in from the westward hills,
As we trod a corpse-path;
It was afternoon.

The church bells rang out from Painswick,
To welcome us past sun-gleamed streams,
To the Celestial City,
Where a black-coated congregation hurried to church,
Like Lowry figures struggling with a headwind,
‘He was Roman Catholic but their church isn’t big enough for the big family.
So they’re using our church.’

The sun was red again, but was swallowed by the cloud.
It disappeared behind the church spire,
While the old church bells tolled for thee and me;
It was two o’clock.

We had walked five and a half miles,
From the high church of ‘Beggarly Bisley’,
Along ancient paths to a funeral at Painswick:
In these short hours of seeming pathetic fallacy,
We walked through the history of our Christianity,
A Pilgrim’s Progress,
High above the Slough of Despond.

Edward Thomas and the Snake’s Head Fritillary

The local Swindon paper’s obituary for Edward Thomas
Commented on his love for the country around the town –
And William Cobbett’s hated rotten borough,
‘The place by the river’, was just six miles or so
From his grandmother’s house near the railway works;
Did he, I wonder, ever make an Easter visit
To the Lammas Meadows at Cricklade,
From Swindon’s Old Town station,
After talking with Alfred Williams,
‘The hammer man poet’,
Glimpsing the ‘Other man’ in the Anglo-Saxon fields,
Or near where a vengeful King Canute crossed the Thames,
And did those memories flit through his mind
On that fateful Easter Monday in 1917,
Recalling some of the ‘Other names’
Of the snake’s head fritillary,
Such as bloody warrior or widow’s wall.

Snakes Head Fritillary by Deborah Roberts

Thanks to Deborah Roberts for the above photo.

Snakes Head Fritillary by Bob Fry

Thanks to Bob Fry for the above photo.

The local Swindon paper’s obituary for Edward Thomas
Commented on his love for the country around the town –
And William Cobbett’s hated rotten borough,
‘The place by the river’, was just six miles or so
From his grandmother’s house near the railway works;
Did he, I wonder, ever make an Easter visit
To the Lammas Meadows at Cricklade,
From Swindon’s Old Town station,
After talking with Alfred Williams,
‘The hammer man poet’,
Glimpsing the ‘Other man’ in the Anglo-Saxon fields,
Or near where a vengeful King Canute crossed the Thames,
And did those memories flit through his mind
On that fateful Easter Monday in 1917,
Recalling some of the ‘Other names’
Of the snake’s head fritillary,
Such as bloody warrior or widow’s wall.

He loved the inadvertent poetry of place names,
So how he would have loved the poetry of the snake’s head fritillary,
Also known as the Oaksey lily, the chequered lily,
Bloody warrior, dead man’s bell, falfaries fan cup,
Shy widows, snake flower, solemn bells of Sodom,
Toad’s head, weeping willow, and widow’s wall,
The flower that sprang up to warn of the advance of Roman legions,
The flower that survived enclosure,
The flower that may have bloomed in Thomas’ mind,
To warn of a concussive shell,
Hurtling across no man’s land,
But not the 77mm pip-squeak that shot right through his chest.

‘Hush, here comes a whizz bang,
Hush, here comes a whizz bang,
Now you soldier men, get down those stairs,
Down in your dugouts and say your prayers,
Hush, here comes a whizz bang,
And it’s making straight for you,
And you’ll see all the wonders of no man’s land
If a whizz bang hits you.’

But it’s the pip-squeak that gets you,
That stops the clocks,
When you’re studying the sky,
Lighting your pipe,
In pursuit of the spring in Arras,
In the front line,
Unenclosed.

Snake’s head fritillary,
Bloody warrior,
Widow’s wall,
Dead men’s bell,
Shy widows.

As in life, so in death: Edward Thomas was still to be haunted by ‘The Other’:

Matthew Hollis in Now All Roads Lead to France: ‘Edward Thomas left the dugout behind his post and leaned into the opening to take a moment to fill his pipe. A shell passed so close to him that the blast of air stopped his heart. He fell without a mark on his body.’

