Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce

By Stanley Weintraub

From an acclaimed military historian comes the astonishing story of World War I's 1914 Christmas truce—a spontaneous celebration when enemies became friends.

It was one of history's most powerful—yet forgotten—Christmas stories. It took place in the improbable setting of the mud, cold rain, and senseless killing of the trenches of World War I. It happened in spite of orders to the contrary by superiors. It happened in spite of language barriers. And it still stands as the only time in history that peace spontaneously arose from the lower ranks in a major conflict, bubbling up to the officers and temporarily turning sworn enemies into friends.

Silent Night, by renowned military historian Stanley Weintraub, magically restores the 1914 Christmas Truce to history. It had been lost in the tide of horror that filled the battlefields of Europe for months and years afterward. Yet, in December 1914, the Great War was still young, and the men who suddenly threw down their arms and came together across the front lines—to sing carols, exchange gifts and letters, eat and drink and even play friendly games of soccer—naively hoped that the war would be short-lived, and that they were fraternizing with future friends.

It began when German soldiers lit candles on small Christmas trees, and British, French, Belgian, and German troops serenaded each other on Christmas Eve. Soon they were gathering and burying the dead, in an age-old custom of truces. But as the power of Christmas grew among them, they broke bread, exchanged addresses and letters, and expressed deep admiration for one another. When angry superiors ordered them to recommence the shooting, many men aimed harmlessly high overhead.

Sometimes the greatest beauty emerges from deep tragedy. Surely the forgotten Christmas Truce was one of history's most beautiful moments, made all the more beautiful in light of the carnage that followed it. Stanley Weintraub's moving re-creation demonstrates that peace can be more fragile than war, but also that ordinary men can bond with one another despite all efforts of politicians and generals to the contrary.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Free Press
• Release date: Nov 11, 2001
• ISBN: 9781439107133

Stanley Weintraub

Stanley Weintraub is Evan Pugh Professor Emeritus of Arts and Humanities at Penn State University and the author of notable histories and biographies including 11 Days in December, Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce, MacArthur's War, Long Day's Journey into War, and A Stillness Heard Round the World: The End of the Great War. He lives in Newark, Delaware.

Book preview

SILENT NIGHT

The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce

Stanley Weintraub

Karolina Harris

THE FREE PRESS

New York London Toronto Sydney Tokyo Singapore

ALSO BY STANLEY WEINTRAUB

A Stillness Heard Round the World: The End of the Great War

Long Day’s Journey into War: December 7, 1941

The Last Great Victory: The End of World War II

MacArthur’s War: Korea and the Undoing of an American Hero

THE FREE PRESS

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Copyright © 2001 by Stanley Weintraub

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

THE FREE PRESS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Designed by Karolina Harris

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Weintraub, Stanley.

Silent Night : the story of the World War I Christmas truce / Stanley Weintraub.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Christmas Truce, 1914. I. Title.

D530.W45   2001

940.4′144—dc21   20011033423

ISBN 0-684-87281-1

ISBN: 978-0-684-87281-0

eISBN: 978-1-439-10713-3

For Robert C. Doyle and Beate Engel-Doyle

PEACE IS HARDER TO MAKE THAN WAR. A Stillness Heard Round the World: The End of the Great War

(Stanley Weintraub, 1985)

Contents

INTRODUCTION

1 An Outbreak of Peace

2 Christmas Eve

3 The Dead

4 Our Friends, the Enemy

5 Football

6 How It Ended

7 What If—?

SOURCES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INDEX

Introduction

Three myths would arise during the early months of the Great War. Burly Cossacks, sent by the Czar to bolster the Western Front, were seen embarking from British railway stations for Dover, still shaking the persistent snows of Russia from their boots. In France, during the British retreat from Mons, angels appeared—spirit bowmen out of the English past—to cover the withdrawal. And the third was that, to the dismay of the generals, along the front lines late in December 1914, opponents in the West laid down their arms and celebrated Christmas together in a spontaneous gesture of peace on earth and good will toward men. Only one of the myths—the last—was true.

