My dearest Wife, Of course, I have always known that men are men the world over, knowing the same emotions. The last thing we want is to kill one another. We trusted them and they trusted us. No treaties, no signatures, nothing but the goodwill of ordinary men, a cask of beer and a plum pudding. In exchange for a picture of his Gilda, I gave a photograph of you. Neither of us could speak the language of the other, but in his great muddy boots and winter great-coat, he pirouetted and pointed at you. I told him ‘Esther’ and he nodded. The word he used means fairylike, or dainty. He mimed the query ‘Children?’. I held my hands over my belly, and we both wept and shook our heads at the mindlessness of what we were doing to one another to gain a few yards of foreign mud. I send you Gilda so that when you read of atrocities, you will for a moment question whether it might be propaganda. Both sides use this means of building up hatred and nationalistic emotions. When we take prisoners, they are in a state of terror because they expect us to commit the most cruel acts. That is not to say that neither side is capable of barbarity…
Christmas morning and it was all quiet on the Front.
When the fog lifted it revealed the shocking sight of some unarmed enemy soldiers standing above their parapet waving.
No one had rescinded the order to shoot, and because of a suspicion that there might be fraternization on Christmas Day, Headquarters had sent down an order specifically forbidding it.
‘Don’t shoot!’ The voice carried easily across the short distance between the two lines. ‘Don’t shoot, we have beer for you.’
A kind of tremor ran through the British line when a cask was hoisted and rolled into no man’s land. There were men out there. Ordinary blokes like yourself who wanted to stand you a round of drinks on Christmas morning.
A grey uniformed soldier pushed the cask further into no man’s land. A German officer followed and stood open-handed facing his enemy lines. For moments no one knew what to do. This was the first time that the Tommys had seen grey uniforms worn smartly; they were more used to the sight of them bloody and fragmented, and mud-soaked and rat-gnawed, or worn by slouch-shouldered dejected prisoners-of-war; but here was a Boche officer’s uniform standing open-handed offering a cask of beer.
The first move by the British was when an officer climbed up and walked the equal distance and faced the German. ‘Please, take the beer. It is good beer.’
The British officer nodded. ‘Thank you. We have something for you. Your English is good.’
‘Thank you. I was in England one time for a year. I have in Winchester a cousin by marriage.’
‘I have never been to Germany, I hear your lakes are impressive.’
‘You should come there.’
‘Tell you the truth, old son, I’ve been working my ass off trying to do just that.’
The men of both sides wondered what their officers could have said to one another to have caused such an outburst of laughter. – Men on both sides emerged unarmed and cautious, slowly at first and then with longer strides, until grey and khaki intermingled. A German soldier appeared with a tray containing glasses and beer in bottles which was poured for the officers.
‘Today, we do not shoot one another. Ja?’
A British officer raised his glass. ‘Against our orders, old son, but ja, today we do not shoot one another.’
A presentation of a Christmas pudding was made to the Germans, and after the men exchanged regimental badges or photographs of their families or girlfriends, the two sides withdrew across the frost-hard ground to their own sides for a silent night that was eerie in its peacefulness. Following the incident, Bindon Blood longed to write and tell Esther of the emotions he experienced and the way he spent Christmas night in contemplation.
At eight o’clock on Boxing Morning his reverie was interrupted by three pistol shots. The two sides exchanged greetings daubed on a flag. The answering three shots fired into the air was the signal to start up the killing once more.