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.

Christmas 1914

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...

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The Christmas Truce

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....

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