Jean Moorcroft Wilson in her biography Edward Thomas From Addlestrop to Arras: ‘Captain Lushington received a telephone call just after the battle began, reporting that Thomas had been “killed in the O.P. by a direct hit through the chest.”’ Lushington then wrote to Helen to say that Thomas had been killed from “a direct hit by a shell.”
Wilson thinks that Lushington decided to protect a vulnerable Helen from the truth, however, when he eventually visited her, by re-imagining a fictive death based on Thomas’ miraculous escape the day before his death, when a shell landed close to him – a dud. Helen wrote, in consequence that, “there was no wound and his beloved body was not injured.”
Wilson adds that Lushington wrote to an early biographer of Thomas in 1936 that, “Thomas had been killed, shot clean through the chest by a pip-squeak (a 77mm shell)”. Wilson thinks that the biographer ignored the letter “in deference to the widow.”
The letter, buried in archives, has only recently been unearthed.

As in life, so in death: Edward Thomas was still to be haunted by ‘The Other’.

Songs of Christmas Past

One damp, December afternoon,
I biked out through Stroud’s featureless streets,
Out along the Slad Valley to Bull’s Cross:
Past pollarded willow trees all along the road,
Past well wrapped farmers stacking logs in a dripping coppice,
Past chapels turned to guesthouses,
Their graveyards full of cars,
Past families cutting mistletoe from high, tall branches,
Long handled secateurs silhouetted
Against a setting sun’s cloudscape,
Past rooks, copse-calling in the gathering dusk,
Until, all was silent and still,
As twilight turned to darkness,
That moment,
When all life seems suspended,
A brief moment of seeming equipoise;
I listened to the silence
And then turned for home –
And when I got back to Stroud,
Nocturnal winter-spring had sprung,
Every window was now ablaze
With lights and trees and candles,
Doors were hung with stars and wreaths
Of holly and mistletoe:
Christmas has come!
Mum and dad are singing again!
Cold season’s magic!

This note below is from my brother, ten years ago, when mum still used to perform this song (she would have been a hundred this year):

‘My mother told me that she bought this play as a sixpenny publication in Woolworths. The family may well have put a strong West Country influence on the rendition which shows in my recollection.’

CHRISTMAS WAITS

In our village, Christmas Eve,
I sez to zeveral mates:
“Now look ‘ere, mates”, I sez,
Sez I,
“Now ‘ow about some Waits?”
We gets zum carols, lairns ‘em up, and on an evenin’ wintry,
We muffles up and zallies forth to try it on the Gintry.
“Good King Wenceslas looked out,”
We zings we with splendid power,
Zeveral neighbours looked out too,
To see what all the row were,
We zings forte (sounded like an ‘underd),
Even in the soft bits ‘ow we thundered,
Bill, our bass, ‘e ‘urt ‘is face, we thought that it was torn,
Yet all agree there were none like we, to ‘ail thee, ‘appy morn.
Perkins took the treble line (a lovely voice ‘e’s got),
I were tenor, Bill were bass, and Fred sang all the lot,
‘E wandered up and down the scale,
And though ‘e rather marred it
Cuz ‘e never knewed the words, and so ‘e “lah-lah-lahed” it,
“Lah-lah-lah-lah looked out”, ‘e sings with splendid power,
Zeveral neighbours looked out, too,
To see what all the row were,
We zings forte (sounded like an ‘undered),
Even in the soft bits ‘ow we thundered,
Every verse got worse and worse,
And though we all felt worn,
Yet all agree there were none like we, to ‘ail thee, ‘appy morn.
Still we never got no cash, which didn’t seem quite just,

Zeein’ we’d stood there for hours, a-singin’ fit to bust,

Then our policeman, old Bob Bates, comes down, a-scowlin’ proper,

“Good old Bob”, young Perkins cries, “At last we’ve got a copper!”

Good King Wenceslas last looked out, we zings with splendid power,
Zeveral neighbours looked out too, to zee what all the row were,

Then a change came on the situation,
Bob got nasty and took us to the station.
“Look ‘ere, Bates, we’re Christmas Waits,”
I says to him with scorn.
He said, with a sneer,
“Now wait in here
And ‘ail thee ‘appy morn.”

