The story of the soldiers who made a truce to celebrate Christmas

Christmas 1914 was different in Europe, since on June 28, Archduke Francisco Fernando had been assassinated along with his wife in Sarajevo at the hands of an anarchist named Gavrilo Princip. The incident was the reason that unleashed the First World War.

‘The World of Yesterday’, is a book written by Stefan Zweig, it focuses on the people of Cameroon who lived in Europe in the 20th century. “For Christmas we will all return home, the recruits shouted at their mothers, smiling in August 1914. Who, in the towns and cities, remembered the war ‘really’? At most four old men who in 1866 had fought against Prussia … a swift excursion to romanticism, a wild and manly adventure: this is how the simple man of 1914 imagined war, and the young even feared that this was missing. wonderful and exciting episode in their lives ”, is narrated in the book. However, Christmas came, and the soldiers did not return home. They would have to wait another four long years. Some would never return.

For the first time in history, the trench warfare began. Life in the trenches, for four years, became the closest thing to hell without having to die first to visit it. Holes of water and mud, where the soldiers suffered the so-called trench foot, lived with rats and slept with difficulty, waiting at any moment for the attack of the enemy or the fearsome gas. Locked up there, they wrote letters, painted, played cards or shared cigarettes, praying that this nonsense they called war would end sooner or later.

But the week leading up to December 25 was an exception. French, German and British soldiers dared to cross the trenches to exchange greetings. In some areas, they even ventured out onto no-man’s-land on Christmas Eve and Christmas, taking the opportunity to exchange food, hold joint funeral ceremonies, and exchange prisoners. They also sang Christmas carols and even played soccer games. Of course, the truce was not the same in all areas.

This type of agreement only occurred on this date throughout the war. It is true that truces were not exclusive to the Christmas period, and occasional ceasefires were accepted to allow some soldiers to recover the bodies of their colleagues. The fascinating story of the 1914 Christmas truce was made into a movie in 2005. (I)