In an issue sent to press just before Christmas, The New Republic, an American weekly writing from a plague-on-both-sides neutrality, accepted what seemed obvious. If men must hate, it is perhaps just as well that they make no Christmas truce. A futile resolution had been introduced in the Senate in Washington urging that the belligerents hold a twenty-day truce at Christmas with the hope that the cessation of hostilities at the said time may stimulate reflection upon the part of the nations [at war] as to the meaning and spirit of Christmas time.

Since early August the European war had claimed hundreds of thousands of killed, wounded, and missing. An appeal for a cease-fire at Christmas from Pope Benedict XV, elected just three months earlier, only weeks after war had broken out, had made headlines but was quickly rebuffed by both sides as impossible. Rather, The New Republic suggested sardonically, The stench of battle should rise above the churches where they preach good-will to men. A few carols, a little incense and some tinsel will heal no wounds. A wartime Christmas would be a festival so empty that it jeers at us.

To many, the end of the war and the failure of the peace would validate the Christmas cease-fire as the only meaningful episode in the apocalypse. It belied the bellicose slogans and suggested that the men fighting and often dying were, as usual, proxies for governments and issues that had little to do with their everyday lives. A candle lit in the darkness of Flanders, the truce flickered briefly and survives only in memoirs, letters, song, drama and story.

Live-and-let-live accommodations occur in all wars. Chronicles at least since Troy record cessations in fighting to bury the dead, to pray to the gods, to negotiate a peace, to assuage war weariness, to offer signs of amity to enemies so long opposite in a static war as to encourage mutual respect. None had ever occurred on the scale of, or with the duration, or with the potential for changing things, as when the shooting suddenly stopped on Christmas Eve, 1914. The difference in 1914 was its potential to become more than a temporary respite. The event appears in retrospect somehow unreal, incredible in its intensity and extent, seemingly impossible to have happened without consequences for the outcome of the war. Like a dream, when it was over, men wondered at it, then went on with the grim business at hand. Under the rigid discipline of wartime command authority, that business was killing.

Dismissed in official histories as an aberration of no consequence, that remarkable moment happened. For the rival governments, for which war was politics conducted by persuasive force, it was imperative to make even temporary peace unappealing and unworkable, only an impulsive interval in a necessarily hostile and competitive world. The impromptu truce seemed dangerously akin to the populist politics of the streets, the spontaneous movements that topple tyrants and autocrats. For that reason alone, high commands could not permit it to gain any momentum to expand in time and in space, or to capture broad appeal back home. That it did not was more accident than design.

After a silent night and day—in many sectors much more than that—the war went on. The peace seemed nearly forgotten. Yet memories of Christmas 1914 persist, and underlying them the compelling realities and the intriguing might-have-beens. What if …?

Late in December 1999 a group of nine quirky Khaki Chums crossed the English Channel to Flanders with the blatantly daft idea of commemorating the truce where it may have begun, near Ploegsteert Wood in Belgium. Wearing makeshift uniforms recalling 1914, and working in the rain and snow, they dug trenches, reinforcing them with sandbags and planks which literally disappeared into the bottomless mud. For several days they cooked their rations, reinforced their parapets, and slept soaked through to the skin. They also endured curious onlookers and enjoyed visits from the media. Before departing, the nine planted a large timber cross in the quagmire as a temporary mark of respect for the wartime dead, filled back their trenches and slogged homeward.

Months later they were astonished to learn that local villagers had treated their crude memorial with a wood preservative and set it in a concrete base. In season, now, poppies flower beneath it. Thousands of Great War monuments, some moving and others mawkish, remain in town squares and military cemeteries across Europe. The after-thought of the Khaki Chums lark in the Flanders mud is the only memorial to the Christmas Truce of 1914.

1

An Outbreak of Peace

In December 1914, on both sides of the front lines in Flanders, astride the borders of Belgium and France, soldiers of two of Queen Victoria’s grandsons, Kaiser Wilhelm II and George V, faced off from rows of trenches that augured a long war of attrition. Belgian and French forces were also along the line, and with the British and French were troops from India and Africa who had never seen winter snows. Opposite were not only Prussians, but Saxons and Bavarians and Westphalians who would rather have been home for the holidays. Christmas was approaching, a festive time common to all the combatants, from Russia in the East to England and France in the West. Some of its most resonant symbols were claimed by Germany, especially the Christmas tree, the Tannenbaum of carols sung in both languages. Gift-giving, the Yule log, even Santa Claus—St. Nikolaus’s name mispronounced—were also attributed to German custom, but long appropriated by both sides.

