The men turned back to their tea. It tasted terrible but it warmed them.
Captain Forsythe crunched through the iced mud of the trench and asked, ‘Everything all right, Corporal Embleton?’
Charlie scrambled to his feet, snapped a salute and straightened his back. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Shouldn’t one of you be looking out? There could be Germans heading this way right at this moment!’
‘Sir!’ Charlie said and turned to look over the rim. ‘Cor, stone the crows!’ he gasped. ‘Look at that!’
Albert and the officer joined him and looked across about a hundred paces. In the still evening air, about a hundred candles were flickering on a dozen fir trees that the Germans had raised above the trenches and planted in their half of No Man’s Land.
Around each tree there were groups of five to ten German soldiers, sitting and talking. In the still evening air their voices drifted across.
Albert called, ‘Merry Christmas, Fritz!’
There was a short pause. Then a German voice replied, ‘Merry Christmas, Tommy!’
‘My name’s Albert!’ the young man shouted.
‘Come here!’ the German called. ‘We meet. We shake hands! You don’t shoot – we don’t shoot!’
Albert began to scramble over the top but Captain Forsythe grabbed his belt and pulled him back.
‘I never thought of that, sir.’
‘It’s a risk you should not take.’
‘No, sir.’
The German called again. ‘It is Christmas! We shake hands!’
The young officer straightened his back. ‘I’ll go and see what they want. If they shoot me, kill every German you can see. Cover me with your rifles.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Captain Forsythe climbed into No Man’s Land. A German searchlight flooded the frozen desert of mud and made the officer shield his eyes. He slowly unbuckled his pistol belt and let it fall to the ground. British troops in the trenches to his right and left raised their heads to watch.
One German stood up and walked out to meet him. The whole world seemed to hold its breath and even the face of the man in the moon froze.
When the German officer met Captain Forsythe he saluted smartly. The young English soldier with the face of a startled schoolboy returned the salute. Then he stretched out a hand and the German grasped it.
As they shook hands, a cheer broke out from the British trenches. It was answered by a cheer from the enemy.
The German soldiers began singing Silent Night while the two men in the middle seemed to be having a long and friendly chat. When the carol was finished there was a silence in the night and a British soldier cried, ‘Can’t you sing It’s a long way to Tipperary?’
‘We will sing it for you, Tommy!’ a German replied and the night was filled with the curious sound of German troops roaring out a British marching song.
One by one the British soldiers joined in. Albert forgot that he didn’t like the song. He could hardly sing for laughing.