Over the last couple of weeks I have gone on an amazing and enthralling journey around the world looking at individual experiences of Christmas in 1914.
I included two accounts of the Christmas Truce from, Bruce Bairnsfather and M.L.Walkinton of the Queens Westminster Rifles in Belgium. Added to that, the Truce that wasn’t, with the French Army deciding to shell any attempts the Germans might make for peace.
The Nurse Violetta Thurston had to endure Roast Horse on Christmas Day on the Russian Front and Sarah Macnaughtan had to endure German shells as they rained down in makeshift Belgian capital at Furnes.
Captain Noel Chavasse in reserve in Belgium told us of his experiences and the First Canadian Division had the communion service near Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire.
The Australian accounts see them spending Christmas day in the sands of Egypt and also on a troopship heading towards Egypt.
Finally, the last word goes to the greatest poet of them all, Wilfred Owen and his Christmas 1914 spent in a small village near Bordeaux, France. In 1914 he was 21 and was employed as a tutor by a lady (Miss de le Touche) for her nephews in Merignac. John Stallworthy in his book “Wilfred Owen” describes his Christmas experience:-
“On Christmas Eve he (Wilfred Owen) went to Midnight Mass with the family and found it a piquant experience,
“All mixed up with candles, incense, acolytes, chasuble and such like. If I didn’t bow, I certainly scraped, for there was an unholy draught. How scandalized would certain of my acquaintance and kin been to see me. But it would take a power of candle grease and embroidery to Romanize me. The question is to un-Greekize me.”
It was three o’clock before they went to bed and lunchtime before they got up on Christmas morning. As he slept, only 500 miles away on the Western Front the guns were silent and carols, their words in English and in German, rose mingling out of the frozen mist. And here and there a Christmas tree spired, like the ghost of some shell-splintered stump, on the battered parapet of a trench. Round these frail symbols of a hope so soon to be extinguished men in domed helmets and spiked helmets drank together and clapped their chilblained hands against the cold.
Unaware of this strange truce, Owen on Christmas afternoon took his charges into Bordeaux to see ‘the Soldiers’ Christmas Tree’ and visit their school. Meanwhile the debate about their return to England continued.”
Friday, December 21, 2007
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Christmas - On Salisbury Plain 1914 with the First Canadian Division.
This piece of First World War history comes from the book, “The Great War as I Saw It” by Canon Frederick George Scott, C.M.G., D.S.O. who was the Senior Chaplain to the First Canadian Division.
Christmas 1914 found the First Canadian Division camped on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England. The Canon organized a midnight Christmas Eve Eucharist for the soldiers, seven thousand miles away from their home in Canada.
“Just before Christmas the 3rd Brigade were moved into huts at Lark Hill. They were certainly an improvement upon the tents, but they were draughty and leaky. From my window I could see, on the few occasions when the weather permitted it, the weird and ancient circles of Stonehenge.
The calm repose of those huge stones, which had watched unmoved the passing of human epochs, brought peace to the mind. They called to memory the lines;—
"Our little systems have their day,
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they."
In order to give Christmas its religious significance, I asked permission of the Rector of Amesbury to use his church for a midnight Eucharist on Christmas Eve. He gladly gave his consent and notice of the service was sent round to the units of the Brigade. In the thick fog the men gathered and marched down the road to the village, where the church windows threw a soft light into the mist that hung over the ancient burial ground. The church inside was bright and beautiful. The old arches and pillars and the little side chapels told of days gone by, when the worship of the holy nuns, who had their convent there, rose up to God day by day. The altar was vested in white and the candles shone out bright and fair. The organist had kindly consented to play the Christmas hymns, in which the men joined heartily. It was a service never to be forgotten, and as I told the men, in the short address I gave them, never before perhaps, in the history of that venerable fane, had it witnessed a more striking assembly. From a distance of nearly seven thousand miles some of them had come, and this was to be our last Christmas before we entered the life and death struggle of the nations. Row after row of men knelt to receive the Bread of Life, and it was a rare privilege to administer it to them. The fog was heavier on our return and some of us had great difficulty in finding our lines.
It seemed sometimes as if we had been forgotten by the War Office, but this was not the case. We had visits from the King, Lord Roberts and other high officials. All these were impressed with the physique and high spirits of our men.
The conditions under which we lived were certainly atrocious, and an outbreak of meningitis cast a gloom over the camp. It was met bravely and skillfully by our medical men, of whose self-sacrifice and devotion no praise is too high. The same is true of their conduct all through the war.
Our life on the Plain was certainly a puzzle to us. Why were we kept there? When were we going to leave? Were we not wanted in France? These were the questions we asked one another. I met an Imperial officer one day, who had just returned from the front. I asked him when we were going to train for the trenches. "Why" he said, "what better training could you have than you are getting here? If you can stand the life here, you can stand the life in France." I think he was right. That strange experience was just what we needed to inure us to hardship, and it left a stamp of resolution and efficiency on the First Division which it never lost.”"
(Canon Frederick George Scott was the padre of the 1st Division of the Canadian Corps and the confidant, friend and spiritual guide to many generals, officers and enlisted men during the war. When he returned from the war he continued to be revered by thousands. In 1934 he published The Great War as I Saw It, a memoir of his experiences. He is also known as a poet of religious, inspirational and patriotic poetry. During the Quebec Conference, held in the summer of 1943, Canon Scott was invited by Churchill and Roosevelt to a private meeting where he read some of this poetry.)
Christmas 1914 found the First Canadian Division camped on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England. The Canon organized a midnight Christmas Eve Eucharist for the soldiers, seven thousand miles away from their home in Canada.
“Just before Christmas the 3rd Brigade were moved into huts at Lark Hill. They were certainly an improvement upon the tents, but they were draughty and leaky. From my window I could see, on the few occasions when the weather permitted it, the weird and ancient circles of Stonehenge.
The calm repose of those huge stones, which had watched unmoved the passing of human epochs, brought peace to the mind. They called to memory the lines;—
"Our little systems have their day,
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they."
In order to give Christmas its religious significance, I asked permission of the Rector of Amesbury to use his church for a midnight Eucharist on Christmas Eve. He gladly gave his consent and notice of the service was sent round to the units of the Brigade. In the thick fog the men gathered and marched down the road to the village, where the church windows threw a soft light into the mist that hung over the ancient burial ground. The church inside was bright and beautiful. The old arches and pillars and the little side chapels told of days gone by, when the worship of the holy nuns, who had their convent there, rose up to God day by day. The altar was vested in white and the candles shone out bright and fair. The organist had kindly consented to play the Christmas hymns, in which the men joined heartily. It was a service never to be forgotten, and as I told the men, in the short address I gave them, never before perhaps, in the history of that venerable fane, had it witnessed a more striking assembly. From a distance of nearly seven thousand miles some of them had come, and this was to be our last Christmas before we entered the life and death struggle of the nations. Row after row of men knelt to receive the Bread of Life, and it was a rare privilege to administer it to them. The fog was heavier on our return and some of us had great difficulty in finding our lines.
It seemed sometimes as if we had been forgotten by the War Office, but this was not the case. We had visits from the King, Lord Roberts and other high officials. All these were impressed with the physique and high spirits of our men.
The conditions under which we lived were certainly atrocious, and an outbreak of meningitis cast a gloom over the camp. It was met bravely and skillfully by our medical men, of whose self-sacrifice and devotion no praise is too high. The same is true of their conduct all through the war.
Our life on the Plain was certainly a puzzle to us. Why were we kept there? When were we going to leave? Were we not wanted in France? These were the questions we asked one another. I met an Imperial officer one day, who had just returned from the front. I asked him when we were going to train for the trenches. "Why" he said, "what better training could you have than you are getting here? If you can stand the life here, you can stand the life in France." I think he was right. That strange experience was just what we needed to inure us to hardship, and it left a stamp of resolution and efficiency on the First Division which it never lost.”"
(Canon Frederick George Scott was the padre of the 1st Division of the Canadian Corps and the confidant, friend and spiritual guide to many generals, officers and enlisted men during the war. When he returned from the war he continued to be revered by thousands. In 1934 he published The Great War as I Saw It, a memoir of his experiences. He is also known as a poet of religious, inspirational and patriotic poetry. During the Quebec Conference, held in the summer of 1943, Canon Scott was invited by Churchill and Roosevelt to a private meeting where he read some of this poetry.)
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Christmas - 1914 the experience of a French Cavalry Officer.
In his book "In the Field (1914-1915), The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry", Marcel Dupont gives a very vivid and dfifferent picture of Christmas 1914. The Christmas Truce at the this time was happening between the British and the Germans in Belgium. Here when both sides tried a truce they were answered by shell fire and a rapid return to their own trenches.
Marcel as an Officer in the French Cavalry thought in his own words: -
"This was going too far. I saw two unarmed Prussians leave their trench and come forward, with their hands raised towards the two Frenchmen, so I consulted G.: "Ought we to fire? I confess it would be rather unpleasant for me to order our fellows to fire upon these unarmed men. On the other hand, can we allow the least intercourse between the barbarous nation that is still treading our soil and our good brothers-in-arms who are pouring out their blood every day to reconquer it?"
Fortunately, the officer who commanded the Saint Thierry artillery, and who had observed this scene with his glasses, spared me a decision which would have been painful to me."
The shell fire that followed certainly put a stop to anything !
The passage is long, but it is well worth a read as it gives a unique understanding of how the French felt at the time. The full book is online at Project Gutenberg:-
"Mon Lieutenant mon Lieutenant, it's two o'clock."
My faithful Wattrelot held the flickering candle just in front of my eyes to rouse me. What torture it is to be snatched from sleep at such an early hour! It would not be anything in summer; but it was the 24th of December, and it was my turn to go on duty in the trenches. A nice way of keeping Christmas!... I turned over in my bed, trying to avoid that light that tormented me; I collected my thoughts, which had wandered far away whilst I was asleep, and had been replaced by exquisite dreams, dreams of times of peace, of welfare, of good cheer, and of gentle warmth.
Then I remembered: I had to take command of a detachment of a hundred troopers of the regiment, who were to replace the hundred now in the trenches. It was nearly a month since we had joined our Army Corps near R., and every other day the regiment had to furnish the same number of men to occupy a sector of the trenches. It was my turn, on the 24th of December, to replace my brother-officer and good friend Lieutenant de la G., who had occupied the post since the 22nd.
I had forgotten all this.... How cold it was! Brrr!...
Whilst Wattrelot was taking himself off I braced myself for the necessary effort of getting out of the warm sheets. Like a coward, I kept on allowing myself successive respites, vowing to rise heroically after each.
"I will get up as soon as Wattrelot has reached the landing of the first floor.... I will get up when I hear him walking on the pavement of the hall, ... or rather when I hear the entrance-door shut, and his boots creaking on the gravel path...."
But every noise was hushed. Wattrelot was already some way off, and I still shied at this act, which, after all, was inevitable: to get out of bed in a little ice-cold room at two o'clock in the morning. Through the window, which had neither shutter nor curtain, I saw a small piece of the sky, beautifully clear, in which myriads of stars were twinkling. The day before, when I came in to go to bed, it was freezing hard. That morning the frost, I thought, must be terrible.
"Come, up!" With a bound I was on the ground, and rushed at once to the little pitch-pine washstand. Rapid ablutions would wake me up thoroughly. Horror! The water in the jug was frozen. Oh! not very deeply, no doubt; but all the same I had to break a coating of ice that had formed on the surface. However, I was happy to feel more nimble after having washed my face. Quick! Two warm waistcoats under my jacket, my large cloak with its cape, my fur gloves, my campaigning cap pulled over my ears, and there I was, with a candle in my hand, going down the grand staircase of the château.
For I was quartered in a château. The very word makes one think of a warm room, well upholstered, well furnished, with soft carpets and comfortable armchairs. But, alas! it was nothing of the sort.... The good lady whose house it was had provided for all contingencies; the family rooms had been prudently dismantled and double-locked. A formidable concierge had the keys, and I was happy indeed when I found the butler's room in the attics. His bed, with its white sheets, seemed to me very desirable. And then, as we say in time of peace, one must take things as they come.
The open hall-door let in a wave of cold air, which struck cold on my face. But I had not a minute to lose. The detachment was to start at half-past two punctually, and it had, no doubt, already formed up in the market-place. I hurried into the street. The tall pines of the park stood out black against the silver sky, whilst the bare branches of the other trees formed thousands of arabesques and strange patterns all round. Not the slightest noise was to be heard in the limpid, diaphanous night, in which the air seemed as pure and rare as on the summits of lofty mountains. Under my footsteps the gravel felt soft, but, once I had got outside the iron gate, I found myself on ground as hard as stone. The mud formed by recent rains and the ruts hollowed by streams of convoys had frozen, and the road was a maze of furrows and inequalities which made me stumble again and again.
In front of the Hôtel des Lacs a certain number of the men had already lined up, in front of their horses. Huddled in their cloaks, with collars turned up, they were stamping their feet and blowing into their hands. It must have been real torture for them too to come out of their straw litter, where they were sleeping so snugly a few moments before, rolled up in their blankets. They had got a liking for the kind of comfort peculiar to the campaigner, and had invented a thousand and one ingenious methods of improving the arrangements of their novel garrison. Sleeping parties had been gradually organised, and sets of seven or eight at a time enjoyed delightful nights, stretched on their clean straw. Many of them would certainly not be able to get to sleep if they suddenly found themselves in a real bed. And then it is less difficult to get up when one has gone to bed with one's clothes on, and when the room is not very warm. Not one of them complained; not one of them grumbled. We can always count on our brave fellows.
"All present, mon Lieutenant!"
It was the senior non-commissioned officers of the two squadrons assembled there who reported. Every one had got up and equipped himself at the appointed hour; not one was missing at roll-call; they had all assembled of their own accord; the corporals had not needed to knock at door after door to wake the sleepers. Our Chasseurs had very quickly established simple customs and rules of their own which ensured the regularity of the service without written orders. This intelligent and spontaneous discipline is one of the most admirable features of this campaign. It has grown up by degrees, without any special orders or prescriptions from above, with the result that the hardest labours are carried out almost without supervision, because each man understands the end in view and the grim necessities which it involves.
They understood at once that this early hour was the only one at which the relief could be effected. And every other day, just as on that December morning, twenty-five men out of each squadron get up at half-past one, equip themselves, and saddle their horses, whilst the cooks warm up a good cup of coffee for each man. Then, without any hurry, but at the exact moment, they form up in fighting order at the appointed spot, and when the officer arrives, in the dark, rain, wind, snow, or frost, he is sure of receiving the same report:
"All present, mon Lieutenant!"
Quick! Mount. We shall feel the cold less trotting over the hardened roads this bright night and under this brilliant moon. Two and two, in silence, we issued from the village in the direction of R. I knew that I should find a little further on, at the cross-roads where the crucifix stands, the fifty men of the first half-regiment and Second-Lieutenant de G., who serves under me.
Yes, there he was, coming to meet me on the hard road. It was a joy to me that chance had given me this jolly fellow for my trench companion. I hardly knew him, for he had not been with us more than a few days. Taken from the Military College directly war was declared, he had first been sent to a reserve squadron, and had only just been appointed to an active regiment. But I already knew, through my comrades of the first squadron, that he was a daring soldier and a merry companion. So much the better, I thought. War is a sad thing, and one must learn to take it gaily. A plague on gloomy spirits and long faces! True, we can no longer wage the picturesque war of the "good old days." We shall never know another Fontenoy, or Rivoli, or Eylau. But that is no reason why we should lose the jovial humour of our forefathers. Thank Heaven! we have preserved their qualities of dash and bravery. But it is more difficult to keep a smiling face in this hideous mole warfare, which is imposed even upon us troopers. All the more reason for liking and admiring the cheery officers who keep our spirits up, and G. is one of them.
We shook hands without speaking, for it seemed to us that if we opened our mouths the frost would get into our bodies and freeze them, and we set off at a sharp trot along the narrow by-road which, crossing the high-road to Paris, leads to C. There we should have to leave our horses, cross the zone of the enemy's artillery fire, and get to the trenches on foot. The horses snorted with pleasure, happy to warm themselves by rapid movement. Some of them indulged in merry capers, which were repressed, not too gently, by their more sedate riders. Their hoofs struck the uneven ground with a metallic ring which must have echoed far; and the clink of bits and stirrups also disturbed the sleeping country. Before us the road ran straight amidst the dark fields, a long pale grey ribbon. No one thought of laughing or talking; sleep seemed still to hover over the column, and every one knew that the two days of trench duty would be long and hard to get through even if the Prussians left us in peace.
We passed a cross, which shone white on the side of the road under the pale light of the moon, and saluted it. We had known it from the first days, and had its inscription by heart:
80 NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICERS, CORPORALS, AND SOLDIERS OF THE 39TH AND 74TH REGIMENTS INFANTRY, KILLED IN ACTION.
PRAY FOR THEM.
We dimly discerned the modest wreaths of green leaves, now faded and yellow, and the little nosegays of withered flowers attached to the arms of this cross, left there after the departure of the regiment and undisturbed by any sacrilegious hand.
We crossed the Paris road, with its double row of trees, which, in the night, appeared gigantic, and, after answering the challenge of the Territorial guarding the approach to C., we entered the village.
It appeared to be completely empty, and yet there were two battalions of the —— Territorials quartered there. The moon seemed to be amusing itself by casting the shadows of the houses on one side of the street upon the walls of the other side in fantastic shapes.
"Dismount."
We had reached the spot where we were to leave our horses. The men quickly unbuckled the blankets which were to help them to endure the weary hours of the following night. They slung them over their shoulders, and we set off towards the towing-path of the canal. We went very slowly, as we had at least seven or eight kilometres before us, and a walk of eight kilometres for troopers laden and dressed as we were is no light matter.
We found the towing-path. Walking at that hour of the night is certainly not very alluring. However, the view was not lacking in grandeur. On either side of the canal the dark silhouettes of tall trees stood out against the sky. Their shadows were reflected in the water, which gleamed with a metallic lustre in the moonshine. How calm and silent it was! Who would have thought we were at war? Not a cannon-shot, not a rifle-shot, disturbed the peace of the night. Yet, as a rule, there were no long intervals between the reports which reminded us of the serious work on hand.
That day it seemed as though some agreement had been come to by both sides to stop killing or trying to kill. However touching such an agreement might be, it would also be somewhat disturbing, for one must always beware of an enemy who resorts so freely to tricks and traps of every kind. It was as well not to celebrate Christmas too obtrusively. Besides, I did not think we were the only ones keeping vigil at that hour.