One of the few things about which the combatants agreed was the centrality of Christmas, but both sides also expected no let-down in the war. Separated by the miserable waste of No Man’s Land as Christmas approached, troops seemed likely to enjoy nothing of the holiday’s ambience—not even mere physical warmth. Cold rain had muddied and even flooded many trenches, and decomposing bodies floated to the surface. Crude duckboard platforms barely kept soldiers dry, but few were eager to shelter in mucky hideaways that might be worse. Unless soldiers moved about, they would sink into the liquefying mud, and many slept erect if they could, leaning against the dripping trench walls. It was a stomach-churning atmosphere for eating one’s rations. Latrines were nearly nonexistent and accomplishing bodily functions a nightmare. German Expressionist artist Otto Dix described the landscape of fortified ditches as lice, rats, barbed wire, fleas, shells, bombs, underground caves, corpses, blood, liquor, mice, cats, artillery, filth, bullets, mortars, fire, steel: that’s what war is. It is the work of the devil.

A lieutenant in the 143rd Lower Alsatian Regiment described German dugouts as desperate defenses against nature. Candle stubs lit the dripping, rotting sandbagged walls. Floors were foul-smelling, viscous mush. Sand-filled sacks hung from the ceilings not always successfully kept food from the reach of rats. Men deloused themselves by sizzling lice in the flame of a candle while others not so fortunate blew on their hands, seized rifles, and ascended for sentry duty. Relieved soldiers would stagger in, blinded by the candles, unbuckle and search for food. Then came sleeping. Eating and sleeping, standing guard, and, in between, trench digging, one recalled, that was the routine.

Much of the Ypres area was below sea level—a thin crust of soil concealing reclaimed swampland, dependent upon a disrupted drainage system. Yet as miserable as the mud was, the word was evaded, and mud slides were described as land-slips. Trenches became—and echoed—home. The Durhams lay what they labeled the Old Kent Road, the Farm Road and New Road with bricks from ruined houses. A strong point near Hoogstade was christened Clapham Junction; others were Battersea Farm, White Horse Cellars and Beggar’s Rest.

Some German trenches were no longer awash, although rain and saturated meadows kept them soggy. Already dug in on slightly higher ground was an earthwork barrier, protected by masses of barbed wire, that left no flanks to turn and suggested that they might remain there until the other side wearied of the attrition. Both sides were unhappily expecting a long war. (It would be so long and bloody as to last only six weeks short of a fifth Christmas.) From the Channel to the Swiss frontier, neither side was yielding land in which it was entrenched. The Germans were bringing in electric power and telephone lines, flooring deep-dug walkways, and constructing concrete machine-gun posts behind the first rows of trenches. But concerned that troops might not then hold their first line at all costs, front-line generals objected to plans to build a second line of German defenses two or three thousand yards to the rear.

Despite propaganda from both sides, and a diet of daily casualties from artillery and small-arms fire, the ordinary British soldier had no strong feelings about fighting the Germans, other than to defend himself and the few creature comforts he had made for himself in his maze of dreary trenches. The British mocked their plight in a song imploring military recruiters—it was still a volunteer army—to

Send out my mother,

My sister and my brother,

But for Gawd’s sake don’t send me.

The French and the Belgians reacted to the war with more emotion than the British. It was being waged on their land, every hectare of which they wanted back. As treaty-bound neutrals, the Belgians had lived under a guarantee of their borders since independence in 1830. The French had lived in an atmosphere of revanche since 1870, when Alsace and Lorraine were seized by the Prussians. (In Paris there was a statue of a young woman swathed in chains, symbolizing Strasbourg.) With that in mind, when Ludwig Renn, a young officer near the front lines at Bertincourt, south of Arras, received orders for his chemical company to go into reserve and rest, his captain quickly had second thoughts. Nein, he said, recalling Renn to the field telephone. Christmas Eve was approaching. The French realize that Christmas is, for the Germans, a great festive day and they might turn to account precisely this night.