The piece below was mum and dad’s Christmas special – they used to perform this in fancy dress as a duo and remembered the lines perfectly, almost to the end of their lives.

Little Nell

It was a dark and stormy night
When my Nelly went away
And I’ll never forget her
Till my dying day
She was just 16
And the village queen
and the prettiest trick
That the valley ever seen
The farm ain’t the same since me Nelly went away
The rooster died and the hen won’t lay
But in this window I’ll put a light
40 below zero, gosh what a night
Who’s that a knocking at the door?

It’s your own Little Nell
Don’t you know me anymore?

What happened to the actor guy,
Who used to call you Honey
Did he leave you all alone when you hadn’t any money?

Oh, he’s a slick town guy and he lies with ease
And he’s got more money that a dog has fleas
But he left me alone when I was most forlorn
The very night that my little Dumbell was born.

Is that there Dummy?


Well it ain’t no other
The gosh-darned image 
Of his gosh-darned mother.

Hoity Toity my fair beauty
Or you’ll come to harm
Cos I hold the mortgage
On your gash-darned farm.

Give me back my Dummy.

Your Dummy?

My Dummy.


Your Dummy?


My Dummy.

Who’s this a comin’?
It sounds like a mule.

I ain’t no mule you gash-darned fool
,
Can’t you tell by me badge
I’m the constibule
Now what’s the harm?
Do please tell.

Well he ain’t done right by my Little Nell.

Yes I have.


You have not.

Yes I have.


You have not.
Well he’s spoilt me farm and ruined me daughter.

Well I guess I’ll have to fine him a dollar and a quarter.

Which all goes to prove the price of sin –
And tomorrow night we play East Lynn.

Christmas 1914

Trenchcoats for Goalposts Poster

Christmas
1914

There was, of course, more than one football match
In the long line of unofficial truces
That stretched all along the front in Flanders;
Indeed, the matches themselves were a sort of climax,
Punctuating the peace that started before Christmas
With shared burying of the dead in No Man’s Land,
And that lasted in some areas until the early spring.

But on Christmas Eve, Christmas trees appeared,
Glowing in the gathering Tannenbaum twilight:
‘Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree,
How lovely are your branches’;
Miracle of miracles, the rain stopped,
A full moon stepped across the cloudless sky,
A hoar frost shimmered in the starlight,
Boots crunched on mud now stiff as duckboards.

Soldiers moved as if in a trance or dream,
Climbing out of their trenches, milling around,
Swopping bodies, kodaks, insignia, Schnapps, beer,
Tobacco, jam, stew and addresses;
Saxons laughed at Scots, blue beneath their kilts,
Over at frozen, peaceful, Ploegsteert Wood,
Then caps were dropped on the ground for goalposts.

Kurt Zehmisch, 134th Saxons, wrote in his diary:
‘Eventually the English brought a soccer ball from their trenches, and pretty soon a lively
game ensued. How marvelously wonderful, yet how strange it was. The English officers felt
the same way about it. Thus Christmas, the celebration of Love managed to bring mortal
enemies together for a time… I told them we didn’t want to shoot on the Second Day of
Christmas either. They agreed.’
So there they were, dodging shell holes, fox holes,
Barbed wire, ditches, turnips and cabbages,
Some roasting a pig together, chasing hares,
Feasting further on plum pudding and wurst,
In what Sergeant-Major Frank Nadin called
‘A rare old jollification, which included football.’

His comrade in the Cheshires, Ernie Williams said:
‘The ball appeared from somewhere, I don’t know where, but it came from their side…
They made up some goals and one fellow went in goal and then it was just a general
kickabout. I should think there were about a couple of hundred taking part…Everyone
seemed to be enjoying themselves. There was no sort of ill-will between us…There was no
eferee, and no score, no tally at all. ‘
So fraternization continued, with singing and smoking,
Tea and cocoa, until darkness descended,
When as Private Mullard of the Rifle Brigade said:
‘Just after midnight you could hear, away on the right, the plonk-plonk of the bullets as
they hit the ground, and we knew the game had started again.’