From time to time we passed small groupsof infantry, haggard, dusty, and heavily laden, marching in ranks with their arms slung, by threes or fours, without speaking, striding slowly, as though they were trying to measure the length of the road. Some of them were carrying curious objects fastened to sticks: pots or big cans, perhaps baskets. Where they were going or what they were doing we did not ask. Every man has his own job; if those fellows were going that way they had their orders, and nobody troubled himself about their object. All was well. The clattering of the Chasseurs on the uneven road lent a little life to the picture. Perhaps they were talking together; but, if so, it was in an undertone, a whisper almost.
And suddenly the enemy let us know that he was also keeping watch. Far ahead of us, near C., a rocket went up into the clear sky and then fell slowly, very slowly, in the form of an intensely brilliant ball, lighting up all the surrounding country wonderfully. We knew them well, those formidable German rockets, which seemed as though they would never go out and shed a pallid and yet blinding light. We knew that as soon as they were lighted everybody who happened to be within range of the enemy's rifle fire had at once to lie flat on the ground, and not move or raise his head so long as the light was burning. Otherwise shots would be fired from all directions, mowing down the vegetation and cutting up the earth all around him. This time we were well outside the range, and we watched the dazzling star in front of us without halting.
"The shepherds' star," said G. solemnly.
Strange shepherds indeed must they have been who carried carbines as their crooks, and were provided with cartridges enough to send a hundred and twenty of their fellow-creatures into the next world. The star seemed to hang for a moment some yards from the ground; then slowly, slowly, as though exhausted by its effort, it fell to the ground and went out. The night seemed less clear and less diaphanous.
We had now reached the glass-works and it was there that we were to leave our cooks. No one would have supposed that this large factory lay idle, and that the hundreds of workmen employed there were dispersed. On the contrary, it seemed to have retained all the animation of the prosperous enterprise it had been before the war.
It was a large square of massive buildings, almost a miniature town, planted on the side of the canal, like an outlying bastion of the suburbs of R. The low white walls, crowned with tiles, had the stunted appearance of military works. But a nearer view gave rather the illusion of the life in a busy factory at night-time. The gateway opened on a courtyard, with furnace fires shining here and there. Shadowy forms passed backwards and forwards, enlivening the dim scene with the bustle of a hive. Men came out by fives or sixes, laden with different kinds of burdens, and disappeared into the darkness, making for mysterious goals. In front of the open gate other figures were unloading heavy cases from vans. These quondam glass-works were now a depôt for the Army Supply service, and a huge kitchen, which administered and fed the whole sector of trenches, of which ours formed a part.
The Germans knew this. So every day and many times a day their guns fired a few salvoes of shells on the huge quadrilateral. But our good troopers were none the worse. Instead of working in the large buildings, part of which had already been destroyed by shells, they utilised the vast basements of the factory. There were the stores, and there they had their kitchens, where they worked day and night to supply their comrades in the trenches with the hot abundant food which twice a day made them forget for a few minutes the hardships of the cold, the rain, and the mud.
Our column halted under the bleak wall. At the wide gateway a sentinel was on duty, standing motionless, muffled in a heavy grey cloak; and through it our cooks passed, disappearing into the darkness, under the guidance of the liaison orderly of the preceding detachment. Whilst waiting for his return from the journey through the labyrinth our Chasseurs had a short rest before beginning the most difficult part of their journey—the last stage on the way to the trenches we were to occupy.
I took the opportunity of talking with an infantry captain who was there, walking up and down with his face buried in a thick muffler and his hands in the pockets of his heavy overcoat, on the sleeves of which three small pieces of gold lace were just discernible.
"Eh bien, mon Capitaine! Anything new?"
"Oh! nothing, except my opinion that you will not be disturbed either to-day or to-morrow. Since yesterday evening they have not fired one shot, and they were singing hymns till midnight. You may be pretty sure they'll redouble their Oremus this Christmas night, so you may sleep soundly."
"Unless all this is merely a feint, and to-night ..."
"Yes, you're right, unless to-night ..."
The column started, and, guided by the liaison orderly, we followed the high-road for some hundred yards. The shells had transformed it into a series of gorges, peaks, ravines, and hills. We had to jump over big branches cut from the trees by the projectiles. It was a road that would not be a cheerful one on moonless nights. Fortunately for us, that particular night was extremely bright. Everything around us could be distinguished; we could even divine about fifteen hundred yards to our right the "solitary tree," the famous tree, standing alone in the middle of the vast bare plain, which marked the centre of our sector of trenches, and where I knew I should find the "dug-out" belonging to the officers of our regiment. I was very much tempted to jump the ditch at the side of the road and cut across the fields to the final point of our march. It would have taken about twenty minutes, and have saved us the long difficult journey through the communication trench. But our orders were very precise: we were not to take short cuts even on dark nights, much less on starlit nights. Our chiefs do well to be cautious on our behalf, for it is certain that, though fully alive to the danger of such a route, there was not one of my hundred fellows who would have hesitated to dash across country just to save himself a few hundred yards.
We came to the mouth of the approach trench, four or five huge steps cut in the chalky clay. The frost had made them slippery, and we had to keep close to the edge of the bank to avoid stumbling. Behind me I heard some of the men sliding down heavily, and a din of mess-tins rolling away amidst laughter and jokes. "A merry heart goes all the way," and I knew my Chasseurs would soon pick themselves up and make up for lost time. This was essential, for the approach trench had ramifications and unexpected cross-passages which might have led a laggard astray.
We went forward slowly. The communication trench was at right angles to the enemy's trenches. To prevent him from enfilading it with his shells, it had been cut in zigzags. And I hardly know of a more laborious method of progression than that of taking ten paces to the right, making a sharp turn, and then again taking ten paces to the left, and so on, in order to cover a distance which, as the crow flies, would not be more than fifteen hundred yards. The passage was so narrow that we touched the walls on either side. The moonlight could not reach the ground we trod on, and we stumbled incessantly over the holes and inequalities caused by the late rains and hardened by the frost. Now and again we slid over ice that had formed on the little pools through which our comrades had been paddling two days before. And this was some consolation for the severity of the frost, preferable a hundred times to the horrors of the rain.
At last we debouched into our trenches, where our predecessors were impatiently waiting for us. Two days and two nights is a long time to go without sleeping, without washing, without having any other view than the walls of earth that shut you in. They were all eager to go back over the same road they had come by two days before, to get to their horses again, their quarters, their friends—in short, their home. So we found them quite ready to go, blankets rolled up and slung over their shoulders, and knapsacks in their places under their cloaks.
Whilst the non-commissioned officers of each squadron went to relieve the men at the listening posts, I brushed past the men lined up against the wall, and went towards the "solitary tree," which seemed to be stretching out its gaunt arms to protect our retreat. I had to turn to the right in a narrow passage which went round the tree, and ended in three steep steps cut in the earth, down which I had to go to reach the dug-out.
My old friend La G. was waiting for me at the bottom of this den, stretched on two chairs, warming his feet at a tiny iron stove perched upon a heap of bricks. By the light of the one candle he looked imposing and serious. His tawny beard, which he had allowed to grow since the war, spread like a fan over his chest, and gave him a look of Henri IV. I knew that this formidable exterior concealed the merriest companion and the most delightful sly joker that ever lived. So I was not much impressed by his thoughtful brow and his dreamy eye.
"Well, what's the news?" I asked.
"We are all freezing," he replied.
I rather suspected it. Besides this fact, which we had discovered before him, La G. could only confirm what the infantry captain had told me shortly before:
"You are going to have a most restful night, my dear fellow; and I advise you to have a Christmas manger arranged at the foot of the 'solitary tree,' and at midnight to sing 'Christians, awake,' in chorus.... We know some hymns as well as the Germans."
I had no lack of desire to put this proposal into action, but such pious customs as these would not perhaps have been quite in harmony with the tactical ideas of our commanding officer. Still I promised La G. I would do my best for the realisation of his dream.
"Good-bye and good luck!" he said.
"Good-bye," I replied.
And he went away into the darkness. At the end of the little passage that led to the trench I could see the men who had just been relieved passing in single file going towards the communication trench by which we had come. Their dark forms defiled in closely and rapidly. Having completed their task, they were happy to be free to get back to their squadrons, and as they passed they cracked their jokes at the others who had to stay. These answered back, but not in the most amiable manner. Then, little by little, silence settled down upon the scene. Every man was at his post: some kept watch, others walked about at the bottom of the trench or busied themselves with repairing or improving the indifferent shelters their predecessors had left them.
G. had gone to take the watch on which the junior officers of the units defending the sector relieved each other every three hours. So there I was alone, alone in the midst of my brave Chasseurs, with the duty of guarding those five hundred yards of trenches—a very small piece at that time of the immense French line. Behind us thousands of our fellows were sleeping in perfect confidence, relying upon the thin rampart we formed in front of them; and farther away still there were millions of Frenchmen and Frenchwomen, who, under their family roof or under that of their hosts, were resting in peace because of our sleepless nights, our limbs stiffened by the cold, our carbines pointed through the loopholes of the trenches.
Thus were we to celebrate the merry festival of Christmas. There was no doubt that far away among those who were keeping the sacred vigil more than one would think of us and sympathise with us.... No doubt many a one among us would feel a touch of sadness that evening, thinking of his home. But none, not one, I felt sure, would wish to quit his post to get away from the Front. Military honour! glorious legacy of our ancestors! Who could have foreseen that it would be implanted so naturally and so easily in the young souls of our soldiers? Within their youthful bodies the same hearts were already beating as those of the immortal veterans of the epic days of France. Men are fashioned by war.
Ten o'clock came on Christmas Eve to find that our day had passed in almost absolute calm. It had been a glorious winter day, a day of bright sunshine and pure clear air. The Germans had hardly fired at all. A few cannon-shots only had replied to our artillery, which let off its heavy guns every now and then upon their positions from the heights behind us.
And then night came. B. and I had just finished our frugal meal. We had promised to pay a visit to the Territorials who occupied the trenches right and left of ours. Our Chasseurs had been posted in that particular section so that in case of attack they might form a solid base for the Territorials to rely upon. They did not conceal their confidence in our men or their admiration for them; and their officers had no scruples in asking for our advice when difficult cases arose. In fact, that very afternoon the captain commanding the company to our right had come to my dug-out to arrange with me about the patrols that had to be sent that night in advance of the line.
Wrapped in our cloaks, we came out of our warm retreat. The night was just like the previous one, starlit, bright, and frosty, a true Christmas night for times of peace. In our trenches one half of the men were awake, in obedience to orders. Carbines were loaded and placed in the loopholes, and the guns were trained upon the enemy. In front of us, at the end of the narrow passages which led out to the listening posts, I knew that our sentries were alert with eye and ear, crouching in their holes in pairs. No one could approach the broad network of wire which protected us without being immediately perceived and shot. At the bottom of the trenches the men on watch were talking softly together and stamping on the ground to combat the intense cold.
Those who were at rest, lying close together at the bottom of the little dug-outs they had made for themselves in the bank, were sleeping or trying to sleep. More than one of them had succeeded, for resounding snores could be heard behind the blankets, pieces of tent canvas and sacking, and all the various rags with which they had ingeniously stuffed up the entrances to their rustic alcoves. One wondered how they could have overcome the sufferings the cold must have caused them so far as to be able to sleep calmly. The five months of war had hardened their bodies and accustomed them to face cold, heat, rain, dust, or mud, with impunity. In this hard school, better than in any other, men of iron are fashioned, who last out a whole campaign and are capable of the supreme effort when the hour comes.
We arrived at the Territorials' trench.
"Bon-soir, mon cher camarade."
It was the Second-Lieutenant whom I met at the entrance. He was a man of forty-two, thin, pale, and bearded. In the shadow his eyes shone strangely. Under the skirts of his great-coat he had his hands buried in his trouser pockets. His elbows stuck out from his body, his knees were bent, his teeth chattered, and he was gently knocking his heels together.
"It isn't warm, eh?" I asked.
"Oh, no; and then, you see, this sort of work is hardly the thing for fellows of our age. Our blood isn't warm enough, and, however you cover yourself up, there's always a chink by which the cold gets in. The worst of all is one's hands and feet; and there's nothing to be done for it. Wouldn't it be much better to trust to us, give us the order to fix bayonets and drive those Boches out of their trenches over there? You'd see if the Territorials couldn't do it as well as the Regulars.... And then one would have a chance of getting warm."
I felt sure that he spoke the truth, and that his opinion was shared by the majority of his companions. But our good comrades of the Territorial Force have no conception of the vigour, the suppleness, and of the fulness of youth required to charge up to the enemy's line under concentrated fire and to cut the complex network of barbed wire that bars the road. Our chiefs were well advised in placing these troops where they were, in those lines of trenches
scientifically constructed and protected, where their courage and tenacity would be invaluable in case of attack, and where they would know better than any others how to carry out the orders given to us: "Hold on till death." Leave to the young soldiers the sublime and perilous task of rushing upon the enemy when he is hidden behind the shelter of his fougades, his parapets, and his artificial brambles; and entrust to the brave Territorials the more obscure but not less glorious work of mounting guard along our front.
I could make them out in the moonlight, standing silent and alert, in groups of two or three. Perched on the ledge of earth which raised them to the height of the parapet, they had their eyes wide open in the darkness, looking towards the enemy. Their loaded rifles were placed in front of them, between two clods of hardened earth. They neither complained nor uttered a word, but suffered nobly. They understand that they must. Ah! where now were the fine tirades of pothouse orators and public meetings? Where now were the oaths to revolt, the solemn denials and the blasphemies pronounced against the Fatherland? All was forgotten, wiped out from the records. If we could have questioned those men who stood there shivering, chilled to the bone, watching over the safety of the country, not one of them, certainly, would have confessed that he was ever one of the renegades of yore. And yet if one were to search among the bravest, among the most resigned, among the best, thousands of them would be discovered.
Heaven grant that this miracle, wrought by the war, may be prolonged far beyond the days of the struggle, and then we shall not think that our brothers' blood has been spilt in vain.
We brushed past them, but they did not even turn round. Eyes, mind, and will were absorbed in the dark mystery of the silent landscape stretching out before them. But the night, though it was so bright, gave everything a strange appearance; transformed all living things and increased their size; made the stones, the stacks, and the trees move, as it seemed to our weary eyes; cast fitful shadows where there were none; and made us hear murmurs which sounded like the muffled tramp of troops marching cautiously. Those men watched because they felt that there was always the danger of a surprise attack, of a sudden rush of Teutons who had crawled up through the grass of the fields. They had piled on their backs empty sacks, blankets, and old rags, for warmth, and wound their mufflers two or three times round their necks; they had taken all possible precautions for carrying out their duty to the very last. And although our hearts had been hardened by the unprecedented miseries of this war, we were seized with pity and admiration. Presently one of them turned round and said to us:
"Hallo! They are lighting up over there now."
I jumped up on to the ledge and saw, in fact, lights shining in three different places some way off. After looking attentively I guessed the meaning of this quite unusual illumination in the rear of the trenches. The lights came from some large fir-trees, placed there under cover of night, and beautifully lighted up. With my glasses I could make them out distinctly, and even the figures dancing round them; and we could hear their voices and shouts of merriment. How well they had arranged the whole thing! They had even gone as far as to light up their Christmas trees with electricity, so as to prevent our gunners from using them as an easy target. In fact, every few minutes all the lights on a tree were suddenly put out, and only appeared some minutes afterwards.
We had thrilled instinctively. Suddenly there arose, all over the wide plain, solemn and melodious singing. We still remembered singing of a similar kind we had recently heard at Bixschoote on a tragic occasion; and here were the same tuneful voices again, singing a hymn of the same kind as those they sang further to the north before shouting their hurrahs for the attack. But we did not fear anything of that kind now. We had the impression that this singing was not a special prayer in front of our little sector of trenches, but that it was general, and extended without limits over the whole of our provinces violated by the enemy: over Champagne, Lorraine, and Picardy, resounding from the North Sea to the Rhine.
The Territorial trench was full of noiseless animation. The men came up out of their little dug-outs without a word, and the whole company was soon perched upon the ledge. There was a silence among our men, as if each man felt uneasy or perhaps jealous of what was going on over there. Then, as if to order, along the line of the German trenches other hymns rang out, and one choir seemed to answer the other. The singing became general. Quite close to us, in the trenches themselves, in the distance, round their brightly lighted trees, to the right, to the left, it resounded, softened by the distance. What a stirring, nay, grandiose, impression those hymns made, floating over the vast field of death! I felt intuitively that all this had been arranged long before, that they might celebrate their Christmas with religious calm and peace.
At any other time, no doubt, many a clumsy joke would have been made, and no little abuse hurled at the singers. But all that has been changed. I divined some regret among our brave fellows that we were not taking part in a similar festival. Was it not Christmas Eve? Had we not been obliged by our duty to give up the delightful family gathering which reunites us yearly around the symbolic Yule-log? This year our mothers, our sisters, and our children were keeping up the time-honoured and pious custom alone. Why did not our larger family of to-day join in singing together around lighted fir-trees? Our Territorials did not speak; but their thoughts flew away from the trenches, and the regrets of all were fused in a common feeling of melancholy.
Little by little the singing died away, and absolute silence fell once more upon the country.
I went with G. as far as his watch-post. He had to resume his duty as officer of the watch from eleven o'clock in the evening to two o'clock in the morning. The post consisted of a kind of small blockhouse, strongly built and protected by two casemates with machine-guns placed so as to command the enemy's trenches. A machine-gunner was always on guard, and could call the others, at the slightest alarm, to work the gun. These men were quartered in a kind of tunnel hollowed out close by, and at the first signal would have been ready to open fire with their terrible engines of destruction. In the centre of the block-house a padded sentry-box was arranged made of a number of sand-bags, in which, by means of a loophole, the officer of the watch could observe the whole sector entrusted to us; and by means of a telephone station, close at hand, he could communicate at any moment with the commander of the sector at the glass-works.
G. had put on the goatskin coat handed to him by the officer he relieved. This officer was a Second-Lieutenant of Territorials, and looked completely frozen.
"Here, my dear fellow," he said, "I leave you the goatskin provided for the use of the officer on duty. I should have liked to give it you well warmed, but I feel like an icicle myself."