By December 4, as wintry rain made movement impossible, the British commander of the II Corps worried about the live-and-let-live theory of life that had surfaced on both sides. Neither side was firing, for example, at mealtimes, and although little fraternization was apparent, unspoken understandings accepted the status quo, and friendly banter echoed across the lines. The death and glory principle, as Lieutenant Charles Sorley, a poet, put it, was, in the circumstances, useless. Unannounced, even unspoken, arrangements lessened the discomfort while discouraging the enmity that encouraged the killing. A Royal Engineer, Andrew Todd, wrote to the Edinburgh Scotsman that soldiers on both sides, only 60 yards apart at one place, had become very ‘pally’ with each other. They were so close that they would throw newspapers, weighted with a stone, across to each other, and sometimes a ration tin, and, Rifleman Leslie Walkinton of the Queen’s Westminsters recalled, shout remarks to each other, sometimes rude ones, but generally with less venom than a couple of London cabbies after a mild collision.

On the morning of December 19, so Lieutenant Geoffrey Heinekey, new to the 2nd Queen’s Westminster Rifles, wrote to his mother, a most extraordinary thing happened…. Some Germans came out and held up their hands and began to take in some of their wounded and so we ourselves immediately got out of our trenches and began bringing in our wounded also. The Germans then beckoned to us and a lot of us went over and talked to them and they helped us to bury our dead. This lasted the whole morning and I talked to several of them and I must say they seemed extraordinarily fine men…. It seemed too ironical for words. There, the night before we had been having a terrific battle and the morning after, there we were smoking their cigarettes and they smoking ours.

The initiatives for one of the long war’s few humane episodes came largely from the invaders, yet not from their generals or their bureaucrats. Leading intellectuals like Rainer Maria Rilke and Thomas Mann had viewed the war as an essential defense against hostile forces representing cultures less rich and technologies less advanced. In Fünf Gesänge Rilke, the leading lyric poet in the language, celebrated the resurrection of the god of war rather than a symbol of weak-minded peace. In defense of Kultur, Mann went to occupied Belgium to observe the future. To be excoriated as Hun barbarians when Germans represented the higher civilization appeared to him an absurd inversion of values, a feeling shared by educated young officers at the front who came out of professional life. Although war itself might seem necessary for Germany, a wartime Christmas seemed, to many who took the festival seriously, befouled. Captain Rudolf Binding, a Hussar, wrote to his father on December 20 that if he were in authority, he would ban the observance of Christmas this year.

Ordinary soldiers were oblivious to such sensitivities. As Christmas approached, Tommy and Jerry indulged in occasional and undeclared live-and-let-live cessations of fire. Jeers were swapped where the trenches were close enough to permit it—Engländer! one side would shout, Jerry! (or Fritz!) the other. Most exchanges were in English, for many Germans had lived and worked across the Channel, some as waiters in hotels or seaside resorts, others as cooks, cabbies and even barbers, all summoned home in the last, hectic, prewar days late in July. So many Germans were working in England before the war that at a House of Lords debate a speaker charged that eighty thousand German waiters remained as a secret army awaiting a signal to seize strategic points. P. G. Wodehouse satirized such nonsense in The Swoop! Or How Clarence Saved England, about a Boy Scout who perceives, in the sporting results in his newspaper, a secret code to alert the Germans. Few readers were amused.

So much interchange had occurred across the line by early December that Brigadier General G. T. Forrestier-Walker, chief of staff to Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien of II Corps, issued a directive unequivocally forbidding fraternization, for it discourages initiative in commanders, and destroys the offensive spirit in all ranks…. Friendly intercourse with the enemy, unofficial armistices and the exchange of tobacco and other comforts, however tempting and occasionally amusing they may be, are absolutely prohibited.

Tempting they were. In World War I, creature comforts were cherished even more than comradeship and unit loyalties. The serving soldier’s idea of high civilization was a warm, dry place, the opportunity to satisfy the stomach and the bladder, and sleep. Both commands had warned against fraternization, for incidents unrelated to the season had already been reported. Such violations likely to erode discipline, General Erich von Falkenhayn warned, were to be investigated carefully by superiors and discouraged most energetically. It was difficult, however, to feel belligerent behind muddy earthworks or from a flooded trench. The Flanders mud, Captain Valentine Williams of the Irish Guards remembered, was greasy and glutinous around Ypres, chalk-white and slimy but no less sticky to the south. There was no stone anywhere in the region, and a few hours of rain

Reviews for Silent Night

[ralphz-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Really interesting subject, but the book misses the mark.