And so the dream ended, the nightmare restarted,
No more ‘Wotcha cock, ow’s London?’
Nor, ‘Are you the Warwickshires?
Any Brummagem lads there?
I have a wife and 5 children there.’
No more: ‘ we started up ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ the Germans immediately joined in,
singing the same hymn to the Latin words ‘Adeste Fideles’.’
No more ‘Dearest Dorothy, Just a line from the trenches on Xmas Eve – a topping night,
with not much firing going on & both sides singng.’
No more ‘Friede auf der Erde’, ‘Peace on Earth’,
No more headlines like ‘TOMMY’S TRUCE BETWEEN THE TRENCHES’.

Instead, a boast of sharing cigars
‘with the best shot in the German army…but I know where his loophole is now and mean to
down him tomorrow.’
Instead, the German Londoner who shouted:
‘Today we have peace. Tomorrow you fight for your country;
I fight for mine. Good Luck.’

Instead, ‘ I do not wish to hurt you
But [Bang!] I feel I must.
It is a Christian virtue
To lay you in the dust.
Zip, that bullet got you
You’re really better dead.
I’m sorry that I shot you-
Pray, let me hold your head.’

Battalions fraternised from the following regiments, Christmas 1914

Devonshire, Surrey, Manchester, Cheshire, Norfolk,
Seaforth Highlanders,
Royal Warwickshire, Royal Dublin Fusiliers, Royal Irish Fusiliers,
Hampshire,
Rifle Brigade, Somerset Light Infantry, London Rifle Brigade,
East Lancashire,
Lancashire Fusiliers, Field Ambulance, Royal Field Artillery,
Monmouthshire,
Essex, Royal Garrison Artillery, Royal Welch Fusiliers,
Leicestershire,
Argylle and Sutherland Highlanders, Cameronians (Scottish Rifles),
Leinster,
London (Queen’s Westminster Rifles), Royal Fusiliers,
Staffordshire,
The Buffs (East Kent), Queen’s (Royal West Surrey), Royal Scots,
Wiltshire,
Yorkshire, Border, Gordon Highlanders, Northumberland Hussars,
Bedfordshire,
Royal Engineers, Royal Horse Artillery, London (Kensington),
Northamptonshire,
Irish Rifles,
Garhwal Rifles.

17th Bavarian Reserve Regiment, Saxon Corps:
134th Infantry Regiment,
133rd Infantry Regiment, 106th Infantry Regiment,
104th Infantry Regiment,
139th Infantry Regiment, 107th Infantry Regiment,
179th Infantry Regiment; Westphalian Corps:
55th Infantry Regiment,
15th Infantry Regiment,
158th Infantry Regiment,
11th Infantry Regiment,
16th Infantry Regiment.

 

The 1914 Truce in Context

It wasn’t, in fact, a bolt from the blue,
Instead the 1914 Truce was part of a pattern,
That both preceded that Christmas and continued beyond:
There were ‘cushy’ sectors, involving ‘laissez-faire’,
‘Rest and let rest’, ‘Let sleeping dogs lie’,
‘Mutual obligation element’,
‘Tacit truces’, ‘mutual understanding’,
‘Compromise, and be mighty glad to be alive’,
Running along the British front line on the Western Front.

There were respected rituals during the day:
Breakfast bacon and ration party truces,
When as Ian Hay wrote in 1915:
‘It would be child’s play to shell …ration wagons
and water carts…but on the whole there is silence…
if you prevent your enemy from drawing his rations…
he will prevent you from drawing yours.’

In addition, both sides faced General Winter:
A German officer commented in 1914:
‘Friend and foe alike go to fetch straw from the same rick
to protect them from the cold and rain and to have some sort of bedding to lie on – and never a shot is fired.’

Sometimes, defused rifle grenades were tossed into trenches,
Containing messages, sometimes weather truces
Led to salutations, conversations and jokes,
(‘”Waiter!”… fifty Fritzes stuck their heads up…”Coming Sir.” ’);
Sometimes, a deliberate policy of positive inertia
Was recognized and reciprocated,
Sometimes night patrols would studiously avoid each other.

