Albert Watson slid a hand into the pocket of his great coat. The card was there. A Christmas card. The most amazing Christmas card he’d ever had.
It was a card from the king himself. It made him proud to have that message, even if it was just a print of His Majesty’s handwriting. Albert didn’t need to read it because he knew the words by heart. But he stole a look at it anyway.
‘May God protect you and bring you home safe.’
He’d read the words a hundred times until it was too dark to read them any more. ‘Bring you home safe,’ he thought. Those four words were the ones that made him just a little homesick.
‘It’s quiet, isn’t it?’ he said suddenly. ‘Do you reckon Jerry’s gone home for Christmas? I haven’t heard a shot for hours.’
The thunder of the guns had faded with the setting sun. There was no use firing when you couldn’t see what your shells were hitting.
Charlie was leaning forward, his putty-coloured face pale and frozen in the faint light of a half moon. He stared across the wasteland – shattered earth with ice-filled pits where a shell had landed. The mud was silver in the light and looked like the surface of the moon itself. No Man’s Land, they called it.
Charlie’s hand slid down and wrapped itself round the rifle that lay there. ‘What’s that noise?’ he whispered.
Albert raised his head and looked across No Man’s Land towards the German trenches. Charlie jumped forward and dragged the young man roughly down. ‘You want to get your head blown off, young Albert?’ he hissed. ‘There’s marksmen just waiting for idiots like you to look over the top! Snipers. The best shots in the German army.’
‘You hurt my elbow!’ Albert complained.
‘Shush! Listen!’
The two men huddled on the frozen floor of the trench and strained their ears. ‘It’s a band!’ the young soldier breathed. ‘It’s a blooming brass band!’
‘Maybe they’re going to attack us with trombones.’ Charlie chuckled.
‘No! They’re playing Silent Night!’
‘A bit risky, that.’
‘It’s giving away their position,’ the older man explained.
‘But it’s lovely,’ Albert said. His throat was tight and his eyes pricked with tears.
There was a faint whistle over the top of the music. The men clutched their heads and shrunk down, not knowing where the shell would land. It grew louder till it was a wail that drowned the music and it ended with a sudden crash that came from the far side of No Man’s Land.
‘I told you,’ Charlie said. ‘One of our gunners isn’t in the Christmas spirit. He missed their trenches by a long way. He was closer to us than the Germans.’
‘Our gunners wouldn’t shell their own men.’ Albert gave a nervous laugh.
‘It’s happened before,’ Charlie said grimly.
The men rose to their feet and peered over the rim of their trench. A spiral of blue smoke climbed into the sky as echoes of the explosion faded into the night.
‘What did our gunners do that for?’ Albert groaned. ‘That was nice music, that was!’
‘That’ll be the generals for you.’
‘Don’t they know it’s Christmas?’
‘Christmas? They can’t even spell the word.’
Albert nodded sadly. ‘I had the same trouble spelling when I was at school.’
A ghostly silence fell over the silver scene again.