The book is a series of anecdotes, which, although related under the big umbrella "Christmas Truce of 1914," still manages to feel quite disconnected.

The narrative pushes both forward and backward in the time line, which is confusing at times.

I'll keep looking for a better book on this subject.

More reviews at my WordPress site, Ralphsbooks.

[david__clifford · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In the heat of the battle form moving a few yards forward the war took a break that made plain the insanity of it all. Men came out of the trenches on both sides of the conflict and celebrated Christmas together in "no mans land" with singing and exchanging of gifts if ever so small.

[lamour_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I had heard about the Christmas truce of December, 1914 but I did not realize how extensive it was. According to Weintaub, instances of fraternization by German soldiers with French, English and Scottish soldiers occurred all along the Front and were usually initiated by the Germans- especially the men from Saxony. Using soldiers letters to home or in some cases to newspapers at home, military unit histories, and soldier memoirs, Weitraub explains how the events were started and what the soldiers did when they met in the No Man's Land between the lines. He also adds a chapter on how the story has been mythologized in modern culture by giving examples of modern songs such as Christmas in the Trenches to show the story has been altered to suit story lines. Apparently there is a Garth Brooks song that has American soldiers participating in this event, a historical moment that could not have occurred since no American units fought at the front until 1918. He concludes with speculation on how world history would have been different if the politicians had followed the soldiers' actions and stopped the war in December 1914.

[whiskey3pa · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting and well enough written. Felt more like a collection of snapshots than a book. For a wonk like me, good. For a more casual reader, I doubt it.

[sunnycouger-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I've seen so many things on the Christmas Truce that I really wanted to read something relating to it. I perhaps went into this with overly high expectations due to how much I love the subject and it never quite hit the heights I was hoping for. Obviously as a historic account there's not much that can be done but I never found myself particularly engaged at times. I don't know if having a section with Brits another with the Germans and another for the French would have worked better or if it was maybe just the number of people mentioned made it hard to follow, but for whatever reason I didn't get the emotional punch that I've gotten when watching documentaries on it.

I did enjoy the way the individual sections of the book, and I enjoyed the excerpts, poems and drawings from actual accounts that went on. The last section - the what if section wasn't needed imho. It was too easy to imagine the ideal world scenario, and although it would have been nice, the truly predictable thing about the human race is that they will invariably find a way to shoot themselves in the foot, so if it wasn't WW1, I'm certain something else would have come along that caused untold miseries. I mean it's a nice idea, but really a bit indulgent.

This is a decent enough book if, like me you have an interest in the subject but I really don't know if it would be the type of book that would spark an interest if you didn't know anything about it.

[cbl_tn · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This account of the spontaneous World War I Christmas truce is mildly disappointing. Had I not read other World War I histories earlier this year, I wouldn't have had enough context for the events described in the book. It also bothered me that Weintraub intersperses accounts of fictional characters with those of real people. I had a hard time sorting out which events were real and which were fictional but based on real events. I think it would have been better if Weintraub had discussed fictional accounts of the truce in a single chapter. The book is worth reading for those with a strong interest in the topic, but readers should already have a basic familiarity with World War I history and chronology.

[newsieq · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I read this book for my NF readers' group ... it was an OK book, stimulated some discussion ... but not the best book we've selected.

[jbd1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Pretty basic, but a good story.