G. was nevertheless glad to have it. After wishing him good luck, I left him to get back to my hut, for, in spite of my cloak, the frost was taking hold of me too. The faithful Wattrelot had done his best to keep our little stove going. Profiting by La G.'s example, I stretched myself on two chairs, with my feet towards the fire. I gradually got warmer, and at the same time somewhat melancholy. What a curious Christmas Eve! Certainly I had never passed one in such a place. The walls were made of a greyish, friable earth, which still showed the marks of the pick that had been used for the excavation. The furniture was simple and not very comfortable. At the back was the bed, made out of a little straw already well tossed over by a number of sleepers. This straw was kept in by a plank fixed to the ground and forming the side of the modest couch. Against the wall, opposite the stove, was the table. This table, which had to serve for writing and feeding, and perhaps for a game of cards, this table, which was required to fill the part of all the tables of all the rooms of any house, was, strange to say, a night-table. I wondered who had brought it there, and who had chosen it. But, such as it was, it served its purpose pretty well. We used it for dinner, and found it almost comfortable, and upon it I signed a number of reports and orders. Together with the two chairs, the stove, the bed, and some nails to hang my clothes on, that table completed the furniture of the "home" where I meditated on that December night.
The candle, stuck in a bottle, flickered at the slightest breath, and threw strange shadows on the walls.
It was the hour of solitude and silence, the hour of meditation and of sadness too now and then. That evening dark thoughts were flying about in that smoky den, assailing me in crowds, and taking possession of my mind; I could not drive them away. It was one of those moments—those very fleeting moments!—when courage seems to fail, and one gives way with a kind of bitter satisfaction. I remembered that months and months had passed since I had seen any of those belonging to me, and I conjured up in my mind the picture of the Christmas Eve they were keeping, too, at that same hour, at the other end of France. And the dear, good friends I had left in Paris and in Rouen—where were they at that moment? What were they doing? Were they thinking of me? How I should have liked to enjoy the wonderful power possessed by certain heroes in the Arabian Nights, which would have allowed me to see at that moment a vision of the loved ones far away. Were they talking about me, sitting together round the fire? I thought that this war had been a splendid thing to us Chasseurs as long as we were fighting as cavalry, scouring the plains, searching the woods, galloping in advance of our infantry, and bringing them information which enabled them to deal their blows or parry those of the enemy, trying to come up with the Prussian cavalry which fled before us. But this trench warfare, this warfare in which one stays for days and days in the same position, in which ground is gained yard by yard, in which artifice tries to outdo artifice, in which each side clings to the ground it has won, digs into it, buries itself in it, and dies in it sooner than give it up! What warfare for cavalry! We have devoted ourselves to it with all our hearts, and the chiefs who have had us under their orders have never failed to commend us; but at times we feel very weary, and during inaction and solitude our imaginations begin to work. Then we recall our regiment in full gallop over field and plain; we hear the clank of swords and bits; we see once more the flash of the blades, the motley line of the horses; we evoke the well-known figures of our chiefs on their chargers. That night my mind became more restless than ever before; it broke loose, it leapt away, and lived again the unforgettable stages of this war: Charleroi, Guise, the Marne, the defence of the Jaulgonne bridge, Montmirail, Reims, ... Belgium, Bixschoote; and then it fell back into the gloomy dug-out where the flame of the single candle traced disquieting shadows on the wall.
Suddenly a cold breath of air blew into my retreat. The door opened abruptly, and at the top of the steps a man, stooping over the floor of the passage, called me in an undertone:
"Mon Lieutenant, come and see.... Something is happening...."
With a bound, I sprang from my shelter and climbed up the ledge.
"Listen, mon Lieutenant."
That night in the trenches was destined to overwhelm me with astonishment, and this one surpassed all that I could imagine. I should like to be able to impart the extraordinary impression I felt; but one would have to have been there that night to be capable of realising it. Over that vast and silent plain, in which everything seemed to sleep and where no other sound was heard, there resounded from afar a voice whose notes, in spite of the distance, reached our ears. What an extraordinary thing it was! That song, vibrating through the boundless night, made our hearts beat and stirred us more than the most perfectly ordered concert given by the most famous singers.
And it was another hymn, unknown to us, coming from the German trenches far away on our left. The singer must have been standing out in the fields on the edge of their line; he must have been moving, coming towards us, and passing slowly along all the enemy's positions, for his voice came gradually nearer, and became louder and clearer. Every now and then it ceased, and then hundreds of other voices responded in chorus with some phrases which formed the refrain of the hymn. Then the soloist began again and came still nearer to us. He must have come from a considerable distance, for our Chasseurs had already heard him some time before they decided to call me. Who could this man have been, who must have been sent along the front of the troops to pray, whilst each German company waited for him, so as to join with him in prayer? Some minister, no doubt, who had come to remind the soldiers of the sanctity of that night and the solemnity of the hour.
Soon we heard the voice coming from the trenches straight in front of us. In spite of the brightness of the night, we could not distinguish the singer, for the two lines at that point were four hundred yards apart. But he was certainly not hiding himself, for his deep voice would never have sounded so rich and clear to us had he been singing at the bottom of their trenches. Again it ceased. And then the Germans directly in front of us, the soldiers occupying the works opposite ours, those men whom we were bound to kill so soon as they appeared, and whose duty it was to shoot us so soon as we showed ourselves—those men calmly took up the refrain of the hymn, with its sweet and mysterious words. They too must have come to the edge of their trench and struck up their hymn with their faces towards us, for their notes came to us clearly and distinctly.
I looked along the line of our trench. All our men too were awake and looking on. They had all got on to the ledge, and several had left the trench and were in the field, listening to the unexpected concert. No one was offended by it; no one laughed at it. Rather was there a trace of regret in the attitudes and the faces of those who were nearest to me. And yet it would have been such a simple matter to put an end to that scene; a volley fired by the troop there, and it would all stop, and drop back into the quiet of other nights. But nobody thought of such a thing. There was not one of our Chasseurs who would not have considered it a sacrilege to fire upon those praying soldiers. We felt indeed that there are hours when one can forget that one is there to kill. This would not prevent us from doing our duty immediately afterwards.
The voice drew farther away, and retreated slowly and majestically towards the trenches situated at the place known as the "Troopers of C.'s" ground, where our two lines approached each other within a distance of fifty yards. How much more touching the sight must have been from there! I wished my post had been in that direction, so that I might have been present at the scene, might have heard the words and distinguished the figure of the pastor walking along the parapets made for hurling out death, and blessing those who the next day might be no more.
Ping! A shot was heard....
The stupid bullet which had perhaps found its mark? At once there was dead silence, not a cry, not an oath, not a groan. Some one had thought he was doing well by firing on that man. A pity! We should gain nothing by preventing them from keeping Christmas in their own way, and it would have been a nobler thing to reserve our blows for other hecatombs. I know that the barbarians would not have hesitated had they been in our place, and that so many of our priests had fallen under their strokes that they could not reasonably have reproached us. There are people who will say that our hatred should embrace everything German; that we should be implacable towards everything bearing that name, and spare none of the execrated race which has been the cause of so many tears, so much blood, so much mourning. Never mind!... I think in this case it would have been better not to have shot....
A shot fired, not far from us, on our left brought me up from my shelter. It seemed strange after the complete calm of that night. It was seven o'clock. The sun was magnificent, and had already bathed the deserted plain, the fields, the heights of S., and the ruined village. In the distance, towards the east, the towers of the cathedral of R. stood out proudly against the golden sky. I looked and saw all my Chasseurs standing on the ledges watching with interest a scene which seemed to be going on in front of the trenches occupied on our left by the Territorials.
I got up by the side of one of them, and he explained to me what was happening.
"Mon Lieutenant, it's the infantry fellows who have just killed a hare that ran between the two lines, and they're going to fetch it...."
And in fact I saw this strange sight: two men had gone out in full daylight from their trenches and were advancing with hesitating steps towards the enemy's. Behind them were a hundred inquisitive heads, looking out above the embrasures arranged between the sacks of earth. A few soldiers, who had come out of the trench, were even sitting on the bank of chalky earth. It was certainly such a scene as I had hardly expected to witness. What was the captain of the company occupying the trench doing?
But my astonishment became stupefaction when I saw the hundreds of heads that fringed the enemy's trenches. I at once sent G. and a non-commissioned officer with the following order to all our men:
"No one is to show himself.... Every man to his fighting post!... Carbines loaded and ready to fire!"
The Germans opposite became suspicious on seeing our line so silent, and no man showing himself; they, too, waited on the alert behind their loopholes. But along the rest of their front their men kept on coming out from their trenches unarmed, and making merry and friendly gestures. I became uneasy, and wondered how this unexpected comedy might end. Ought I to have those men fired upon who were not quite opposite to us, and whose opponents seemed rather inclined to make a Christmas truce?
Our two infantrymen had come to the spot where the hare had fallen, very nearly half-way between the French and the German lines. One of them stooped down and got up again proudly brandishing his victim in the enemy's faces. At once there was a burst of applause from the German lines. They called out: "Kameraden! Kameraden!"
This was going too far. I saw two unarmed Prussians leave their trench and come forward, with their hands raised towards the two Frenchmen, so I consulted G.: "Ought we to fire? I confess it would be rather unpleasant for me to order our fellows to fire upon these unarmed men. On the other hand, can we allow the least intercourse between the barbarous nation that is still treading our soil and our good brothers-in-arms who are pouring out their blood every day to reconquer it?"
Fortunately, the officer who commanded the Saint Thierry artillery, and who had observed this scene with his glasses, spared me a decision which would have been painful to me.
Pong! Pong! Pong! Pong!
Four shells passed, hissing, over our heads, and burst with admirable precision two hundred yards above the German trenches. The artillery officer seemed to have placed with a delicate hand the four little white puffs of smoke which, equidistant from each other, appeared to mark out the bounds in the heavens of the frontier line he wished to forbid the enemy to pass on the earth. The Germans did not fail to understand this graceful warning. With cries of rage and protest, they ran back to their shelters, and our Frenchmen did the same.
And, as though to mark the intentional kindness of what he had just done, hardly had the last of the spiked helmets disappeared behind the parapets, when again the same hissing noise was heard, and, pong! pong! pong! pong! four shells dropped, this time full upon the whitish line formed along the green plain by the upturned earth of their trenches. In the midst of the smoke, earth and rubbish of all kinds were seen flying. Our Chasseurs cried "Bravo!" Everyone felt that the best solution had been found, and rejoiced at this termination of the brief Christmas truce.
And now our minds were free to rejoice in the great day itself in company with our good troopers. In the night there had arrived, well packed in smart hampers, the bottles of champagne which Major B. had presented to his men, and we were looking forward to the time, only a few hours hence, when the soup would be upon the table, and we should keep our Christmas by letting off the corks in the direction of the German trenches.
Our young fellow-officers were already anticipating this peaceful salvo, which would certainly be heard by the enemy. "
Marcel as an Officer in the French Cavalry thought in his own words: -
"This was going too far. I saw two unarmed Prussians leave their trench and come forward, with their hands raised towards the two Frenchmen, so I consulted G.: "Ought we to fire? I confess it would be rather unpleasant for me to order our fellows to fire upon these unarmed men. On the other hand, can we allow the least intercourse between the barbarous nation that is still treading our soil and our good brothers-in-arms who are pouring out their blood every day to reconquer it?"
Fortunately, the officer who commanded the Saint Thierry artillery, and who had observed this scene with his glasses, spared me a decision which would have been painful to me."
The shell fire that followed certainly put a stop to anything !
The passage is long, but it is well worth a read as it gives a unique understanding of how the French felt at the time. The full book is online at Project Gutenberg:-
"Mon Lieutenant mon Lieutenant, it's two o'clock."
My faithful Wattrelot held the flickering candle just in front of my eyes to rouse me. What torture it is to be snatched from sleep at such an early hour! It would not be anything in summer; but it was the 24th of December, and it was my turn to go on duty in the trenches. A nice way of keeping Christmas!... I turned over in my bed, trying to avoid that light that tormented me; I collected my thoughts, which had wandered far away whilst I was asleep, and had been replaced by exquisite dreams, dreams of times of peace, of welfare, of good cheer, and of gentle warmth.
Then I remembered: I had to take command of a detachment of a hundred troopers of the regiment, who were to replace the hundred now in the trenches. It was nearly a month since we had joined our Army Corps near R., and every other day the regiment had to furnish the same number of men to occupy a sector of the trenches. It was my turn, on the 24th of December, to replace my brother-officer and good friend Lieutenant de la G., who had occupied the post since the 22nd.
I had forgotten all this.... How cold it was! Brrr!...
Whilst Wattrelot was taking himself off I braced myself for the necessary effort of getting out of the warm sheets. Like a coward, I kept on allowing myself successive respites, vowing to rise heroically after each.
"I will get up as soon as Wattrelot has reached the landing of the first floor.... I will get up when I hear him walking on the pavement of the hall, ... or rather when I hear the entrance-door shut, and his boots creaking on the gravel path...."
But every noise was hushed. Wattrelot was already some way off, and I still shied at this act, which, after all, was inevitable: to get out of bed in a little ice-cold room at two o'clock in the morning. Through the window, which had neither shutter nor curtain, I saw a small piece of the sky, beautifully clear, in which myriads of stars were twinkling. The day before, when I came in to go to bed, it was freezing hard. That morning the frost, I thought, must be terrible.
"Come, up!" With a bound I was on the ground, and rushed at once to the little pitch-pine washstand. Rapid ablutions would wake me up thoroughly. Horror! The water in the jug was frozen. Oh! not very deeply, no doubt; but all the same I had to break a coating of ice that had formed on the surface. However, I was happy to feel more nimble after having washed my face. Quick! Two warm waistcoats under my jacket, my large cloak with its cape, my fur gloves, my campaigning cap pulled over my ears, and there I was, with a candle in my hand, going down the grand staircase of the château.
For I was quartered in a château. The very word makes one think of a warm room, well upholstered, well furnished, with soft carpets and comfortable armchairs. But, alas! it was nothing of the sort.... The good lady whose house it was had provided for all contingencies; the family rooms had been prudently dismantled and double-locked. A formidable concierge had the keys, and I was happy indeed when I found the butler's room in the attics. His bed, with its white sheets, seemed to me very desirable. And then, as we say in time of peace, one must take things as they come.
The open hall-door let in a wave of cold air, which struck cold on my face. But I had not a minute to lose. The detachment was to start at half-past two punctually, and it had, no doubt, already formed up in the market-place. I hurried into the street. The tall pines of the park stood out black against the silver sky, whilst the bare branches of the other trees formed thousands of arabesques and strange patterns all round. Not the slightest noise was to be heard in the limpid, diaphanous night, in which the air seemed as pure and rare as on the summits of lofty mountains. Under my footsteps the gravel felt soft, but, once I had got outside the iron gate, I found myself on ground as hard as stone. The mud formed by recent rains and the ruts hollowed by streams of convoys had frozen, and the road was a maze of furrows and inequalities which made me stumble again and again.
In front of the Hôtel des Lacs a certain number of the men had already lined up, in front of their horses. Huddled in their cloaks, with collars turned up, they were stamping their feet and blowing into their hands. It must have been real torture for them too to come out of their straw litter, where they were sleeping so snugly a few moments before, rolled up in their blankets. They had got a liking for the kind of comfort peculiar to the campaigner, and had invented a thousand and one ingenious methods of improving the arrangements of their novel garrison. Sleeping parties had been gradually organised, and sets of seven or eight at a time enjoyed delightful nights, stretched on their clean straw. Many of them would certainly not be able to get to sleep if they suddenly found themselves in a real bed. And then it is less difficult to get up when one has gone to bed with one's clothes on, and when the room is not very warm. Not one of them complained; not one of them grumbled. We can always count on our brave fellows.
"All present, mon Lieutenant!"
It was the senior non-commissioned officers of the two squadrons assembled there who reported. Every one had got up and equipped himself at the appointed hour; not one was missing at roll-call; they had all assembled of their own accord; the corporals had not needed to knock at door after door to wake the sleepers. Our Chasseurs had very quickly established simple customs and rules of their own which ensured the regularity of the service without written orders. This intelligent and spontaneous discipline is one of the most admirable features of this campaign. It has grown up by degrees, without any special orders or prescriptions from above, with the result that the hardest labours are carried out almost without supervision, because each man understands the end in view and the grim necessities which it involves.
They understood at once that this early hour was the only one at which the relief could be effected. And every other day, just as on that December morning, twenty-five men out of each squadron get up at half-past one, equip themselves, and saddle their horses, whilst the cooks warm up a good cup of coffee for each man. Then, without any hurry, but at the exact moment, they form up in fighting order at the appointed spot, and when the officer arrives, in the dark, rain, wind, snow, or frost, he is sure of receiving the same report:
"All present, mon Lieutenant!"
Quick! Mount. We shall feel the cold less trotting over the hardened roads this bright night and under this brilliant moon. Two and two, in silence, we issued from the village in the direction of R. I knew that I should find a little further on, at the cross-roads where the crucifix stands, the fifty men of the first half-regiment and Second-Lieutenant de G., who serves under me.
Yes, there he was, coming to meet me on the hard road. It was a joy to me that chance had given me this jolly fellow for my trench companion. I hardly knew him, for he had not been with us more than a few days. Taken from the Military College directly war was declared, he had first been sent to a reserve squadron, and had only just been appointed to an active regiment. But I already knew, through my comrades of the first squadron, that he was a daring soldier and a merry companion. So much the better, I thought. War is a sad thing, and one must learn to take it gaily. A plague on gloomy spirits and long faces! True, we can no longer wage the picturesque war of the "good old days." We shall never know another Fontenoy, or Rivoli, or Eylau. But that is no reason why we should lose the jovial humour of our forefathers. Thank Heaven! we have preserved their qualities of dash and bravery. But it is more difficult to keep a smiling face in this hideous mole warfare, which is imposed even upon us troopers. All the more reason for liking and admiring the cheery officers who keep our spirits up, and G. is one of them.
We shook hands without speaking, for it seemed to us that if we opened our mouths the frost would get into our bodies and freeze them, and we set off at a sharp trot along the narrow by-road which, crossing the high-road to Paris, leads to C. There we should have to leave our horses, cross the zone of the enemy's artillery fire, and get to the trenches on foot. The horses snorted with pleasure, happy to warm themselves by rapid movement. Some of them indulged in merry capers, which were repressed, not too gently, by their more sedate riders. Their hoofs struck the uneven ground with a metallic ring which must have echoed far; and the clink of bits and stirrups also disturbed the sleeping country. Before us the road ran straight amidst the dark fields, a long pale grey ribbon. No one thought of laughing or talking; sleep seemed still to hover over the column, and every one knew that the two days of trench duty would be long and hard to get through even if the Prussians left us in peace.
We passed a cross, which shone white on the side of the road under the pale light of the moon, and saluted it. We had known it from the first days, and had its inscription by heart:
80 NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICERS, CORPORALS, AND SOLDIERS OF THE 39TH AND 74TH REGIMENTS INFANTRY, KILLED IN ACTION.
PRAY FOR THEM.
