1914 Christmas Cease-fire and Whisper of Silence

The hidden effects of the World Wars continue.

Few are yet alive who remember Christmas in 1914. Yet what happened there cannot be forgotten because it set a tone for our time and day.

There was a brief break in the battle between the Germans and the Allies whose battle lines ranged from Belgium into France.

The First World War was fought in trenches and a dreary heavily laden somberness held tight, like a claw to the war-torn area between the belligerents. In that eerie death space no warrior’s will was present. The wounded and the dead were scattered like hail stones across the battlefield.

It was on Christmas Eve, December 24 that the German soldiers put lighted Christmas trees here and there along the front line.

Before long there was silence as the rifle and cannon fire stopped. The battle area fell silent almost as if in memorial to the dead and wounded. Not long after soldiers on both sides of the fight hooted with delight some of the men started to sing Christmas carols.

Before long combatants on both sides of the war leaped out of their trenches and joined each other in the body-strewn area between the battle lines. They sang together, shared food and drink.

Comments like, “We no shoot. You no shoot” could be heard along the front line.

Warmth of feeling spontaneously bubble up from the weary men on both sides of the conflict. As they met some shook hands. Others halted briefly as they stood before soldiers that only moments before they were firing at.

A few could be seen sharing a cigarette with soldiers from the enemy side. Somewhere the notes of Silent Night could be heard. In another direction the sweet notes of the Cantique Noel softened the darkness.

It is hard to imagine that it happened one hundred years ago this month!

Today we live in a noisy society and we are used to the noise. But in 1914 people all over the world were not used to the noise of cracking rifles, the loud booms of cannons, the whir of countless airplane engines and the angry whine of ship’s engines. It was a noisy period in human history as humanity was forced to live with heavy sounds and stultifying influences.

But what happened on that famous Christmas Eve when soldiers stopped fighting and embraced each other and sang Christmas carols together or simply stood peacefully and smoked a cigarette in silence, appreciating the companionship of another?

Perhaps it was the silence that was so poignant, so deeply penetrating.

But the silence went beyond being without the constant pop and crack of nerve shattering noise. Those moments as we recall them today stood for a point of saturation, a deeper than usual kind of fullness and at the same time an emptiness, a silence of hateful thought, the beginning of human awareness that there is no separation and the remembrance that we are all deeply connected and that essentially we are all on one side.

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© 2014 Rebecca Field