Weaponry, even when used, could also send messages:
Rifle and machine gun fire might be aimed too high,
Hand bombing led to a signaled, invitational
And deliberate misplacing of explosives:
‘their trenches…no more than ten or fifteen yards from ours…
was a good insurance against strafing on either side.
The mildest exchange of hand grenades or bombs…
Would have made life intolerable.’

Heavy artillery took a different line:
Here messages were sent by the fact that often,
The same spot would be shelled
at exactly the same time each day:
‘Twelve little Willies at noon to the tick,
Got our heads down, and go them down quick,
Peaceful and calm was the rest of the day,
Nobody hurt and nothing to say.’

‘Nobody hurt and nothing to say’:

I have compiled this prose-poem from ‘Trench Warfare 1914-1918: The Live and Let Live System’, by Tony Ashworth (Macmillan, 1980); his conclusion is that:
‘Altogether it does not seem unreasonable to assert that live and let live occurred in about one-third of all trench tours made by all divisions within the BEF. Such was the scale of this undertone of trench warfare.’

This ignored and forgotten history is something to talk about in centenary year.

 

The Rodborough Doggy Tree

The Rodborough Doggy Tree

The Rodborough Doggy Tree

When the sun descends beyond yon hill,
And gilds the golden cumulus,
Thou shalt find me in the winter chill,
Cantering past some tumulus,
Or ancient circle, sarsen-girt,
Then on to fairest RODBOROUGH Fort,
For feral football in the dirt,
Until the darkness calls a halt;
And then we trot across the scree,
Past moonlit dewpond, all serene,
To celebrate the DOGGY TREE,
Each Christmastide a gladsome scene,
With bauble, bell and glittered card,
All pendant-hung and tree-top starred,
And there we read from my dear leader,
“Merry Christmas to all our Readers.”

In memory of my dear dog, Basil; always missed but never more so than at the end of the old, and beginning of the new year; Basil wrote this some 10 years ago for www.footballpoets.org, in his role as official mascot of the Stroud Football Poets.

Battalions fraternised from the following regiments, Christmas 1914

Devonshire, Surrey, Manchester, Cheshire, Norfolk,
Seaforth Highlanders,
Royal Warwickshire, Royal Dublin Fusiliers, Royal Irish Fusiliers,
Hampshire,
Rifle Brigade, Somerset Light Infantry, London Rifle Brigade,
East Lancashire,
Lancashire Fusiliers, Field Ambulance, Royal Field Artillery,
Monmouthshire,
Essex, Royal Garrison Artillery, Royal Welch Fusiliers,
Leicestershire,
Argylle and Sutherland Highlanders, Cameronians (Scottish Rifles),
Leinster,
London (Queen’s Westminster Rifles), Royal Fusiliers,
Staffordshire,
The Buffs (East Kent), Queen’s (Royal West Surrey), Royal Scots,
Wiltshire,
Yorkshire, Border, Gordon Highlanders, Northumberland Hussars,
Bedfordshire,
Royal Engineers, Royal Horse Artillery, London (Kensington),
Northamptonshire,
Irish Rifles,
Garhwal Rifles.

17th Bavarian Reserve Regiment, Saxon Corps:
134th Infantry Regiment,
133rd Infantry Regiment, 106th Infantry Regiment,
104th Infantry Regiment,
139th Infantry Regiment, 107th Infantry Regiment,
179th Infantry Regiment; Westphalian Corps:
55th Infantry Regiment,
15th Infantry Regiment,
158th Infantry Regiment,
11th Infantry Regiment,
16th Infantry Regiment.

Christmas 1914

Christmas
1914

There was, of course, more than one football match
In the long line of unofficial truces
That stretched all along the front in Flanders;
Indeed, the matches themselves were a sort of climax,
Punctuating the peace that started before Christmas
With shared burying of the dead in No Man’s Land,
And that lasted in some areas until the early spring.