We dimly discerned the modest wreaths of green leaves, now faded and yellow, and the little nosegays of withered flowers attached to the arms of this cross, left there after the departure of the regiment and undisturbed by any sacrilegious hand.
We crossed the Paris road, with its double row of trees, which, in the night, appeared gigantic, and, after answering the challenge of the Territorial guarding the approach to C., we entered the village.
It appeared to be completely empty, and yet there were two battalions of the —— Territorials quartered there. The moon seemed to be amusing itself by casting the shadows of the houses on one side of the street upon the walls of the other side in fantastic shapes.
"Dismount."
We had reached the spot where we were to leave our horses. The men quickly unbuckled the blankets which were to help them to endure the weary hours of the following night. They slung them over their shoulders, and we set off towards the towing-path of the canal. We went very slowly, as we had at least seven or eight kilometres before us, and a walk of eight kilometres for troopers laden and dressed as we were is no light matter.
We found the towing-path. Walking at that hour of the night is certainly not very alluring. However, the view was not lacking in grandeur. On either side of the canal the dark silhouettes of tall trees stood out against the sky. Their shadows were reflected in the water, which gleamed with a metallic lustre in the moonshine. How calm and silent it was! Who would have thought we were at war? Not a cannon-shot, not a rifle-shot, disturbed the peace of the night. Yet, as a rule, there were no long intervals between the reports which reminded us of the serious work on hand.
That day it seemed as though some agreement had been come to by both sides to stop killing or trying to kill. However touching such an agreement might be, it would also be somewhat disturbing, for one must always beware of an enemy who resorts so freely to tricks and traps of every kind. It was as well not to celebrate Christmas too obtrusively. Besides, I did not think we were the only ones keeping vigil at that hour.
From time to time we passed small groupsof infantry, haggard, dusty, and heavily laden, marching in ranks with their arms slung, by threes or fours, without speaking, striding slowly, as though they were trying to measure the length of the road. Some of them were carrying curious objects fastened to sticks: pots or big cans, perhaps baskets. Where they were going or what they were doing we did not ask. Every man has his own job; if those fellows were going that way they had their orders, and nobody troubled himself about their object. All was well. The clattering of the Chasseurs on the uneven road lent a little life to the picture. Perhaps they were talking together; but, if so, it was in an undertone, a whisper almost.
And suddenly the enemy let us know that he was also keeping watch. Far ahead of us, near C., a rocket went up into the clear sky and then fell slowly, very slowly, in the form of an intensely brilliant ball, lighting up all the surrounding country wonderfully. We knew them well, those formidable German rockets, which seemed as though they would never go out and shed a pallid and yet blinding light. We knew that as soon as they were lighted everybody who happened to be within range of the enemy's rifle fire had at once to lie flat on the ground, and not move or raise his head so long as the light was burning. Otherwise shots would be fired from all directions, mowing down the vegetation and cutting up the earth all around him. This time we were well outside the range, and we watched the dazzling star in front of us without halting.
"The shepherds' star," said G. solemnly.
Strange shepherds indeed must they have been who carried carbines as their crooks, and were provided with cartridges enough to send a hundred and twenty of their fellow-creatures into the next world. The star seemed to hang for a moment some yards from the ground; then slowly, slowly, as though exhausted by its effort, it fell to the ground and went out. The night seemed less clear and less diaphanous.
We had now reached the glass-works and it was there that we were to leave our cooks. No one would have supposed that this large factory lay idle, and that the hundreds of workmen employed there were dispersed. On the contrary, it seemed to have retained all the animation of the prosperous enterprise it had been before the war.
It was a large square of massive buildings, almost a miniature town, planted on the side of the canal, like an outlying bastion of the suburbs of R. The low white walls, crowned with tiles, had the stunted appearance of military works. But a nearer view gave rather the illusion of the life in a busy factory at night-time. The gateway opened on a courtyard, with furnace fires shining here and there. Shadowy forms passed backwards and forwards, enlivening the dim scene with the bustle of a hive. Men came out by fives or sixes, laden with different kinds of burdens, and disappeared into the darkness, making for mysterious goals. In front of the open gate other figures were unloading heavy cases from vans. These quondam glass-works were now a depôt for the Army Supply service, and a huge kitchen, which administered and fed the whole sector of trenches, of which ours formed a part.
The Germans knew this. So every day and many times a day their guns fired a few salvoes of shells on the huge quadrilateral. But our good troopers were none the worse. Instead of working in the large buildings, part of which had already been destroyed by shells, they utilised the vast basements of the factory. There were the stores, and there they had their kitchens, where they worked day and night to supply their comrades in the trenches with the hot abundant food which twice a day made them forget for a few minutes the hardships of the cold, the rain, and the mud.
Our column halted under the bleak wall. At the wide gateway a sentinel was on duty, standing motionless, muffled in a heavy grey cloak; and through it our cooks passed, disappearing into the darkness, under the guidance of the liaison orderly of the preceding detachment. Whilst waiting for his return from the journey through the labyrinth our Chasseurs had a short rest before beginning the most difficult part of their journey—the last stage on the way to the trenches we were to occupy.
I took the opportunity of talking with an infantry captain who was there, walking up and down with his face buried in a thick muffler and his hands in the pockets of his heavy overcoat, on the sleeves of which three small pieces of gold lace were just discernible.
"Eh bien, mon Capitaine! Anything new?"
"Oh! nothing, except my opinion that you will not be disturbed either to-day or to-morrow. Since yesterday evening they have not fired one shot, and they were singing hymns till midnight. You may be pretty sure they'll redouble their Oremus this Christmas night, so you may sleep soundly."
"Unless all this is merely a feint, and to-night ..."
"Yes, you're right, unless to-night ..."
The column started, and, guided by the liaison orderly, we followed the high-road for some hundred yards. The shells had transformed it into a series of gorges, peaks, ravines, and hills. We had to jump over big branches cut from the trees by the projectiles. It was a road that would not be a cheerful one on moonless nights. Fortunately for us, that particular night was extremely bright. Everything around us could be distinguished; we could even divine about fifteen hundred yards to our right the "solitary tree," the famous tree, standing alone in the middle of the vast bare plain, which marked the centre of our sector of trenches, and where I knew I should find the "dug-out" belonging to the officers of our regiment. I was very much tempted to jump the ditch at the side of the road and cut across the fields to the final point of our march. It would have taken about twenty minutes, and have saved us the long difficult journey through the communication trench. But our orders were very precise: we were not to take short cuts even on dark nights, much less on starlit nights. Our chiefs do well to be cautious on our behalf, for it is certain that, though fully alive to the danger of such a route, there was not one of my hundred fellows who would have hesitated to dash across country just to save himself a few hundred yards.
We came to the mouth of the approach trench, four or five huge steps cut in the chalky clay. The frost had made them slippery, and we had to keep close to the edge of the bank to avoid stumbling. Behind me I heard some of the men sliding down heavily, and a din of mess-tins rolling away amidst laughter and jokes. "A merry heart goes all the way," and I knew my Chasseurs would soon pick themselves up and make up for lost time. This was essential, for the approach trench had ramifications and unexpected cross-passages which might have led a laggard astray.
We went forward slowly. The communication trench was at right angles to the enemy's trenches. To prevent him from enfilading it with his shells, it had been cut in zigzags. And I hardly know of a more laborious method of progression than that of taking ten paces to the right, making a sharp turn, and then again taking ten paces to the left, and so on, in order to cover a distance which, as the crow flies, would not be more than fifteen hundred yards. The passage was so narrow that we touched the walls on either side. The moonlight could not reach the ground we trod on, and we stumbled incessantly over the holes and inequalities caused by the late rains and hardened by the frost. Now and again we slid over ice that had formed on the little pools through which our comrades had been paddling two days before. And this was some consolation for the severity of the frost, preferable a hundred times to the horrors of the rain.
At last we debouched into our trenches, where our predecessors were impatiently waiting for us. Two days and two nights is a long time to go without sleeping, without washing, without having any other view than the walls of earth that shut you in. They were all eager to go back over the same road they had come by two days before, to get to their horses again, their quarters, their friends—in short, their home. So we found them quite ready to go, blankets rolled up and slung over their shoulders, and knapsacks in their places under their cloaks.
Whilst the non-commissioned officers of each squadron went to relieve the men at the listening posts, I brushed past the men lined up against the wall, and went towards the "solitary tree," which seemed to be stretching out its gaunt arms to protect our retreat. I had to turn to the right in a narrow passage which went round the tree, and ended in three steep steps cut in the earth, down which I had to go to reach the dug-out.
My old friend La G. was waiting for me at the bottom of this den, stretched on two chairs, warming his feet at a tiny iron stove perched upon a heap of bricks. By the light of the one candle he looked imposing and serious. His tawny beard, which he had allowed to grow since the war, spread like a fan over his chest, and gave him a look of Henri IV. I knew that this formidable exterior concealed the merriest companion and the most delightful sly joker that ever lived. So I was not much impressed by his thoughtful brow and his dreamy eye.
"Well, what's the news?" I asked.
"We are all freezing," he replied.
I rather suspected it. Besides this fact, which we had discovered before him, La G. could only confirm what the infantry captain had told me shortly before:
"You are going to have a most restful night, my dear fellow; and I advise you to have a Christmas manger arranged at the foot of the 'solitary tree,' and at midnight to sing 'Christians, awake,' in chorus.... We know some hymns as well as the Germans."
I had no lack of desire to put this proposal into action, but such pious customs as these would not perhaps have been quite in harmony with the tactical ideas of our commanding officer. Still I promised La G. I would do my best for the realisation of his dream.
"Good-bye and good luck!" he said.
"Good-bye," I replied.
And he went away into the darkness. At the end of the little passage that led to the trench I could see the men who had just been relieved passing in single file going towards the communication trench by which we had come. Their dark forms defiled in closely and rapidly. Having completed their task, they were happy to be free to get back to their squadrons, and as they passed they cracked their jokes at the others who had to stay. These answered back, but not in the most amiable manner. Then, little by little, silence settled down upon the scene. Every man was at his post: some kept watch, others walked about at the bottom of the trench or busied themselves with repairing or improving the indifferent shelters their predecessors had left them.
G. had gone to take the watch on which the junior officers of the units defending the sector relieved each other every three hours. So there I was alone, alone in the midst of my brave Chasseurs, with the duty of guarding those five hundred yards of trenches—a very small piece at that time of the immense French line. Behind us thousands of our fellows were sleeping in perfect confidence, relying upon the thin rampart we formed in front of them; and farther away still there were millions of Frenchmen and Frenchwomen, who, under their family roof or under that of their hosts, were resting in peace because of our sleepless nights, our limbs stiffened by the cold, our carbines pointed through the loopholes of the trenches.
Thus were we to celebrate the merry festival of Christmas. There was no doubt that far away among those who were keeping the sacred vigil more than one would think of us and sympathise with us.... No doubt many a one among us would feel a touch of sadness that evening, thinking of his home. But none, not one, I felt sure, would wish to quit his post to get away from the Front. Military honour! glorious legacy of our ancestors! Who could have foreseen that it would be implanted so naturally and so easily in the young souls of our soldiers? Within their youthful bodies the same hearts were already beating as those of the immortal veterans of the epic days of France. Men are fashioned by war.
Ten o'clock came on Christmas Eve to find that our day had passed in almost absolute calm. It had been a glorious winter day, a day of bright sunshine and pure clear air. The Germans had hardly fired at all. A few cannon-shots only had replied to our artillery, which let off its heavy guns every now and then upon their positions from the heights behind us.
And then night came. B. and I had just finished our frugal meal. We had promised to pay a visit to the Territorials who occupied the trenches right and left of ours. Our Chasseurs had been posted in that particular section so that in case of attack they might form a solid base for the Territorials to rely upon. They did not conceal their confidence in our men or their admiration for them; and their officers had no scruples in asking for our advice when difficult cases arose. In fact, that very afternoon the captain commanding the company to our right had come to my dug-out to arrange with me about the patrols that had to be sent that night in advance of the line.
Wrapped in our cloaks, we came out of our warm retreat. The night was just like the previous one, starlit, bright, and frosty, a true Christmas night for times of peace. In our trenches one half of the men were awake, in obedience to orders. Carbines were loaded and placed in the loopholes, and the guns were trained upon the enemy. In front of us, at the end of the narrow passages which led out to the listening posts, I knew that our sentries were alert with eye and ear, crouching in their holes in pairs. No one could approach the broad network of wire which protected us without being immediately perceived and shot. At the bottom of the trenches the men on watch were talking softly together and stamping on the ground to combat the intense cold.
Those who were at rest, lying close together at the bottom of the little dug-outs they had made for themselves in the bank, were sleeping or trying to sleep. More than one of them had succeeded, for resounding snores could be heard behind the blankets, pieces of tent canvas and sacking, and all the various rags with which they had ingeniously stuffed up the entrances to their rustic alcoves. One wondered how they could have overcome the sufferings the cold must have caused them so far as to be able to sleep calmly. The five months of war had hardened their bodies and accustomed them to face cold, heat, rain, dust, or mud, with impunity. In this hard school, better than in any other, men of iron are fashioned, who last out a whole campaign and are capable of the supreme effort when the hour comes.
We arrived at the Territorials' trench.
"Bon-soir, mon cher camarade."
It was the Second-Lieutenant whom I met at the entrance. He was a man of forty-two, thin, pale, and bearded. In the shadow his eyes shone strangely. Under the skirts of his great-coat he had his hands buried in his trouser pockets. His elbows stuck out from his body, his knees were bent, his teeth chattered, and he was gently knocking his heels together.
"It isn't warm, eh?" I asked.
"Oh, no; and then, you see, this sort of work is hardly the thing for fellows of our age. Our blood isn't warm enough, and, however you cover yourself up, there's always a chink by which the cold gets in. The worst of all is one's hands and feet; and there's nothing to be done for it. Wouldn't it be much better to trust to us, give us the order to fix bayonets and drive those Boches out of their trenches over there? You'd see if the Territorials couldn't do it as well as the Regulars.... And then one would have a chance of getting warm."
I felt sure that he spoke the truth, and that his opinion was shared by the majority of his companions. But our good comrades of the Territorial Force have no conception of the vigour, the suppleness, and of the fulness of youth required to charge up to the enemy's line under concentrated fire and to cut the complex network of barbed wire that bars the road. Our chiefs were well advised in placing these troops where they were, in those lines of trenches
scientifically constructed and protected, where their courage and tenacity would be invaluable in case of attack, and where they would know better than any others how to carry out the orders given to us: "Hold on till death." Leave to the young soldiers the sublime and perilous task of rushing upon the enemy when he is hidden behind the shelter of his fougades, his parapets, and his artificial brambles; and entrust to the brave Territorials the more obscure but not less glorious work of mounting guard along our front.
I could make them out in the moonlight, standing silent and alert, in groups of two or three. Perched on the ledge of earth which raised them to the height of the parapet, they had their eyes wide open in the darkness, looking towards the enemy. Their loaded rifles were placed in front of them, between two clods of hardened earth. They neither complained nor uttered a word, but suffered nobly. They understand that they must. Ah! where now were the fine tirades of pothouse orators and public meetings? Where now were the oaths to revolt, the solemn denials and the blasphemies pronounced against the Fatherland? All was forgotten, wiped out from the records. If we could have questioned those men who stood there shivering, chilled to the bone, watching over the safety of the country, not one of them, certainly, would have confessed that he was ever one of the renegades of yore. And yet if one were to search among the bravest, among the most resigned, among the best, thousands of them would be discovered.
Heaven grant that this miracle, wrought by the war, may be prolonged far beyond the days of the struggle, and then we shall not think that our brothers' blood has been spilt in vain.
We brushed past them, but they did not even turn round. Eyes, mind, and will were absorbed in the dark mystery of the silent landscape stretching out before them. But the night, though it was so bright, gave everything a strange appearance; transformed all living things and increased their size; made the stones, the stacks, and the trees move, as it seemed to our weary eyes; cast fitful shadows where there were none; and made us hear murmurs which sounded like the muffled tramp of troops marching cautiously. Those men watched because they felt that there was always the danger of a surprise attack, of a sudden rush of Teutons who had crawled up through the grass of the fields. They had piled on their backs empty sacks, blankets, and old rags, for warmth, and wound their mufflers two or three times round their necks; they had taken all possible precautions for carrying out their duty to the very last. And although our hearts had been hardened by the unprecedented miseries of this war, we were seized with pity and admiration. Presently one of them turned round and said to us:
"Hallo! They are lighting up over there now."
I jumped up on to the ledge and saw, in fact, lights shining in three different places some way off. After looking attentively I guessed the meaning of this quite unusual illumination in the rear of the trenches. The lights came from some large fir-trees, placed there under cover of night, and beautifully lighted up. With my glasses I could make them out distinctly, and even the figures dancing round them; and we could hear their voices and shouts of merriment. How well they had arranged the whole thing! They had even gone as far as to light up their Christmas trees with electricity, so as to prevent our gunners from using them as an easy target. In fact, every few minutes all the lights on a tree were suddenly put out, and only appeared some minutes afterwards.
We had thrilled instinctively. Suddenly there arose, all over the wide plain, solemn and melodious singing. We still remembered singing of a similar kind we had recently heard at Bixschoote on a tragic occasion; and here were the same tuneful voices again, singing a hymn of the same kind as those they sang further to the north before shouting their hurrahs for the attack. But we did not fear anything of that kind now. We had the impression that this singing was not a special prayer in front of our little sector of trenches, but that it was general, and extended without limits over the whole of our provinces violated by the enemy: over Champagne, Lorraine, and Picardy, resounding from the North Sea to the Rhine.
The Territorial trench was full of noiseless animation. The men came up out of their little dug-outs without a word, and the whole company was soon perched upon the ledge. There was a silence among our men, as if each man felt uneasy or perhaps jealous of what was going on over there. Then, as if to order, along the line of the German trenches other hymns rang out, and one choir seemed to answer the other. The singing became general. Quite close to us, in the trenches themselves, in the distance, round their brightly lighted trees, to the right, to the left, it resounded, softened by the distance. What a stirring, nay, grandiose, impression those hymns made, floating over the vast field of death! I felt intuitively that all this had been arranged long before, that they might celebrate their Christmas with religious calm and peace.
At any other time, no doubt, many a clumsy joke would have been made, and no little abuse hurled at the singers. But all that has been changed. I divined some regret among our brave fellows that we were not taking part in a similar festival. Was it not Christmas Eve? Had we not been obliged by our duty to give up the delightful family gathering which reunites us yearly around the symbolic Yule-log? This year our mothers, our sisters, and our children were keeping up the time-honoured and pious custom alone. Why did not our larger family of to-day join in singing together around lighted fir-trees? Our Territorials did not speak; but their thoughts flew away from the trenches, and the regrets of all were fused in a common feeling of melancholy.
