Truce

Truce:

Christmas Eve 1914:

It won’t be over by Christmas. That much is clear. We shall not be sipping that fine wine that Wilfred was always talking about. We shall not be with our families, having a jolly good time. Instead, we shall be here. In a waterlogged trench, smelling like a latrine and sleeping in our dugouts. We will be given some duckboard for a mattress and a sandbag for a pillow if we are lucky.

If anything annoys me, it’s those pesky rats. The black ones are just frightfully prodigious and formidable; it’s the brown ones you have to watch out for. The man eating rats. They’re all over the place; you can’t seem to get rid of them. Don’t even get me started on the body lice.

Or even the smell. Don’t get me started on that either. I guess when you have bodies piled up on the side of the trench it will let off the most pungent smell. They were in the shallow ditches, piled up in the reserve trenches and down the path to Communications, but no more so than on the front lines. Latrines overflowed, sending the belongings of a toilet into the trench. It’s God awful.

I was rubbing my hands together and blowing on them, trying to get a bit of heat into my flesh if that was possible. Then, throughout the camp we heard singing. They were notes that drifted from not so far away but seemed so distant.

“Stille Natche…”

Wilfred and I stuck our heads out of the dugouts and listened, as were the rest of the soldiers. We were immersed in the notes that seemed so familiar.

“Silent Night,” I whispered.

“You speak German?” Wilfred asked.

“No, just listen to the tune,”

We listened and it was so. They were indeed singing Silent Night. In other words, they were calling for a truce. I sat up fully and cleared my throat. Wilfred caught on and gave me a look that said ‘You can’t be serious!?’ but oh boy was I serious.

“Silent night, holy night…” I sang loudly.

Wilfred slowly joined in and after a while, so did the rest of the British army. The singing of the Germans got louder when they heard our singing. No one slept that silent night.

Christmas Day 1914:

“What happened last night was a one off and it won’t be happening again, I can be sure of that. Gentlemen, need I remind you that this is war?” The General asked.

Wilfred raised an eyebrow at me and I turned away. We shall see about that; they were calling for a truce I can feel it in the air. No one wants to shoot at each other. It’s Christmas Day. The day Christ was born and brought into our world. Shouldn’t we show him a little respect by calling a truce on such a day?

I stepped onto the fire bay and stuck my head over the parapet. A bullet from a German sniper soared over my head and a hand yanked at my clothes on my back, forcing me down and out of sight.

“Never in my dreams! Power, you’re weak, are you completely insane? Do not pull a stunt like that ever again!” The General shouted.

He roughly let go of my military coat and turned his back on me. No. I know I’m right about this. Once again I poked my head over the parapet, but this time I brought my hands up into surrender.

“Power! You idiot!” The General roared.

Nothing happened. No bullets. No shells. No shrapnel. No grenades. No nothing.

“Forgive me for saying, General, but they appear to not be shooting my head off!” I yelled backwards.

“Don’t you dare get out of the trench!” was his response.

In answer, I flung myself out of the trench and walked into No Man‘s Land where I saw a German soldier advancing too. I will worry about the consequences of my actions later.

“I am actually going to kill that boy!” The General roared as I left.

The German and I stopped in the middle of No Man’s Land and looked at each other for a while. The German stuck out his hand. His armlet was the same as mine. He was a private.

“Ich heiβe Adolf,“ He said.

I shook his hand.

“My name is Daniel,“ I said.

June 1990:

The gentleman I was talking to leant back in his chair and stopped writing. He frowned slightly and then looked up to look at me.

So it’s true... The football on No Man’s Land?“ He asked.

“All true,“

“Who won?“

I leant forward in my chair, curiosity was dragging me forward.

“Who do you think won?“ I asked.

“Britain?“ He asked.

“You’d like to think so but with our track record of football skills then you can safely say that the Germans won that game. So you can put that into your book too,“ I said and he wrote my words down.

Christmas Day 1914:

The General marched to my dugout and ordered me to stand and I did just that. I knew there would be repercussions for what I did. I may have caused a truce but I still disobeyed my General’s most explicit orders. It was punishable by death or Field Punishment One.

“Under normal circumstances I would have placed you in the way of a firing squad and had done with you, but what you did today only caused one man to die and there could have been thousands,” The General said.

My eyes widened with shock. I took all the risks. Not one single soldier, British or German, should have died today.

“Who was it?” I croaked.

“Frank Collins. He was walking up to a German fella and when he turned his back on the German troop, he shot him in the back. The stretcher bearers tried reaching the poor bloke, but couldn’t in time. However, more would have died if you hadn’t taken the risks that you did today, Power. So, although I am going to pretend it never happened, you did well,” The General said.

He refused to believe that a truce was possible. He refused.