[cameling_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Christmas truce of WWI has gained fame through movies and historical fiction but how does one separate truth from fiction? This is a wonderful work based on research of journals and letters written by the soldiers and officers who were there when it happened. Only a few months into the First World War, troops from Scotland, India, Germany, France, Prussia, England and Belgium on the rain soaked battlefields of Flanders were already sick of the soggy, cold and muddy conditions of war. They were in the front line and under constant fire from, their trenches were constantly flooding, they had nowhere dry to sleep, rats were running around, they were surrounded by filth and now dead bodies of their fallen comrades.By tacit understanding and overtures started apparently by the Germans who took Christmas extremely seriously and were shipped little Christmas trees which they lit with candles and then placed on their parapets, there was less fighting in the days coming up to Christmas Eve. Some soldiers clearly started to adopt a live and let live attitude to the war, trading vocal insults with the opposite enemy but without much heat behind their words. Then signboards with Christmas greetings went up and responded to by the opposite side. Some soldiers and officers gradually stood on their parapets, clearly unarmed, and asked for a truce to celebrate Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. They understood that the war would have to resume at some point, but they just wanted to celebrate Christmas and to bury their dead. I had previously thought that the Christmas Truce took place only between a particular German troop and an opposing English platoon. It came as a surprise to me to learn that this truce was conducted across multiple sections of the Flanders and between the Germans and some of their enemies even up to New Year's. Not all embraced the truce and there were a few French and German officers who spurned overtures.The emerging stories highlighted that decisions for wars are often decided on by leaders sitting far away from the action while those on the front line bear the worst consequences of their decisions.

[nigeyb · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is an enjoyable and well written account of the 1914 truce that happened during World War 1 on the Western Front in the improbable setting of the trenches. Time and again Stanley Weintraub uncovers examples of how, despite orders from senior officers, the troops in the trenches came together to sing carols, exchange gifts, eat and drink together, and even play football. In most of these examples the troops discovered how alike they were and how much they shared in common.I am not sure this subject warrants a whole book and there is quite a bit of repetition as Stanley Weintraub gives numerous different examples of the different ways the truce occurred in different parts of the Western Front. The book concludes with a short chapter titled "What if....?" in which Stanley Weintraub speculates what might have happened had the war ended with the 1914 Christmas truce which felt a bit pointless.Interesting, if inessential.3/5

[ksmyth_18 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I picked up Stanley Weintraub's brief account of the 1914 Christmas truce after setting it down without completing it a couple of years ago. It is a good account of this odd anomaly of the Great War. Weintraub does a fine job of setting the scene: soldiers a settling down into their trenches, replete with the discomfort of the wet winter weather, the rats, bad food, and the nearness of the enemy lines divided by a No Man's Land littered with bodies-friends and foes alike. He contrasts this with the incongruities of the Christmas season-British and German soldiers alike receive government-sponsored goodies from home, which, while appreciated, do little to alleviate the suffering of those in the trenches-they don't drain the trenches, some waist high in mud, they don't reduce the danger from sniper's bullets or artillery shells. That is left to the men themselves. From December 24th through December 26th, chiefly German and British soldiers informally agree to a lull in the fighting, first to bury their dead, and then to trade petty luxuries, souvenirs, trade pleasantries, and even to kick around a football. What the governments and generals will not do, the front line troops do themselves. Weintraub, importantly, points out that the truce wasn't universal, but many, many units in the trenches sent home accounts of the several days of quiet and fraternization. If the book has a failing it is not fully exploring the fear of the governments and the generals that the truce could lead to an outbreak of peace-and what they did to insure it did not happen again. Well told, with an eye to humanize an inhuman conflict. A special nod goes to Weintraub's use of English, German and French source.

[bookworm12_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

During World War I, German, French, British and Belgian soldiers found solace in the “enemy” for a brief period. On Christmas Eve in 1914 the men were dug into miserable trenches, up to their ankles in mud and filth. Despite warnings from their superiors and even at the risk of losing their own lives, the soldiers declared a momentary truce and enjoyed the holiday. They crossed into no man’s land and swapped cigarettes and food. They ever played soccer and buried their dead. This occurred all along the front, with different groups of men deciding to initiate a cease-fire. Weintaub’s book is wonderfully researched, pulling information from soldiers’ letters, newspaper articles, etc. he recreates the scenes. The details are what really stuck with me, a German soldier giving a British soldier buttons from his uniform, a soldier who was accidently shot in the midst of the peace. The event itself is so unbelievable that’s it’s fascinating to read about, but the author’s writing is a bit dry. To me, it was still worth it, because it shows a gleaming light of humanity in the face of an awful war, but it’s not a page-turner.  

[kslade-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Good short account of the "Christmas truce" during the first year of World War One. The soldiers stopped fighting and mingled together!