Little by little the singing died away, and absolute silence fell once more upon the country.
I went with G. as far as his watch-post. He had to resume his duty as officer of the watch from eleven o'clock in the evening to two o'clock in the morning. The post consisted of a kind of small blockhouse, strongly built and protected by two casemates with machine-guns placed so as to command the enemy's trenches. A machine-gunner was always on guard, and could call the others, at the slightest alarm, to work the gun. These men were quartered in a kind of tunnel hollowed out close by, and at the first signal would have been ready to open fire with their terrible engines of destruction. In the centre of the block-house a padded sentry-box was arranged made of a number of sand-bags, in which, by means of a loophole, the officer of the watch could observe the whole sector entrusted to us; and by means of a telephone station, close at hand, he could communicate at any moment with the commander of the sector at the glass-works.
G. had put on the goatskin coat handed to him by the officer he relieved. This officer was a Second-Lieutenant of Territorials, and looked completely frozen.
"Here, my dear fellow," he said, "I leave you the goatskin provided for the use of the officer on duty. I should have liked to give it you well warmed, but I feel like an icicle myself."
G. was nevertheless glad to have it. After wishing him good luck, I left him to get back to my hut, for, in spite of my cloak, the frost was taking hold of me too. The faithful Wattrelot had done his best to keep our little stove going. Profiting by La G.'s example, I stretched myself on two chairs, with my feet towards the fire. I gradually got warmer, and at the same time somewhat melancholy. What a curious Christmas Eve! Certainly I had never passed one in such a place. The walls were made of a greyish, friable earth, which still showed the marks of the pick that had been used for the excavation. The furniture was simple and not very comfortable. At the back was the bed, made out of a little straw already well tossed over by a number of sleepers. This straw was kept in by a plank fixed to the ground and forming the side of the modest couch. Against the wall, opposite the stove, was the table. This table, which had to serve for writing and feeding, and perhaps for a game of cards, this table, which was required to fill the part of all the tables of all the rooms of any house, was, strange to say, a night-table. I wondered who had brought it there, and who had chosen it. But, such as it was, it served its purpose pretty well. We used it for dinner, and found it almost comfortable, and upon it I signed a number of reports and orders. Together with the two chairs, the stove, the bed, and some nails to hang my clothes on, that table completed the furniture of the "home" where I meditated on that December night.
The candle, stuck in a bottle, flickered at the slightest breath, and threw strange shadows on the walls.
It was the hour of solitude and silence, the hour of meditation and of sadness too now and then. That evening dark thoughts were flying about in that smoky den, assailing me in crowds, and taking possession of my mind; I could not drive them away. It was one of those moments—those very fleeting moments!—when courage seems to fail, and one gives way with a kind of bitter satisfaction. I remembered that months and months had passed since I had seen any of those belonging to me, and I conjured up in my mind the picture of the Christmas Eve they were keeping, too, at that same hour, at the other end of France. And the dear, good friends I had left in Paris and in Rouen—where were they at that moment? What were they doing? Were they thinking of me? How I should have liked to enjoy the wonderful power possessed by certain heroes in the Arabian Nights, which would have allowed me to see at that moment a vision of the loved ones far away. Were they talking about me, sitting together round the fire? I thought that this war had been a splendid thing to us Chasseurs as long as we were fighting as cavalry, scouring the plains, searching the woods, galloping in advance of our infantry, and bringing them information which enabled them to deal their blows or parry those of the enemy, trying to come up with the Prussian cavalry which fled before us. But this trench warfare, this warfare in which one stays for days and days in the same position, in which ground is gained yard by yard, in which artifice tries to outdo artifice, in which each side clings to the ground it has won, digs into it, buries itself in it, and dies in it sooner than give it up! What warfare for cavalry! We have devoted ourselves to it with all our hearts, and the chiefs who have had us under their orders have never failed to commend us; but at times we feel very weary, and during inaction and solitude our imaginations begin to work. Then we recall our regiment in full gallop over field and plain; we hear the clank of swords and bits; we see once more the flash of the blades, the motley line of the horses; we evoke the well-known figures of our chiefs on their chargers. That night my mind became more restless than ever before; it broke loose, it leapt away, and lived again the unforgettable stages of this war: Charleroi, Guise, the Marne, the defence of the Jaulgonne bridge, Montmirail, Reims, ... Belgium, Bixschoote; and then it fell back into the gloomy dug-out where the flame of the single candle traced disquieting shadows on the wall.
Suddenly a cold breath of air blew into my retreat. The door opened abruptly, and at the top of the steps a man, stooping over the floor of the passage, called me in an undertone:
"Mon Lieutenant, come and see.... Something is happening...."
With a bound, I sprang from my shelter and climbed up the ledge.
"Listen, mon Lieutenant."
That night in the trenches was destined to overwhelm me with astonishment, and this one surpassed all that I could imagine. I should like to be able to impart the extraordinary impression I felt; but one would have to have been there that night to be capable of realising it. Over that vast and silent plain, in which everything seemed to sleep and where no other sound was heard, there resounded from afar a voice whose notes, in spite of the distance, reached our ears. What an extraordinary thing it was! That song, vibrating through the boundless night, made our hearts beat and stirred us more than the most perfectly ordered concert given by the most famous singers.
And it was another hymn, unknown to us, coming from the German trenches far away on our left. The singer must have been standing out in the fields on the edge of their line; he must have been moving, coming towards us, and passing slowly along all the enemy's positions, for his voice came gradually nearer, and became louder and clearer. Every now and then it ceased, and then hundreds of other voices responded in chorus with some phrases which formed the refrain of the hymn. Then the soloist began again and came still nearer to us. He must have come from a considerable distance, for our Chasseurs had already heard him some time before they decided to call me. Who could this man have been, who must have been sent along the front of the troops to pray, whilst each German company waited for him, so as to join with him in prayer? Some minister, no doubt, who had come to remind the soldiers of the sanctity of that night and the solemnity of the hour.
Soon we heard the voice coming from the trenches straight in front of us. In spite of the brightness of the night, we could not distinguish the singer, for the two lines at that point were four hundred yards apart. But he was certainly not hiding himself, for his deep voice would never have sounded so rich and clear to us had he been singing at the bottom of their trenches. Again it ceased. And then the Germans directly in front of us, the soldiers occupying the works opposite ours, those men whom we were bound to kill so soon as they appeared, and whose duty it was to shoot us so soon as we showed ourselves—those men calmly took up the refrain of the hymn, with its sweet and mysterious words. They too must have come to the edge of their trench and struck up their hymn with their faces towards us, for their notes came to us clearly and distinctly.
I looked along the line of our trench. All our men too were awake and looking on. They had all got on to the ledge, and several had left the trench and were in the field, listening to the unexpected concert. No one was offended by it; no one laughed at it. Rather was there a trace of regret in the attitudes and the faces of those who were nearest to me. And yet it would have been such a simple matter to put an end to that scene; a volley fired by the troop there, and it would all stop, and drop back into the quiet of other nights. But nobody thought of such a thing. There was not one of our Chasseurs who would not have considered it a sacrilege to fire upon those praying soldiers. We felt indeed that there are hours when one can forget that one is there to kill. This would not prevent us from doing our duty immediately afterwards.
The voice drew farther away, and retreated slowly and majestically towards the trenches situated at the place known as the "Troopers of C.'s" ground, where our two lines approached each other within a distance of fifty yards. How much more touching the sight must have been from there! I wished my post had been in that direction, so that I might have been present at the scene, might have heard the words and distinguished the figure of the pastor walking along the parapets made for hurling out death, and blessing those who the next day might be no more.
Ping! A shot was heard....
The stupid bullet which had perhaps found its mark? At once there was dead silence, not a cry, not an oath, not a groan. Some one had thought he was doing well by firing on that man. A pity! We should gain nothing by preventing them from keeping Christmas in their own way, and it would have been a nobler thing to reserve our blows for other hecatombs. I know that the barbarians would not have hesitated had they been in our place, and that so many of our priests had fallen under their strokes that they could not reasonably have reproached us. There are people who will say that our hatred should embrace everything German; that we should be implacable towards everything bearing that name, and spare none of the execrated race which has been the cause of so many tears, so much blood, so much mourning. Never mind!... I think in this case it would have been better not to have shot....
A shot fired, not far from us, on our left brought me up from my shelter. It seemed strange after the complete calm of that night. It was seven o'clock. The sun was magnificent, and had already bathed the deserted plain, the fields, the heights of S., and the ruined village. In the distance, towards the east, the towers of the cathedral of R. stood out proudly against the golden sky. I looked and saw all my Chasseurs standing on the ledges watching with interest a scene which seemed to be going on in front of the trenches occupied on our left by the Territorials.
I got up by the side of one of them, and he explained to me what was happening.
"Mon Lieutenant, it's the infantry fellows who have just killed a hare that ran between the two lines, and they're going to fetch it...."
And in fact I saw this strange sight: two men had gone out in full daylight from their trenches and were advancing with hesitating steps towards the enemy's. Behind them were a hundred inquisitive heads, looking out above the embrasures arranged between the sacks of earth. A few soldiers, who had come out of the trench, were even sitting on the bank of chalky earth. It was certainly such a scene as I had hardly expected to witness. What was the captain of the company occupying the trench doing?
But my astonishment became stupefaction when I saw the hundreds of heads that fringed the enemy's trenches. I at once sent G. and a non-commissioned officer with the following order to all our men:
"No one is to show himself.... Every man to his fighting post!... Carbines loaded and ready to fire!"
The Germans opposite became suspicious on seeing our line so silent, and no man showing himself; they, too, waited on the alert behind their loopholes. But along the rest of their front their men kept on coming out from their trenches unarmed, and making merry and friendly gestures. I became uneasy, and wondered how this unexpected comedy might end. Ought I to have those men fired upon who were not quite opposite to us, and whose opponents seemed rather inclined to make a Christmas truce?
Our two infantrymen had come to the spot where the hare had fallen, very nearly half-way between the French and the German lines. One of them stooped down and got up again proudly brandishing his victim in the enemy's faces. At once there was a burst of applause from the German lines. They called out: "Kameraden! Kameraden!"
This was going too far. I saw two unarmed Prussians leave their trench and come forward, with their hands raised towards the two Frenchmen, so I consulted G.: "Ought we to fire? I confess it would be rather unpleasant for me to order our fellows to fire upon these unarmed men. On the other hand, can we allow the least intercourse between the barbarous nation that is still treading our soil and our good brothers-in-arms who are pouring out their blood every day to reconquer it?"
Fortunately, the officer who commanded the Saint Thierry artillery, and who had observed this scene with his glasses, spared me a decision which would have been painful to me.
Pong! Pong! Pong! Pong!
Four shells passed, hissing, over our heads, and burst with admirable precision two hundred yards above the German trenches. The artillery officer seemed to have placed with a delicate hand the four little white puffs of smoke which, equidistant from each other, appeared to mark out the bounds in the heavens of the frontier line he wished to forbid the enemy to pass on the earth. The Germans did not fail to understand this graceful warning. With cries of rage and protest, they ran back to their shelters, and our Frenchmen did the same.
And, as though to mark the intentional kindness of what he had just done, hardly had the last of the spiked helmets disappeared behind the parapets, when again the same hissing noise was heard, and, pong! pong! pong! pong! four shells dropped, this time full upon the whitish line formed along the green plain by the upturned earth of their trenches. In the midst of the smoke, earth and rubbish of all kinds were seen flying. Our Chasseurs cried "Bravo!" Everyone felt that the best solution had been found, and rejoiced at this termination of the brief Christmas truce.
And now our minds were free to rejoice in the great day itself in company with our good troopers. In the night there had arrived, well packed in smart hampers, the bottles of champagne which Major B. had presented to his men, and we were looking forward to the time, only a few hours hence, when the soup would be upon the table, and we should keep our Christmas by letting off the corks in the direction of the German trenches.
Our young fellow-officers were already anticipating this peaceful salvo, which would certainly be heard by the enemy. "
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Christmas - 1914 in Russia
Miss Violetta Thurston, was an English nurse who went to Belgium with a 'Flying Column' early in the war and was subsequently ordered by the Germans to leave Brussels when it fell. She was sent across Germany, having a tedious and uncomfortable journey, and when at Copenhagen she offered her services to the Russian Red Cross. Her offer was accepted, and she went to Lodz, where she was posted to a hospital in what was once a girls’ day school.
Her book 'Field Hospital and Flying Column, Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia' is available on line at Project Gutenberg. It is a fasinating and informative narrative of her part in the war. This extract describes her experience of Christmas 1914 in Russia, with a Christmas Day meal of roast horse and boiled potatoes: -
"We had left Zyradow rather quiet, but when we came back we found the cannon going hard, both from the Radzivilow and the Goosof direction. It would have taken much more than cannon to keep us awake, however, and we lay down most gratefully on our stretchers in the empty room at the Red Cross Bureau and slept. A forty-eight hours' spell is rather long for the staff, though probably there would have been great difficulty in changing the Columns more often.
I woke up in the evening to hear the church bells ringing, and remembered that it was Christmas Eve and that they were ringing for the Midnight Mass, so I got up quickly. The large church was packed with people, every one of the little side chapels was full and people were even sitting on the altar steps. There must have been three or four thousand people there, most of them of course the people of the place, but also soldiers, Red Cross workers and many refugees mostly from Lowice. Poor people, it was a sad Christmas for them—having lost so much already and not knowing from day to day if they would lose all, as at that time it was a question whether or not the Russian authorities would decide for strategic reasons to fall back once more.
And then twelve o'clock struck and the Mass began.
Soon a young priest got up into the pulpit and gave them a little sermon. It was in Polish, but though I could not understand the words, I could tell from the people's faces what it was about. When he spoke of the horrors of war, the losses and the deaths and the suffering that had come to so many of them, one woman put her apron to her face and sobbed aloud in the tense silence. And in a moment the whole congregation began sobbing and moaning and swaying themselves to and fro. The young priest stopped and left them alone a moment or two, and then began to speak in a low persuasive voice. I do not know what he said, but he gradually soothed them and made them happy. And then the organ began pealing out triumphantly, and while the guns crashed and thundered outside, the choir within sang of peace and goodwill to all men.
Christmas Day was a very mournful one for us, as we heard of the loss of our new and best automobile, which had just been given as a present to the Column. One of the boys was taking it to Warsaw from Skiernevice with some wounded officers, and it had broken down just outside the village. The mud was awful, and with the very greatest difficulty they managed to get it towed as far as Rawa, but had to finally abandon it to the Germans, though fortunately they got off safely themselves. It was a great blow to the Column, as it was impossible to replace it, these big ambulance cars costing something like 8000 roubles.
So our Christmas dinner eaten at our usual dirty little restaurant could not be called a success.
Food was very scarce at that time in Zyradow; there was hardly any meat or sugar, and no milk or eggs or white bread. One of us had brought a cake for Christmas from Warsaw weeks before, and it was partaken of on this melancholy occasion without enthusiasm. Even the punch made out of a teaspoonful of brandy from the bottom of Princess's flask mixed with about a pint of water and two lumps of sugar failed to move us to any hilarity. Our menu did not vary in any particular from that usually provided at the restaurant, though we did feel we might have had a clean cloth for once.
Menu - Christmas 1914
Gravy Soup
Roast Horse, Boiled Potatoes
Currant Cake
Tea Punch
We were very glad to go up to Radzivilow once more. Our former dressing-station had been abandoned as too dangerous for staff and patients, and the dressing- and operating-room was now in a train about five versts down the line from Radzivilow station. Our train was a permanency on the line, and we lived and worked in it, while twice a day an ambulance train came up, our wounded were transferred to it and taken away, and we filled up once more. We found things fairly quiet this time when we went up. The Germans had been making some very fierce attacks, trying to cross the river Rawka, and therefore their losses must have been very heavy, but the Russians were merely holding their ground, and so there were comparatively few wounded on our side. This time we were able to divide up into shifts for the work—a luxury we were very seldom able to indulge in.
We had previously made great friends with a Siberian captain, and we found to our delight that he was living in a little hut close to our train. He asked me one day if I would like to go up to the positions with him and take some Christmas presents round to the men. Of course I was more than delighted, and as he was going up that night and I was not on duty, the general very kindly gave permission for me to go up too. In the end Colonel S. and one of the Russian Sisters accompanied us as well. The captain got a rough cart and horse to take us part of the way, and he and another man rode on horseback beside us. We started off about ten o'clock, a very bright moonlight night—so bright that we had to take off our brassards and anything that could have shown up white against the dark background of the woods. We drove as far as the pine-woods in which the Russian positions were, and left the cart and horses in charge of a Cossack while we were away. The general had intended that we should see the reserve trenches, but we had seen plenty of them before, and our captain meant that we should see all the fun that was going, so he took us right up to the front positions. We went through the wood silently in single file, taking care that if possible not even a twig should crackle under our feet, till we came to the very front trenches at the edge of the wood. We crouched down and watched for some time. Everything was brilliantly illuminated by the moonlight, and we had to be very careful not to show ourselves. A very fierce German attack was going on, and the bullets were pattering like hail on the trees all round us. We could see nothing for some time but the smoke of the rifles.
The Germans were only about a hundred yards away from us at this time, and we could see the river Rawka glittering below in the moonlight. What an absurd little river to have so much fighting about. That night it looked as if we could easily wade across it. The captain made a sign, and we crept with him along the edge of the wood, till we got to a Siberian officer's dug-out. At first we could not see anything, then we saw a hole between two bushes, and after slithering backwards down the hole, we got into a sort of cave that had been roofed in with poles and branches, and was absolutely invisible a few steps away. It was fearfully hot and frowzy—a little stove in the corner threw out a great heat, and the men all began to smoke, which made it worse.
We stayed a while talking, and then crawled along to visit one of the men's dug-outs, a German bullet just missing us as we passed, and burying itself in a tree. There were six men already in the dug-out, so we did not attempt to get in, but gave them tobacco and matches, for which they were very grateful. These men had an "ikon" or sacred picture hanging up inside their cave; the Russian soldiers on active service carry a regimental ikon, and many carry them in their pockets too. One man had his life saved by his ikon. He showed it to us; the bullet had gone just between the Mother and the Child, and was embedded in the wood.
It was all intensely interesting, and we left the positions with great reluctance, to return through the moonlit pine-woods till we reached our cart. We had indeed made a night of it, for it was five o'clock in the morning when we got back to the train once more, and both the doctor and I were on duty again at eight. But it was well worth losing a night's sleep to go up to the positions during a violent German attack. I wonder what the general would have said if he had known!