But on Christmas Eve, Christmas trees appeared,
Glowing in the gathering Tannenbaum twilight:
‘Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree,
How lovely are your branches’;
Miracle of miracles, the rain stopped,
A full moon stepped across the cloudless sky,
A hoar frost shimmered in the starlight,
Boots crunched on mud now stiff as duckboards.

Soldiers moved as if in a trance or dream,
Climbing out of their trenches, milling around,
Swopping bodies, kodaks, insignia, Schnapps, beer,
Tobacco, jam, stew and addresses;
Saxons laughed at Scots, blue beneath their kilts,
Over at frozen, peaceful, Ploegsteert Wood,
Then caps were dropped on the ground for goalposts.

Kurt Zehmisch, 134th Saxons, wrote in his diary:
‘Eventually the English brought a soccer ball from their trenches, and pretty soon a lively game ensued. How marvelously wonderful, yet how strange it was. The English officers felt the same way about it. Thus Christmas, the celebration of Love managed to bring mortal enemies together for a time… I told them we didn’t want to shoot on the Second Day of Christmas either. They agreed.’
So there they were, dodging shell holes, fox holes,
Barbed wire, ditches, turnips and cabbages,
Some roasting a pig together, chasing hares,
Feasting further on plum pudding and wurst,
In what Sergeant-Major Frank Nadin called
‘A rare old jollification, which included football.’

His comrade in the Cheshires, Ernie Williams said:
‘The ball appeared from somewhere, I don’t know where, but it came from their side… They made up some goals and one fellow went in goal and then it was just a general kickabout. I should think there were about a couple of hundred taking part…Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. There was no sort of ill-will between us…There was no referee, and no score, no tally at all.’
So fraternization continued, with singing and smoking,
Tea and cocoa, until darkness descended,
When as Private Mullard of the Rifle Brigade said:
‘Just after midnight you could hear, away on the right, the plonk-plonk of the bullets as they hit the ground, and we knew the game had started again.’

And so the dream ended, the nightmare restarted,
No more ‘Wotcha cock, ow’s London?’
Nor, ‘Are you the Warwickshires?
Any Brummagem lads there?
I have a wife and 5 children there.’
No more: ‘ we started up ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ the Germans immediately joined in singing the same hymn to the Latin words ‘Adeste Fideles’.’
No more ‘Dearest Dorothy, Just a line from the trenches on Xmas Eve – a topping night with not much firing going on & both sides singng.’
No more ‘Friede auf der Erde’, ‘Peace on Earth’,
No more headlines like ‘TOMMY’S TRUCE BETWEEN THE TRENCHES’.

Instead, a boast of sharing cigars
‘with the best shot in the German army…but I know where his loophole is now and mean to down him tomorrow.’
Instead, the German Londoner who shouted:
‘Today we have peace. Tomorrow you fight for your country;
I fight for mine. Good Luck.’

Instead, ‘ I do not wish to hurt you
But [Bang!] I feel I must.
It is a Christian virtue
To lay you in the dust.
Zip, that bullet got you
You’re really better dead.
I’m sorry that I shot you-
Pray, let me hold your head.’

The Christmas Truce

 

 When war broke out, the British public cried,
‘We’ll be in Berlin by Christmas’,
But by Christmas thousands had died,
As Mons, the Marne, Ypres and Messines cut
Down the youth of Europe, while Flanders floods
Drowned dying, dead and alive.
Summer’s dream was swamped by winter’s mud,
Rats, lice, death and blood
In No Man’s Land; a hell hole nightmare scene
Of jagged wire, flares, shells, screams and shrapnel,
(A choreographed commonality,
That saw each side’s men attack, flail and fall
In ceaseless dance of Death’s banality),
Until Christmas Eve 1914,
When Hamburg, Berlin, London, Manchester
Said ‘No!’ to the killing fields’ mad mayhem,
Ordered by King, Flag, Map and Kaiser,
And met instead in friendship. Walking tall
And slow, comrades in war’s adversities,
They embraced in No Man’s Land and football
Harmonised nations’ animosities:
Stille Nacht. Heilige Nacht.