Christmas 1915 - with Danish Hospitality.

This article entitled “My Three War Christmases In Flanders, Denmark, and Old England by Basil Clarke” comes from the excellent site “The Great War in A Different Light.”

Christmas 1915 by War Correspondent Basil Clarke was spent in the North Sea nearing the port of Copenhagen, with Danish hospitality.

1915

Her name was Flora or Dora or Stella or Bella, and she was the horriblest, nastiest, beastliest little boat I ever sailed in. First we were kept in dock for thirty-six hours after "sailing day," and not allowed to leave the ship. Then, after hauling out of the dock, she lay tumbling off the coast for twenty-four hours waiting for her sailing signal before she turned her bosom to the sea and shaped "a course round the North Sea mine-fielda” and hit the port of Copenhagen.

What a voyage ! They say we were only seven days on board. We rolled, then we pitched, then we pitched and rolled, then we rolled and pitched. The wind blew, and the rain fell. Once we passed within twenty feet of a great red mine rolling sleepily in the angry seas. Our Dutch skipper nearly "threw a fit" on the bridge — as a Tyneside steward expressed it — in dodging his craft to the starboard of it. He cursed the sea and the wind and the war and his luck in life. The gale had caused that mine to drift from its charted ground, and he had all but run into it.

Danish Hospitality

Bad as the sea was, bad as the boat was, bad as the world seemed, Christmas was in the air. Passengers began to emerge from their cabins. The saloon piano began to tinkle. The weather picked up one night and the moon shone. A party of us younger folk dragged out the saloon piano to the deck. First they sang Danish songs. Then I played while they danced on the tarpaulin covers of the after hatch ; then I danced while someone else played. We danced and sang till 3 a.m., when the moon sank into the sea.

Among themselves that night those delightful Danes hatched a little conspiracy. It reached me in my hotel in Copenhagen next day in the form of an invitation from some half-dozen of them to spend the following day in their company. They had arranged a little Christmas-party together, men and girls, and made me their guest. The day after Christmas, 1915, I began my round of investigations in Scandinavia as to how Germany was getting food and supplies through neutral countries. But that is another story.

My Christmas Day was the one bright spot in that journey.