We finished our forty-eight hours' duty and returned once more to Zyradow. I was always loth to leave Radzivilow. The work there was splendid, and there more than anywhere else I have been to one feels the war as a High Adventure.
War would be the most glorious game in the world if it were not for the killing and wounding. In it one tastes the joy of comradeship to the full, the taking and giving, and helping and being helped in a way that would be impossible to conceive in the ordinary world. At Radzivilow, too, one could see the poetry of war, the zest of the frosty mornings, and the delight of the camp-fire at night, the warm, clean smell of the horses tethered everywhere, the keen hunger, the rough food sweetened by the sauce of danger, the riding out in high hope in the morning; even the returning wounded in the evening did not seem altogether such a bad thing out there. One has to die some time, and the Russian peasants esteem it a high honour to die for their "little Mother" as they call their country. The vision of the High Adventure is not often vouchsafed to one, but it is a good thing to have had it—it carries one through many a night at the shambles.
Her book 'Field Hospital and Flying Column, Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia' is available on line at Project Gutenberg. It is a fasinating and informative narrative of her part in the war. This extract describes her experience of Christmas 1914 in Russia, with a Christmas Day meal of roast horse and boiled potatoes: -
"We had left Zyradow rather quiet, but when we came back we found the cannon going hard, both from the Radzivilow and the Goosof direction. It would have taken much more than cannon to keep us awake, however, and we lay down most gratefully on our stretchers in the empty room at the Red Cross Bureau and slept. A forty-eight hours' spell is rather long for the staff, though probably there would have been great difficulty in changing the Columns more often.
I woke up in the evening to hear the church bells ringing, and remembered that it was Christmas Eve and that they were ringing for the Midnight Mass, so I got up quickly. The large church was packed with people, every one of the little side chapels was full and people were even sitting on the altar steps. There must have been three or four thousand people there, most of them of course the people of the place, but also soldiers, Red Cross workers and many refugees mostly from Lowice. Poor people, it was a sad Christmas for them—having lost so much already and not knowing from day to day if they would lose all, as at that time it was a question whether or not the Russian authorities would decide for strategic reasons to fall back once more.
And then twelve o'clock struck and the Mass began.
Soon a young priest got up into the pulpit and gave them a little sermon. It was in Polish, but though I could not understand the words, I could tell from the people's faces what it was about. When he spoke of the horrors of war, the losses and the deaths and the suffering that had come to so many of them, one woman put her apron to her face and sobbed aloud in the tense silence. And in a moment the whole congregation began sobbing and moaning and swaying themselves to and fro. The young priest stopped and left them alone a moment or two, and then began to speak in a low persuasive voice. I do not know what he said, but he gradually soothed them and made them happy. And then the organ began pealing out triumphantly, and while the guns crashed and thundered outside, the choir within sang of peace and goodwill to all men.
Christmas Day was a very mournful one for us, as we heard of the loss of our new and best automobile, which had just been given as a present to the Column. One of the boys was taking it to Warsaw from Skiernevice with some wounded officers, and it had broken down just outside the village. The mud was awful, and with the very greatest difficulty they managed to get it towed as far as Rawa, but had to finally abandon it to the Germans, though fortunately they got off safely themselves. It was a great blow to the Column, as it was impossible to replace it, these big ambulance cars costing something like 8000 roubles.
So our Christmas dinner eaten at our usual dirty little restaurant could not be called a success.
Food was very scarce at that time in Zyradow; there was hardly any meat or sugar, and no milk or eggs or white bread. One of us had brought a cake for Christmas from Warsaw weeks before, and it was partaken of on this melancholy occasion without enthusiasm. Even the punch made out of a teaspoonful of brandy from the bottom of Princess's flask mixed with about a pint of water and two lumps of sugar failed to move us to any hilarity. Our menu did not vary in any particular from that usually provided at the restaurant, though we did feel we might have had a clean cloth for once.
Menu - Christmas 1914
Gravy Soup
Roast Horse, Boiled Potatoes
Currant Cake
Tea Punch
We were very glad to go up to Radzivilow once more. Our former dressing-station had been abandoned as too dangerous for staff and patients, and the dressing- and operating-room was now in a train about five versts down the line from Radzivilow station. Our train was a permanency on the line, and we lived and worked in it, while twice a day an ambulance train came up, our wounded were transferred to it and taken away, and we filled up once more. We found things fairly quiet this time when we went up. The Germans had been making some very fierce attacks, trying to cross the river Rawka, and therefore their losses must have been very heavy, but the Russians were merely holding their ground, and so there were comparatively few wounded on our side. This time we were able to divide up into shifts for the work—a luxury we were very seldom able to indulge in.
We had previously made great friends with a Siberian captain, and we found to our delight that he was living in a little hut close to our train. He asked me one day if I would like to go up to the positions with him and take some Christmas presents round to the men. Of course I was more than delighted, and as he was going up that night and I was not on duty, the general very kindly gave permission for me to go up too. In the end Colonel S. and one of the Russian Sisters accompanied us as well. The captain got a rough cart and horse to take us part of the way, and he and another man rode on horseback beside us. We started off about ten o'clock, a very bright moonlight night—so bright that we had to take off our brassards and anything that could have shown up white against the dark background of the woods. We drove as far as the pine-woods in which the Russian positions were, and left the cart and horses in charge of a Cossack while we were away. The general had intended that we should see the reserve trenches, but we had seen plenty of them before, and our captain meant that we should see all the fun that was going, so he took us right up to the front positions. We went through the wood silently in single file, taking care that if possible not even a twig should crackle under our feet, till we came to the very front trenches at the edge of the wood. We crouched down and watched for some time. Everything was brilliantly illuminated by the moonlight, and we had to be very careful not to show ourselves. A very fierce German attack was going on, and the bullets were pattering like hail on the trees all round us. We could see nothing for some time but the smoke of the rifles.
The Germans were only about a hundred yards away from us at this time, and we could see the river Rawka glittering below in the moonlight. What an absurd little river to have so much fighting about. That night it looked as if we could easily wade across it. The captain made a sign, and we crept with him along the edge of the wood, till we got to a Siberian officer's dug-out. At first we could not see anything, then we saw a hole between two bushes, and after slithering backwards down the hole, we got into a sort of cave that had been roofed in with poles and branches, and was absolutely invisible a few steps away. It was fearfully hot and frowzy—a little stove in the corner threw out a great heat, and the men all began to smoke, which made it worse.
We stayed a while talking, and then crawled along to visit one of the men's dug-outs, a German bullet just missing us as we passed, and burying itself in a tree. There were six men already in the dug-out, so we did not attempt to get in, but gave them tobacco and matches, for which they were very grateful. These men had an "ikon" or sacred picture hanging up inside their cave; the Russian soldiers on active service carry a regimental ikon, and many carry them in their pockets too. One man had his life saved by his ikon. He showed it to us; the bullet had gone just between the Mother and the Child, and was embedded in the wood.
It was all intensely interesting, and we left the positions with great reluctance, to return through the moonlit pine-woods till we reached our cart. We had indeed made a night of it, for it was five o'clock in the morning when we got back to the train once more, and both the doctor and I were on duty again at eight. But it was well worth losing a night's sleep to go up to the positions during a violent German attack. I wonder what the general would have said if he had known!
We finished our forty-eight hours' duty and returned once more to Zyradow. I was always loth to leave Radzivilow. The work there was splendid, and there more than anywhere else I have been to one feels the war as a High Adventure.
War would be the most glorious game in the world if it were not for the killing and wounding. In it one tastes the joy of comradeship to the full, the taking and giving, and helping and being helped in a way that would be impossible to conceive in the ordinary world. At Radzivilow, too, one could see the poetry of war, the zest of the frosty mornings, and the delight of the camp-fire at night, the warm, clean smell of the horses tethered everywhere, the keen hunger, the rough food sweetened by the sauce of danger, the riding out in high hope in the morning; even the returning wounded in the evening did not seem altogether such a bad thing out there. One has to die some time, and the Russian peasants esteem it a high honour to die for their "little Mother" as they call their country. The vision of the High Adventure is not often vouchsafed to one, but it is a good thing to have had it—it carries one through many a night at the shambles.
Radzivilow is the only place it came to me. In Belgium one's heart was wrung by the poignancy of it all, its littleness and defencelessness; in Lodz one could see nothing for the squalor and "frightfulness"; in other places the ruined villages, the flight of the dazed, terrified peasants show one of the darkest sides of war."
(Miss Violetta Thurston was born Anna Violet Thurstan in Hastings in 1879, the daughter of Dr. Edward Paget Thurstan. She trained as a nurse at The London Hospital, and The Children’s Hospital, Shadwell, at that time using the name Violet Thurstan.
Educated in France and Germany she spoke these languages fluently. Before the war she was prominent in her profession as an administrator, organiser and lecturer, and was highly respected by both the nursing and medical professions. She became the one of the most ‘high profile’ of all nurses who served in the Great War and from the early days her name was rarely out of the nursing press, and she wrote long letters, which were published week by week).
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Christmas - 1914 for Captain Noel Chavasse
Christmas 1914 and the 10th Battalion the Kings (Liverpool Regiment) was in reserve in Belgium, near the village of Kemmel. Captain Noel Godfrey Chavasse was serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps as Medical Officer to the 10th Battalion the Kings (Liverpool Regiment) – the Liverpool Scottish.
In her book ‘Chavasse Double VC’ Ann Clayton describes Noel Chavasse’s first Christmas in the war. Of course, only a few miles away other soldier’s were taking part in the famous Christmas Truce.
“Life was more agreeable In Christmas 1914. The battalion had the good fortune not to be in the line on 25 December. On Christmas Eve Noel was in billet in a ruined building with (Lieutenant) McKinnell, and the two of them slept head to foot on a small mattress. When they woke, they went out for their usual cold baths, but decided not to bother in view of the freezing temperature. At midday the battalion paraded in a nearby field and received gifts of chocolate, Oxo cubes, writing paper and pencil set, sent out from Liverpool by the wives and relations of the officers. The Commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Davidson, said there was only one thing he wanted to know – were they downhearted? The whole battalion roared ‘NO!’
The battalion pipes were borrowed from the store at St. Omer, and bagpipes were not usually permitted. Only four pipes turned out, the fifth piper having been killed the previous day. Their uniforms were tattered and torn, but the men pressed them to play again and again. A carol was sung, then up galloped a pair of horses and a transport wagon full of Princess Mary’s Christmas gift tins, each containing pipe and tobacco and there was Christmas card for every man from the King and Queen. Lord Derby, by now Director-General of Recruiting, but with a special interest in the Liverpool battalions, had sent a plum pudding for all ranks and for the offices a hamper containing green turtles, ready-to-eat turkeys and cigars.
There was also a cigar for each of the non-commissioned officers. The men had special rations of rum, bread and fresh meat. More than 250 sacks of mail had been received, containing foodstuffs – so much, in fact, the Sam Moulton was sick after eating too much. Indeed, normal daily rations were not drawn by most men for the next day or two, they received so much food from home.”
(Noel Godfrey Chavasse was the younger of two identical twin boys born to the Rev. Francis James Chavasse (later Bishop of Liverpool and founder of St. Peter's College, Oxford) and Edith Jane Chavasse (nee Maude) on Sunday 9th November, 1884 at 36 New Inn Hall Street, Oxford.
He was educated at Magdalen College School in Cowley Place, Oxford, Liverpool College and Trinity College, Oxford. On 3rd March, 1900, Rev. Chavasse was offered the Anglican Bishopric of Liverpool. The family moved to the Bishop's Palace at 19 Abercromby Square, Liverpool. Noel and Christopher went to school at Liverpool College where they excelled at sports from the start. Their academic progress was initially rather slower but as they grew older, both did well until in 1904, both were admitted to Trinity College, Oxford.
In January 1909, Noel joined the Oxford University Officer Training Corps Medical Unit. By the following May, he was promoted to lance-sergeant.
In early 1913, after discussions with some of his fellow doctors, he applied for and was accepted by the Royal Army Medical Corps (R.A.M.C.) and thanks to one of his mentors, a Dr McAlistair, who was then Surgeon-Captain of the 10th Battalion of the Kings (Liverpool Regiment), the Liverpool Scottish, he was attached to the battalion as surgeon-lieutenant. The 10th Kings had been a Territorial Battalion since the Haldane Reforms in 1909. He joined the battalion on 2nd June, 1913 and was welcomed by Lieutenant-Colonel W. Nicholl, the Commanding Officer. As an officer in a Territorial unit, Chavasse now had to attend to both his civilian and military duties.
When the First World War started, he was a captain with the Royal Army Medical Corps, British Army attached to the 1/10th (Scottish) Battalion of the King's (Liverpool Regiment).
Chavasse was first awarded the VC for his actions on August 9, 1916, at Guillemont, France. His second VC award was made during the period July 31 to August 2, 1917, at Wieltje, Belgium. Chavasse died of his wounds on August 4th 1917 and is buried at Brandhoek New Military Cemetery, Vlamertinge).
For more information about Captain Noel Godfrey Chavasse you can visit these two websites:
Wikipedia or Chavasse.u-net.com or buy the excellent book 'Chavasse Double VC’ by Ann Clayton at Amazon.co.uk
In her book ‘Chavasse Double VC’ Ann Clayton describes Noel Chavasse’s first Christmas in the war. Of course, only a few miles away other soldier’s were taking part in the famous Christmas Truce.
“Life was more agreeable In Christmas 1914. The battalion had the good fortune not to be in the line on 25 December. On Christmas Eve Noel was in billet in a ruined building with (Lieutenant) McKinnell, and the two of them slept head to foot on a small mattress. When they woke, they went out for their usual cold baths, but decided not to bother in view of the freezing temperature. At midday the battalion paraded in a nearby field and received gifts of chocolate, Oxo cubes, writing paper and pencil set, sent out from Liverpool by the wives and relations of the officers. The Commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Davidson, said there was only one thing he wanted to know – were they downhearted? The whole battalion roared ‘NO!’
The battalion pipes were borrowed from the store at St. Omer, and bagpipes were not usually permitted. Only four pipes turned out, the fifth piper having been killed the previous day. Their uniforms were tattered and torn, but the men pressed them to play again and again. A carol was sung, then up galloped a pair of horses and a transport wagon full of Princess Mary’s Christmas gift tins, each containing pipe and tobacco and there was Christmas card for every man from the King and Queen. Lord Derby, by now Director-General of Recruiting, but with a special interest in the Liverpool battalions, had sent a plum pudding for all ranks and for the offices a hamper containing green turtles, ready-to-eat turkeys and cigars.
There was also a cigar for each of the non-commissioned officers. The men had special rations of rum, bread and fresh meat. More than 250 sacks of mail had been received, containing foodstuffs – so much, in fact, the Sam Moulton was sick after eating too much. Indeed, normal daily rations were not drawn by most men for the next day or two, they received so much food from home.”
(Noel Godfrey Chavasse was the younger of two identical twin boys born to the Rev. Francis James Chavasse (later Bishop of Liverpool and founder of St. Peter's College, Oxford) and Edith Jane Chavasse (nee Maude) on Sunday 9th November, 1884 at 36 New Inn Hall Street, Oxford.
He was educated at Magdalen College School in Cowley Place, Oxford, Liverpool College and Trinity College, Oxford. On 3rd March, 1900, Rev. Chavasse was offered the Anglican Bishopric of Liverpool. The family moved to the Bishop's Palace at 19 Abercromby Square, Liverpool. Noel and Christopher went to school at Liverpool College where they excelled at sports from the start. Their academic progress was initially rather slower but as they grew older, both did well until in 1904, both were admitted to Trinity College, Oxford.
In January 1909, Noel joined the Oxford University Officer Training Corps Medical Unit. By the following May, he was promoted to lance-sergeant.
In early 1913, after discussions with some of his fellow doctors, he applied for and was accepted by the Royal Army Medical Corps (R.A.M.C.) and thanks to one of his mentors, a Dr McAlistair, who was then Surgeon-Captain of the 10th Battalion of the Kings (Liverpool Regiment), the Liverpool Scottish, he was attached to the battalion as surgeon-lieutenant. The 10th Kings had been a Territorial Battalion since the Haldane Reforms in 1909. He joined the battalion on 2nd June, 1913 and was welcomed by Lieutenant-Colonel W. Nicholl, the Commanding Officer. As an officer in a Territorial unit, Chavasse now had to attend to both his civilian and military duties.
When the First World War started, he was a captain with the Royal Army Medical Corps, British Army attached to the 1/10th (Scottish) Battalion of the King's (Liverpool Regiment).
Chavasse was first awarded the VC for his actions on August 9, 1916, at Guillemont, France. His second VC award was made during the period July 31 to August 2, 1917, at Wieltje, Belgium. Chavasse died of his wounds on August 4th 1917 and is buried at Brandhoek New Military Cemetery, Vlamertinge).
For more information about Captain Noel Godfrey Chavasse you can visit these two websites:
Wikipedia or Chavasse.u-net.com or buy the excellent book 'Chavasse Double VC’ by Ann Clayton at Amazon.co.uk
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Christmas - The Christmas Truce 1914 as remembered by M.L.Walkinton.
Private M. L. Walkinton, a 17 year old Rifleman in the Queens Westminster Rifles took part in the famous Christmas Truce in 1914. Reflecting back years later, this is what he has to say about that famous event in his book 'Twice in a Lifetime':-
“On a quiet night, when the trenches were near enough, we used to sing to each other, sometimes alternate verses of the same tune like Hail though one despised Jesus and Deutschland, Deutschland liber alles. They often sang their own words to the tune of God Save the King. Then an officer of one side or the other would come and stop it by ordering a few rounds of fire. We used to be sporting and fire high with the first round – and so did Brother Boche. We used to shout remarks to each other, sometimes rude ones, but generally with less venom in them than a couple of London cabbies after a mild collision……
Well, goodwill and good fellowship at Christmas-time were bred in the bone, so to speak and in spite of orders and warnings one kept thinking about it. The way this Christmas feeling persisted is interesting as one of the few victories of the teaching of the Church over the teaching of the State during the whole war. It persisted with us until the word ‘Truce’ crept into conversation. It grew so strong that not a shot was fired on our bit of front after midnight of December 24th/25th until midnight of December 25th/26th.
It was weird and unearthly for everything to be suddenly still. For some time we were suspicious and careful. We were afraid that some low-down trick might be played upon us by those ‘dirty swine’ (a phrase learned from newspapers printed in the far-off security of England – not our own coining). But after half an hour nothing had happened and both sides started singing carols. We wandered about a bit, rather nervously, on the parapet and shouted across to the Germans, who were doing the same. After a time a German who spoke English came half-way across and offered to meet one of our men to arrange a twenty-four hour truce. One or two bold spirits went out to meet him and they shouted an arrangement for no firing for twenty-four hours. Dawn came and with it a return to nervousness. But no one fired. We exposed ourselves a bit and so did the ‘enemy’ and nothing happened, so everybody got up out of both lots of trenches and walked about and shouted and waved.
Then the men of the opposing sides began to drift towards each other, first as far as the barbed wire and then a few of each side scrambled through. Timidly they approached each other – unarmed, of course - until finally a German and an Englishmen met and shook hands to the sound of a happy little burst of cheering. Within a few seconds hundreds of people were shaking hands, laughing, exchanging drinks of rum and cognac, cigars and cigarettes, chocolate, sausages and so on.
I talked to a German-American who seemed a very pleasant sort of lad. He had never been to England actually, though his ship had anchored off Plymouth. We tried talking war, but I found he was full of newspaper propaganda, as I suppose I was, and we couldn’t make any sense of it. He thought that the Germans had made a successful landing in England and were marching on London. I told him that we were expected to beat Germany by Easter and he roared.
After that I think we talked about food and our respective family histories. He introduced me to his battalion sniper who had just received an Iron Cross from the Kaiser. The sniper showed it to me and seemed very proud of it. I tried to beg it, but he gave me a button of his tunic instead! Several people exchanged addresses and promised to write to each other after the war, but I don’t know if any of them did.
Christmas cards from the King and Queen were handed to every man in the battalion; a greatly appreciated gesture.
At some time during the day I went back to our lines and cooked myself some sausage which I had brought back from a local butchers the night before when on fatigue duty in Chapelle D’Armentieres. There was about eighteen inches of it – they didn’t divide it into ‘links’ like they do in England – and it was rather a disappointment owing to my poor cooking. Just before dusk we all returned to our lines and during the night we were relived by the 1st Royal Fusiliers. My platoon spent the next night or two in comfort in some newly-built and unfurnished workmen’s house in Chapelle. We were dry, we were warm and we had uninterrupted sleep. Bliss again!"
“On a quiet night, when the trenches were near enough, we used to sing to each other, sometimes alternate verses of the same tune like Hail though one despised Jesus and Deutschland, Deutschland liber alles. They often sang their own words to the tune of God Save the King. Then an officer of one side or the other would come and stop it by ordering a few rounds of fire. We used to be sporting and fire high with the first round – and so did Brother Boche. We used to shout remarks to each other, sometimes rude ones, but generally with less venom in them than a couple of London cabbies after a mild collision……
Well, goodwill and good fellowship at Christmas-time were bred in the bone, so to speak and in spite of orders and warnings one kept thinking about it. The way this Christmas feeling persisted is interesting as one of the few victories of the teaching of the Church over the teaching of the State during the whole war. It persisted with us until the word ‘Truce’ crept into conversation. It grew so strong that not a shot was fired on our bit of front after midnight of December 24th/25th until midnight of December 25th/26th.
It was weird and unearthly for everything to be suddenly still. For some time we were suspicious and careful. We were afraid that some low-down trick might be played upon us by those ‘dirty swine’ (a phrase learned from newspapers printed in the far-off security of England – not our own coining). But after half an hour nothing had happened and both sides started singing carols. We wandered about a bit, rather nervously, on the parapet and shouted across to the Germans, who were doing the same. After a time a German who spoke English came half-way across and offered to meet one of our men to arrange a twenty-four hour truce. One or two bold spirits went out to meet him and they shouted an arrangement for no firing for twenty-four hours. Dawn came and with it a return to nervousness. But no one fired. We exposed ourselves a bit and so did the ‘enemy’ and nothing happened, so everybody got up out of both lots of trenches and walked about and shouted and waved.
Then the men of the opposing sides began to drift towards each other, first as far as the barbed wire and then a few of each side scrambled through. Timidly they approached each other – unarmed, of course - until finally a German and an Englishmen met and shook hands to the sound of a happy little burst of cheering. Within a few seconds hundreds of people were shaking hands, laughing, exchanging drinks of rum and cognac, cigars and cigarettes, chocolate, sausages and so on.
I talked to a German-American who seemed a very pleasant sort of lad. He had never been to England actually, though his ship had anchored off Plymouth. We tried talking war, but I found he was full of newspaper propaganda, as I suppose I was, and we couldn’t make any sense of it. He thought that the Germans had made a successful landing in England and were marching on London. I told him that we were expected to beat Germany by Easter and he roared.
After that I think we talked about food and our respective family histories. He introduced me to his battalion sniper who had just received an Iron Cross from the Kaiser. The sniper showed it to me and seemed very proud of it. I tried to beg it, but he gave me a button of his tunic instead! Several people exchanged addresses and promised to write to each other after the war, but I don’t know if any of them did.
Christmas cards from the King and Queen were handed to every man in the battalion; a greatly appreciated gesture.
At some time during the day I went back to our lines and cooked myself some sausage which I had brought back from a local butchers the night before when on fatigue duty in Chapelle D’Armentieres. There was about eighteen inches of it – they didn’t divide it into ‘links’ like they do in England – and it was rather a disappointment owing to my poor cooking. Just before dusk we all returned to our lines and during the night we were relived by the 1st Royal Fusiliers. My platoon spent the next night or two in comfort in some newly-built and unfurnished workmen’s house in Chapelle. We were dry, we were warm and we had uninterrupted sleep. Bliss again!"
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Christmas - On board a troopship heading for Egypt.
Private William Dalton Lycett, 2063, of the 4th Field Ambulance A.I.F. enlisted on 12th September 1914, he embarked on the 22nd December 1914 at Melbourne on the H.M.A.T. “Berrima” and spent his Christmas on board boat.
This extract is from his diary which can be found online at Anzacs.net: -
Tuesday 22nd December, 1914
We broke camp at 10 a.m. and marched to the Broadmeadows Station where we entrained for Port Melbourne and boarded the S.S. Berrima which is to take us to our destination which is unknown to us at present. We left the wharf at 5 p.m. and steamed till 6.30 p.m. when we dropped anchor off Sandringham where we remained for the night.
Wednesday 23rd December, 1914
We raised anchor and steamed away at 5 a.m., reaching the heads about 7.45 a.m., after passing which we dropped the Pilot and took in tow the Australian Submarine AE2, continuing our journey in pleasant weather with no further events of note for this day.
Thursday 24th December, 1914
I forgot to state at first that the bugle sounded lights out at 9 p.m. when every man is supposed to be in his hammock. I woke on this morning after a lovely night's sleep at about 6 a.m. and on getting on deck found we had lost some time through the hawser which connected the submarine to our boat parting at 4 a.m.. This had been fixed up and we were off again but at 9.30 a.m. the same thing happened again and we had to heave to for a couple of hours while it was fixed up again. I started this morning to give a hand in the hospital at meal times. The hospital is splendid and we have at present 6 cases, all minor. The food has been splendid so far and this afternoon I was told to have my meals and to sleep in the saloon along with the rest of the tent division, up to now we had been sleeping below with the other men. We had a concert in the evening and there were some very good items.
Friday 25th December, 1914
Xmas day on the water with a church service at 10 a.m. which I could not attend as I was on duty in the hospital. We are somewhere in the Australian Bight. I had a splendid dinner pork and plum pudding being the chief items. The afternoon and evening passed away quietly with nothing else worthy of note.
Saturday 26th December, 1914
Boxing Day, we sighted a steamer which we think is the Ulysses, it has been in sight all day. I have been assisting all day while Captain Dawson has been vaccinating the troops.
Sunday 27th December, 1914
Sunday very quiet, everyone busy writing in case we touch Albany tomorrow.
Monday 28th December, 1914
Anchored outside Albany this morning about 6 a.m.. Moved to within half mile of wharf about 10 a.m. No chance of getting on shore. We finished the vaccin. this morning. A lot of the boys have been fishing over the side and have caught a lot of Mackerel, I had no line. We had a Patriotic Concert tonight.
(Will Lycett in 1910, at the age of twenty migrated to Australia from Middlesborough in the County of Durham with his parents, five brothers and one sister. He had served his apprenticeship as a boilermaker alongside his father in the Railway Workshops at Crewe in Cheshire. Four years after his arrival here war was declared and he enlisted on 12th September 1914. He survived the war and died in April 1975. )
Of all the ANZAC troops who left for the 'Great War' one in five (80,000 of them) were never to return home. So it was with the Lycett family - five served and only four came home, his brother Private Frederick James Lycett, 46th Battalion was killled in action on 18th July 1917 at Hill 63 in Belgium he was 19.
This extract is from his diary which can be found online at Anzacs.net: -
Tuesday 22nd December, 1914
We broke camp at 10 a.m. and marched to the Broadmeadows Station where we entrained for Port Melbourne and boarded the S.S. Berrima which is to take us to our destination which is unknown to us at present. We left the wharf at 5 p.m. and steamed till 6.30 p.m. when we dropped anchor off Sandringham where we remained for the night.
Wednesday 23rd December, 1914
We raised anchor and steamed away at 5 a.m., reaching the heads about 7.45 a.m., after passing which we dropped the Pilot and took in tow the Australian Submarine AE2, continuing our journey in pleasant weather with no further events of note for this day.
Thursday 24th December, 1914
I forgot to state at first that the bugle sounded lights out at 9 p.m. when every man is supposed to be in his hammock. I woke on this morning after a lovely night's sleep at about 6 a.m. and on getting on deck found we had lost some time through the hawser which connected the submarine to our boat parting at 4 a.m.. This had been fixed up and we were off again but at 9.30 a.m. the same thing happened again and we had to heave to for a couple of hours while it was fixed up again. I started this morning to give a hand in the hospital at meal times. The hospital is splendid and we have at present 6 cases, all minor. The food has been splendid so far and this afternoon I was told to have my meals and to sleep in the saloon along with the rest of the tent division, up to now we had been sleeping below with the other men. We had a concert in the evening and there were some very good items.
Friday 25th December, 1914
Xmas day on the water with a church service at 10 a.m. which I could not attend as I was on duty in the hospital. We are somewhere in the Australian Bight. I had a splendid dinner pork and plum pudding being the chief items. The afternoon and evening passed away quietly with nothing else worthy of note.
Saturday 26th December, 1914
Boxing Day, we sighted a steamer which we think is the Ulysses, it has been in sight all day. I have been assisting all day while Captain Dawson has been vaccinating the troops.
Sunday 27th December, 1914
Sunday very quiet, everyone busy writing in case we touch Albany tomorrow.
Monday 28th December, 1914
Anchored outside Albany this morning about 6 a.m.. Moved to within half mile of wharf about 10 a.m. No chance of getting on shore. We finished the vaccin. this morning. A lot of the boys have been fishing over the side and have caught a lot of Mackerel, I had no line. We had a Patriotic Concert tonight.
(Will Lycett in 1910, at the age of twenty migrated to Australia from Middlesborough in the County of Durham with his parents, five brothers and one sister. He had served his apprenticeship as a boilermaker alongside his father in the Railway Workshops at Crewe in Cheshire. Four years after his arrival here war was declared and he enlisted on 12th September 1914. He survived the war and died in April 1975. )
Of all the ANZAC troops who left for the 'Great War' one in five (80,000 of them) were never to return home. So it was with the Lycett family - five served and only four came home, his brother Private Frederick James Lycett, 46th Battalion was killled in action on 18th July 1917 at Hill 63 in Belgium he was 19.
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Christmas - Sarah Macnaughtan in Furnes, Belgium.
Christmas 1914 was also spent in the makeshift capital of the Belgians, Furnes. Sarah Macnaughtan spent a very different 1914 Christmas Day to those involved in the Christmas Truce and those encamped in the sands of Egypt.
Sarah Macnaughtan was a remarkable woman, before the war she was a well known published novelist. At the outbreak of war she volunteered with the Red Cross and joined a band of nurses led by Mrs. Stobart. She endured shelling just before the fall of Antwerp and when her fellow nurses returned to England, she stayed on in Belgium at the newly made ‘capital’ Furnes. Subsequently, in the later part of 1914 she started a Soup Kitchen for the Belgian troops.
He amazing story can be found online in ‘MY WAR EXPERIENCES IN
TWO CONTINENTS’ , also you can read about the shelling in the Antwerp Hospital here.
This is her diary of Christmas 1914, in Furnes, Belgium:-
23 December.— Yesterday I motored into Dunkirk, and did a lot of shopping. By accident our motor-car went back to Furnes without me, and there was not a bed to be had in Dunkirk! After many vicissitudes I met Captain Whiting, who gave up his room in his own house to me, and slept at the club. I was in clover for once, and nearly wept when I found my boots brushed and hot water at my door. It was so like home again.
I was leaving the station to-day when shelling began again. One shell dropped not far behind the bridge, which I had just crossed, and wrecked a house. Another fell into a boat on the canal and wounded the occupants badly. I went to tell the Belgian Sisters not to go down to the station, and I lunched at their house, and then went home till the evening work began. People are always telling one that danger is now over—a hidden gun has been discovered and captured, and there will be no more shelling. Quel blague! The shelling goes on just the same whether hidden guns are captured or not.
I can't say at present when I shall get home, because no one ever knows what is going to happen. I don't quite know who would take my place at the soup-kitchen if I were to leave.
25 December. — My Christmas Day began at midnight, when I walked home through the moonlit empty streets of Furnes. At 2 a.m. the guns began to roar, and roared all night. They say the Allies are making an attack.
I got up early and went to church in the untidy school-room at the hospital, which is called the nurses' sitting-room. Mr. Streatfield had arranged a little altar, which was quite nice, and had set some chairs in an orderly row. As much as in him lay—from the altar linen to the white artificial flowers in the vases—all was as decent as could be and there were candles and a cross. We were quite a small congregation, but another service had been held earlier, and the wounded heard Mass in their ward at 6 a.m. The priests put up an altar there, and I believe the singing was excellent. Inside we prayed for peace, and outside the guns went on firing. Prince Alexander of Teck came to our service—a big soldierly figure in the bare room.
After breakfast I went to the soup-kitchen at the station, as usual, then home—i.e., to the hospital to lunch. At 3.15 came a sort of evensong with hymns, and then we went to the civil hospital, where there was a Christmas-tree for all the Belgian refugee children. Anything more touching I never saw, and to be with them made one blind with tears. One tiny mite, with her head in bandages, and a little black shawl on, was introduced to me as "une blessée, madame." Another little boy in the hospital is always spoken of gravely as "the civilian."
Every man, woman, and child got a treat or a present or a good dinner. The wounded had turkey, and all they could eat, and the children got toys and sweets off the tree. I suppose these children are not much accustomed to presents, for their delight was almost too much for them. I have never seen such excitement! Poor mites! without homes or money, and with their relations often lost—yet little boys were gibbering over their toys, and little girls clung to big parcels, and squeaked dolls or blew trumpets. The bigger children had rather good voices, and all sang our National Anthem in English. "God save our nobbler King"—the accent was quaint, but the children sang lustily.
We had finished, and were waiting for our own Christmas dinner when shells began to fly. One came whizzing past Mr. Streatfield's store-room as I stood there with him. The next minute a little child in floods of tears came in, grasping her mother's bag, to say "Maman" had had her arm blown off. The child herself was covered with dust and dirt, and in the streets people were sheltering in doorways, and taking little runs for safety as soon as a shell had finished bursting. The bombardment lasted about an hour, and we all waited in the kitchen and listened to it. At such times, when everyone is rather strung up, someone always and continually lets things fall. A nun clattered down a pail, and Maurice the cook seemed to fling saucepan-lids on the floor.
About 8.15 the bombardment ceased, and we went in to a cheery dinner—soup, turkey, and plum-pudding, with crackers and speeches. I believe no one would have guessed we had been a bit "on the stretch."
At 9.30 I went to the station. It was very melancholy. No one was there but myself. The fires were out, or smoking badly. Everyone had been scared to death by the shells, and talked of nothing else, whereas shells should be forgotten directly. I got things in order as soon as I could and the wounded in the train got their hot soup and coffee as usual, which was a satisfaction. Then I came home alone at midnight—keeping as near the houses as I could because of possible shells—and so to bed, very cold, and rather too inclined to think about home.
26 December.— Went to the station. Oddly enough, very few wounded were there, so I came away, and had my first day at home. I got a little oil stove put in my room, wrote letters, tidied up, and thoroughly enjoyed myself.
A Taube came over and hovered above Furnes, and dropped bombs. I was at the Villa, and the family of Joos and I stood and watched it, and a nasty dangerous moth it looked away up in the sky. Presently it came over our house, so we went down to the kitchen. A few shots were fired, but the Taube was far too high up to be hit. Max, the Joos' cousin, went out and "tirait," to the admiration of the women-kind, and then, of course, "Papa" had to have a try. The two men, with their little gun and their talk and gesticulations, lent a queer touch of comic opera to the scene. The garden was so small, the men in their little hats were so suggestive of the "broken English" scene on the stage, that one could only stand and laugh.
The Joos family are quite a study, and so kind. On Christmas Eve I dined with them, and they gave me the best of all they had. There was a pheasant, which someone had given the doctor (I fancy he is a very small practitioner amongst the poor people); surely, never did a bird give more pleasure. I had known of its arrival days before by seeing Fernande, the little girl, decorated with feathers from its tail. Then the good papa must be decorated also, and these small jokes delighted the whole family to the point of ecstasy.
On Christmas Eve Monsieur Max conceived the splendid joke, carefully arranged, of presenting Madame Joos—who is young and pretty—and the doctor with two parcels, which on being opened contained the child's umbrella and a toy gun. There wasn't even a comic address on the parcels; but Yrma, the servant, carefully trained for the part, brought them in in fits of delight, and all the family laughed with joy till the tears ran down their cheeks. As they wiped their eyes, they admitted they were sick with laughter. After supper we had the pianola, played by papa; and I must say that, when one can get nothing else, this instrument gives a great deal of pleasure. One gets a sort of ache for music which is just as bad as being hungry.
Sarah Macnaughtan was a remarkable woman, before the war she was a well known published novelist. At the outbreak of war she volunteered with the Red Cross and joined a band of nurses led by Mrs. Stobart. She endured shelling just before the fall of Antwerp and when her fellow nurses returned to England, she stayed on in Belgium at the newly made ‘capital’ Furnes. Subsequently, in the later part of 1914 she started a Soup Kitchen for the Belgian troops.
He amazing story can be found online in ‘MY WAR EXPERIENCES IN
TWO CONTINENTS’ , also you can read about the shelling in the Antwerp Hospital here.
This is her diary of Christmas 1914, in Furnes, Belgium:-
23 December.— Yesterday I motored into Dunkirk, and did a lot of shopping. By accident our motor-car went back to Furnes without me, and there was not a bed to be had in Dunkirk! After many vicissitudes I met Captain Whiting, who gave up his room in his own house to me, and slept at the club. I was in clover for once, and nearly wept when I found my boots brushed and hot water at my door. It was so like home again.
I was leaving the station to-day when shelling began again. One shell dropped not far behind the bridge, which I had just crossed, and wrecked a house. Another fell into a boat on the canal and wounded the occupants badly. I went to tell the Belgian Sisters not to go down to the station, and I lunched at their house, and then went home till the evening work began. People are always telling one that danger is now over—a hidden gun has been discovered and captured, and there will be no more shelling. Quel blague! The shelling goes on just the same whether hidden guns are captured or not.
I can't say at present when I shall get home, because no one ever knows what is going to happen. I don't quite know who would take my place at the soup-kitchen if I were to leave.
25 December. — My Christmas Day began at midnight, when I walked home through the moonlit empty streets of Furnes. At 2 a.m. the guns began to roar, and roared all night. They say the Allies are making an attack.
I got up early and went to church in the untidy school-room at the hospital, which is called the nurses' sitting-room. Mr. Streatfield had arranged a little altar, which was quite nice, and had set some chairs in an orderly row. As much as in him lay—from the altar linen to the white artificial flowers in the vases—all was as decent as could be and there were candles and a cross. We were quite a small congregation, but another service had been held earlier, and the wounded heard Mass in their ward at 6 a.m. The priests put up an altar there, and I believe the singing was excellent. Inside we prayed for peace, and outside the guns went on firing. Prince Alexander of Teck came to our service—a big soldierly figure in the bare room.
After breakfast I went to the soup-kitchen at the station, as usual, then home—i.e., to the hospital to lunch. At 3.15 came a sort of evensong with hymns, and then we went to the civil hospital, where there was a Christmas-tree for all the Belgian refugee children. Anything more touching I never saw, and to be with them made one blind with tears. One tiny mite, with her head in bandages, and a little black shawl on, was introduced to me as "une blessée, madame." Another little boy in the hospital is always spoken of gravely as "the civilian."
Every man, woman, and child got a treat or a present or a good dinner. The wounded had turkey, and all they could eat, and the children got toys and sweets off the tree. I suppose these children are not much accustomed to presents, for their delight was almost too much for them. I have never seen such excitement! Poor mites! without homes or money, and with their relations often lost—yet little boys were gibbering over their toys, and little girls clung to big parcels, and squeaked dolls or blew trumpets. The bigger children had rather good voices, and all sang our National Anthem in English. "God save our nobbler King"—the accent was quaint, but the children sang lustily.
We had finished, and were waiting for our own Christmas dinner when shells began to fly. One came whizzing past Mr. Streatfield's store-room as I stood there with him. The next minute a little child in floods of tears came in, grasping her mother's bag, to say "Maman" had had her arm blown off. The child herself was covered with dust and dirt, and in the streets people were sheltering in doorways, and taking little runs for safety as soon as a shell had finished bursting. The bombardment lasted about an hour, and we all waited in the kitchen and listened to it. At such times, when everyone is rather strung up, someone always and continually lets things fall. A nun clattered down a pail, and Maurice the cook seemed to fling saucepan-lids on the floor.
About 8.15 the bombardment ceased, and we went in to a cheery dinner—soup, turkey, and plum-pudding, with crackers and speeches. I believe no one would have guessed we had been a bit "on the stretch."
At 9.30 I went to the station. It was very melancholy. No one was there but myself. The fires were out, or smoking badly. Everyone had been scared to death by the shells, and talked of nothing else, whereas shells should be forgotten directly. I got things in order as soon as I could and the wounded in the train got their hot soup and coffee as usual, which was a satisfaction. Then I came home alone at midnight—keeping as near the houses as I could because of possible shells—and so to bed, very cold, and rather too inclined to think about home.
26 December.— Went to the station. Oddly enough, very few wounded were there, so I came away, and had my first day at home. I got a little oil stove put in my room, wrote letters, tidied up, and thoroughly enjoyed myself.
A Taube came over and hovered above Furnes, and dropped bombs. I was at the Villa, and the family of Joos and I stood and watched it, and a nasty dangerous moth it looked away up in the sky. Presently it came over our house, so we went down to the kitchen. A few shots were fired, but the Taube was far too high up to be hit. Max, the Joos' cousin, went out and "tirait," to the admiration of the women-kind, and then, of course, "Papa" had to have a try. The two men, with their little gun and their talk and gesticulations, lent a queer touch of comic opera to the scene. The garden was so small, the men in their little hats were so suggestive of the "broken English" scene on the stage, that one could only stand and laugh.
The Joos family are quite a study, and so kind. On Christmas Eve I dined with them, and they gave me the best of all they had. There was a pheasant, which someone had given the doctor (I fancy he is a very small practitioner amongst the poor people); surely, never did a bird give more pleasure. I had known of its arrival days before by seeing Fernande, the little girl, decorated with feathers from its tail. Then the good papa must be decorated also, and these small jokes delighted the whole family to the point of ecstasy.
On Christmas Eve Monsieur Max conceived the splendid joke, carefully arranged, of presenting Madame Joos—who is young and pretty—and the doctor with two parcels, which on being opened contained the child's umbrella and a toy gun. There wasn't even a comic address on the parcels; but Yrma, the servant, carefully trained for the part, brought them in in fits of delight, and all the family laughed with joy till the tears ran down their cheeks. As they wiped their eyes, they admitted they were sick with laughter. After supper we had the pianola, played by papa; and I must say that, when one can get nothing else, this instrument gives a great deal of pleasure. One gets a sort of ache for music which is just as bad as being hungry.
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Christmas - 1914 for the 8th Battalion.
While the Christmas Truce was taking place in the muddy fields of Flanders, on the other side of the world in the sands of Egypt things were very different. The 8th Battalion, of the Australian Expeditionary Army were spending their first Christmas away from home stationed at Mena Camp (with the rest of the 2nd Brigade), which was some 12 miles to the west of Cario and at the foot of the Pyramids.
Ron Austin in his book “Cobbers in Khaki” gives us this picture of Christmas 1914:-
“The 8th Battalion’s first Christmas away from home was a most forgettable one, as the Christmas dinner left a lot to be desired. Although the menu consisted of the “inevitable Stew” and rice and raisins, some of the men augmented the stark meal with buns, jams and oranges. After lunch some of the men climbed the Cheops Pyramid later had bread and jam for tea. Despite the paucity of the festivities, Private Taylor still described it as ‘a bonzer day.’ Cyril Bryant, a 24 old motor trimmer from Ballarat, dutifully wrote to his mother on Christmas Day,
“We had plenty of hard work to do, we go out in the morning at eight and come back at two and then we have the rest of the day to ourselves, that is, if we do not have to be on guard. It is very trying marching over the sand.
Just fancy mother, it is Christmas Day that I am writing this letter in Egypt, little did we know that I would be so far away from you this Xmas. We had a telegram from the people of Ballarat today, wishing as a merry Xmas. We get plenty of trench digging there…..they think there must be trouble with the Turks and the only way they can come is across the desert. I think we will be here for some time and then the France.””
Private John Pitt ‘D’ Company, 8th Battalion, (who was originally from England), in his own diary records this:-
Dec 24th Christmas Eve - on the desert, tucker pretty scarce.
Christmas Day - A lovely morning. 9 am Church parade. Issued with 2oz Havelock and tinned fish and fruit. In the afternoon we, being duty company, I was told off to go to the Garrison Military police barracks with 3 other fellows and an NCO (Cpl Craven) to fetch out a couple of prisoners to the 6th and 7th battalions. Also went to the Citadel, a poor Christmas day.
Boxing Day 1914 - Marching in the sand from 8 am till 3 pm.
Ron Austin in his book “Cobbers in Khaki” gives us this picture of Christmas 1914:-
“The 8th Battalion’s first Christmas away from home was a most forgettable one, as the Christmas dinner left a lot to be desired. Although the menu consisted of the “inevitable Stew” and rice and raisins, some of the men augmented the stark meal with buns, jams and oranges. After lunch some of the men climbed the Cheops Pyramid later had bread and jam for tea. Despite the paucity of the festivities, Private Taylor still described it as ‘a bonzer day.’ Cyril Bryant, a 24 old motor trimmer from Ballarat, dutifully wrote to his mother on Christmas Day,
“We had plenty of hard work to do, we go out in the morning at eight and come back at two and then we have the rest of the day to ourselves, that is, if we do not have to be on guard. It is very trying marching over the sand.
Just fancy mother, it is Christmas Day that I am writing this letter in Egypt, little did we know that I would be so far away from you this Xmas. We had a telegram from the people of Ballarat today, wishing as a merry Xmas. We get plenty of trench digging there…..they think there must be trouble with the Turks and the only way they can come is across the desert. I think we will be here for some time and then the France.””
Private John Pitt ‘D’ Company, 8th Battalion, (who was originally from England), in his own diary records this:-
Dec 24th Christmas Eve - on the desert, tucker pretty scarce.
Christmas Day - A lovely morning. 9 am Church parade. Issued with 2oz Havelock and tinned fish and fruit. In the afternoon we, being duty company, I was told off to go to the Garrison Military police barracks with 3 other fellows and an NCO (Cpl Craven) to fetch out a couple of prisoners to the 6th and 7th battalions. Also went to the Citadel, a poor Christmas day.
Boxing Day 1914 - Marching in the sand from 8 am till 3 pm.
Monday, December 03, 2007
Christmas - The Christmas Truce of 1914.
As the festive season comes upon us all, i thought i would post a few accounts from various sources of Christmas during the First World War.
The first is about the famous Christmas Truce of 1914. It comes from the book "Bullets & Billets" by Bruce Bairnsfather:-
"It was now nearing Christmas Day, and we knew it would fall to our lot to be back in the trenches again on the 23rd of December, and that we would, in consequence, spend our Christmas there. I remember at the time being very down on my luck about this, as anything in the nature of Christmas Day festivities was obviously knocked on the head. Now, however, looking back on it all, I wouldn't have missed that unique and weird Christmas Day for anything.
Well, as I said before, we went "in" again on the 23rd. The weather had now become very fine and cold. The dawn of the 24th brought a perfectly still, cold, frosty day. The spirit of Christmas began to permeate us all; we tried to plot ways and means of making the next day, Christmas, different in some way to others. Invitations from one dug-out to another for sundry meals were beginning to circulate. Christmas Eve was, in the way of weather, everything that Christmas Eve should be.
I was billed to appear at a dug-out about a quarter of a mile to the left that evening to have rather a special thing in trench dinners—not quite so much bully and Maconochie about as usual. A bottle of red wine and a medley of tinned things from home deputized in their absence. The day had been entirely free from shelling, and somehow we all felt that the Boches, too, wanted to be quiet. There was a kind of an invisible, intangible feeling extending across the frozen swamp between the two lines, which said "This is Christmas Eve for both of us—something in common."
About 10 p.m. I made my exit from the convivial dug-out on the left of our line and walked back to my own lair. On arriving at my own bit of trench I found several of the men standing about, and all very cheerful. There was a good bit of singing and talking going on, jokes and jibes on our curious Christmas Eve, as contrasted with any former one, were thick in the air. One of my men turned to me and said:
"You can 'ear 'em quite plain, sir!"
"Hear what?" I inquired.
"The Germans over there, sir; 'ear 'em singin' and playin' on a band or somethin'."
I listened;—away out across the field, among the dark shadows beyond, I could hear the murmur of voices, and an occasional burst of some unintelligible song would come floating out on the frosty air. The singing seemed to be loudest and most distinct a bit to our right. I popped into my dug-out and found the platoon commander.
"Do you hear the Boches kicking up that racket over there?" I said.
"Yes," he replied; "they've been at it some time!"
"Come on," said I, "let's go along the trench to the hedge there on the right—that's the nearest point to them, over there."
So we stumbled along our now hard, frosted ditch, and scrambling up on to the bank above, strode across the field to our next bit of trench on the right. Everyone was listening. An improvised Boche band was playing a precarious version of "Deutschland, Deutschland, uber Alles," at the conclusion of which, some of our mouth-organ experts retaliated with snatches of ragtime songs and imitations of the German tune. Suddenly we heard a confused shouting from the other side. We all stopped to listen. The shout came again. A voice in the darkness shouted in English, with a strong German accent, "Come over here!" A ripple of mirth swept along our trench, followed by a rude outburst of mouth organs and laughter. Presently, in a lull, one of our sergeants repeated the request, "Come over here!"
"You come half-way—I come half-way," floated out of the darkness.
"Come on, then!" shouted the sergeant. "I'm coming along the hedge!"
"Ah! but there are two of you," came back the voice from the other side.
Well, anyway, after much suspicious shouting and jocular derision from both sides, our sergeant went along the hedge which ran at right-angles to the two lines of trenches. He was quickly out of sight; but, as we all listened in breathless silence, we soon heard a spasmodic conversation taking place out there in the darkness.
Presently, the sergeant returned. He had with him a few German cigars and cigarettes which he had exchanged for a couple of Maconochie's and a tin of Capstan, which he had taken with him. The séance was over, but it had given just the requisite touch to our Christmas Eve—something a little human and out of the ordinary routine.
After months of vindictive sniping and shelling, this little episode came as an invigorating tonic, and a welcome relief to the daily monotony of antagonism. It did not lessen our ardour or determination; but just put a little human punctuation mark in our lives of cold and humid hate. Just on the right day, too—Christmas Eve! But, as a curious episode, this was nothing in comparison to our experience on the following day.
On Christmas morning I awoke very early, and emerged from my dug-out into the trench. It was a perfect day. A beautiful, cloudless blue sky. The ground hard and white, fading off towards the wood in a thin low-lying mist. It was such a day as is invariably depicted by artists on Christmas cards—the ideal Christmas Day of fiction.
"Fancy all this hate, war, and discomfort on a day like this!" I thought to myself. The whole spirit of Christmas seemed to be there, so much so that I remember thinking, "This indescribable something in the air, this Peace and Goodwill feeling, surely will have some effect on the situation here to-day!" And I wasn't far wrong; it did around us, anyway, and I have always been so glad to think of my luck in, firstly, being actually in the trenches on Christmas Day, and, secondly, being on the spot where quite a unique little episode took place.
Everything looked merry and bright that morning—the discomforts seemed to be less, somehow; they seemed to have epitomized themselves in intense, frosty cold. It was just the sort of day for Peace to be declared. It would have made such a good finale. I should like to have suddenly heard an immense siren blowing. Everybody to stop and say, "What was that?" Siren blowing again: appearance of a small figure running across the frozen mud waving something. He gets closer—a telegraph boy with a wire! He hands it to me. With trembling fingers I open it:
"War off, return home.—George, R.I." Cheers! But no, it was a nice, fine day that was all.
Walking about the trench a little later, discussing the curious affair of the night before, we suddenly became aware of the fact that we were seeing a lot of evidences of Germans. Heads were bobbing about and showing over their parapet in a most reckless way, and, as we looked, this phenomenon became more and more pronounced.
A complete Boche figure suddenly appeared on the parapet, and looked about itself. This complaint became infectious. It didn't take "Our Bert" long to be up on the skyline (it is one long grind to ever keep him off it). This was the signal for more Boche anatomy to be disclosed, and this was replied to by all our Alf's and Bill's, until, in less time than it takes to tell, half a dozen or so of each of the belligerents were outside their trenches and were advancing towards each other in no-man's land.
A strange sight, truly!
I clambered up and over our parapet, and moved out across the field to look. Clad in a muddy suit of khaki and wearing a sheepskin coat and Balaclava helmet, I joined the throng about half-way across to the German trenches.
It all felt most curious: here were these sausage-eating wretches, who had elected to start this infernal European fracas, and in so doing had brought us all into the same muddy pickle as themselves.
This was my first real sight of them at close quarters. Here they were—the actual, practical soldiers of the German army. There was not an atom of hate on either side that day; and yet, on our side, not for a moment was the will to war and the will to beat them relaxed. It was just like the interval between the rounds in a friendly boxing match. The difference in type between our men and theirs was very marked. There was no contrasting the spirit of the two parties. Our men, in their scratch costumes of dirty, muddy khaki, with their various assorted headdresses of woolen helmets, mufflers and battered hats, were a light-hearted, open, humorous collection as opposed to the somber demeanor and stolid appearance of the Huns in their grey-green faded uniforms, top boots, and pork-pie hats.
The shortest effect I can give of the impression I had was that our men, superior, broadminded, more frank, and lovable beings, were regarding these faded, unimaginative products of perverted culture as a set of objectionable but amusing lunatics whose heads had got to be eventually smacked.
"Look at that one over there, Bill," our Bert would say, as he pointed out some particularly curious member of the party.
I strolled about amongst them all, and sucked in as many impressions as I could. Two or three of the Boches seemed to be particularly interested in me, and after they had walked round me once or twice with sullen curiosity stamped on their faces, one came up and said "Offizier?" I nodded my head, which means "Yes" in most languages, and, besides, I can't talk German.
These devils, I could see, all wanted to be friendly; but none of them possessed the open, frank geniality of our men. However, everyone was talking and laughing, and souvenir hunting.
I spotted a German officer, some sort of lieutenant I should think, and being a bit of a collector, I intimated to him that I had taken a fancy to some of his buttons.
We both then said things to each other which neither understood, and agreed to do a swap. I brought out my wire clippers and, with a few deft snips, removed a couple of his buttons and put them in my pocket. I then gave him two of mine in exchange.
Whilst this was going on a babbling of guttural ejaculations emanating from one of the laager-schifters, told me that some idea had occurred to someone.
Suddenly, one of the Boches ran back to his trench and presently reappeared with a large camera. I posed in a mixed group for several photographs, and have ever since wished I had fixed up some arrangement for getting a copy. No doubt framed editions of this photograph are reposing on some Hun mantelpieces, showing clearly and unmistakably to admiring strafers how a group of perfidious English surrendered unconditionally on Christmas Day to the brave Deutschers.
Slowly the meeting began to disperse; a sort of feeling that the authorities on both sides were not very enthusiastic about this fraternizing seemed to creep across the gathering. We parted, but there was a distinct and friendly understanding that Christmas Day would be left to finish in tranquility. The last I saw of this little affair was a vision of one of my machine gunners, who was a bit of an amateur hairdresser in civil life, cutting the unnaturally long hair of a docile Boche, who was patiently kneeling on the ground whilst the automatic clippers crept up the back of his neck. "
The full book "Bullets and Billets" can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg
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