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Letter documenting historic 'WWI Christmas truce football match' found
Oct 17, 2006 4:40 PM
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Letter documenting historic 'WWI Christmas truce football match' found
From ANI
London, Oct 17 (ANI): A letter documenting the famous Christmas Day truce of 1914 when guns fell silent along the Western Front, and feuding German and British soldiers engaged in a friendly soccer match in the icy mud of No Man's Land in France, has been found 92 years after it was first written.
The letter, written in the British trenches by a British private, details the truce when the Kaiser's soldiers and British Tommies exchanged pleasantries and celebrated Christmas together, and engaged in what was to become famous as the world's only friendly football match between enemy soldiers during a war.
Written in pencil on five pages of paper torn from an Army-issue notebook, the private he tells his "dear Mater" how on a frosty, moonlit Christmas Eve the Germans began placing "lights all along the edge of their trenches and coming over to us - wishing us Happy Christmas etc".
He says it is "the most memorable Christmas" he has ever spent or is likely to spend: "since about teatime yesterday, not a shot has been fired on either side up to now".
"They also gave us a few songs so we had quite a social party...Some of our chaps went over to their lines. I think they've all come back bar one from E Co. They no doubt kept him as a souvenir," the letter goes on to say.
"After breakfast we had a game of football at the back of our trenches! We've had a few Germans over to see us this morning. They also sent a party over to bury a sniper we shot in the week. He was about 100 yds from our trench. A few of our fellows went out and helped to bury him.
"About 10.30 we had a short church parade, held in the trench. How we did sing. O come all ye faithful".
The private identified only as a boy, further says that at night German and British soldiers had a joint Christmas dinner comprising "fried bacon and dip-bread followed by hot Xmas pudding, then muscatels and almonds, oranges, bananas, chocolate, cocoa and smokes".
"You can guess we thought of the dinners at home. Just before dinner I had the pleasure of shaking hands with several Germans: a party of them came halfway over to us. So several of us went out to them. O exchanged one of my balaclavas for a hat. I've also got a button off one of their tunics. We also exchanged smokes etc and had a decent chat. They say they won't fire tomorrow if we don't, so I suppose we shall get a bit of a holiday - perhaps," the letter says.
"After exchanging autographs and them wishing us a Happy New Year we departed and came back and had our dinner. We can hardly believe we've been firing at them for the last week or two - it all seems so strange. At present it is freezing hard and everything is covered in ice...
"There must be something in the spirit of Christmas as today we are all on top of our trenches running about. Whereas other days we have to keep out heads well down...I had a parcel from B G's Lace Dept containing a sweater, smokes, under clothes etc. We also had a card from the Queen, which I am sending back to you to look after please," he further says.
Near the end of the well-thumbed letter, he tells his mother: "As I can't explain to everyone how I spent my 25th, you might hand this round please...I never expected to shake hands with Germans between the firing lines on Christmas Day and I don't suppose you thought of us doing so".
"So after a fashion we've enjoyed? our Christmas. Hoping you spend a happy time with George Boy as well. How we thought of England during the day. Kind regards to all the neighbours. With much love from Boy," the letter concludes.
Historian Felix Pryor, manuscripts consultant to auctioneers Bonhams, who is offering the letter for sale on November 7, has termed it as "a desperately poignant - almost surreal - document".
"I have never in my career seen anything like it. To find a letter written home on the actual day of one of the most famous incidents in military history is amazing," The Times quoted him as saying.
"The envelope is missing and the intensely moving letter has long since been separated from the sender's family. It is therefore, quite literally, the work of an Unknown Soldier," Pryor added.
In the historic and unique truce, firing stopped along the entire 500 miles of the Western front. The Germans sang "Stille nacht, heilige nach" (Silent night, holy night), while the British responded with as rendition of 'O Come all ye Faithful'.
In one sector, the Germans produced a Christmas tree and staged the famous football match. In some areas, the truce lasted only one day; in others in continued until close to the New Year.
The letter was discovered in a box of otherwise undistinguished manuscripts, and is expected to fetch around 500 - 1000 pounds at auction. (ANI)
http://www.dailyindia.com/show/71205.php/Letter_documenting_historic_WWI_Christmas_truce_football_match_foundANI
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"Intelligence is a weapon... which, like Claymore mines, must be pointed in the right direction to be most effective for our side."
Just remember that your weapon was built by the lowest bidder
Guerrillas never win wars but their adversaries often lose them -Charles W. Thayer
For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman
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Re: Letter documenting historic 'WWI Christmas truce football match' found
Oct 18, 2006 8:42 AM
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Excellent post, Kaos.
Always a topic of great interest to me as for a few moments in time and during a brutal conflict, the ordinary foot soldiers were able to enjoy just being alive. I have read much on this incident and the harsh results from the High Command when this 'truce' was discovered.
Sadly, all the men that took part in those peaceful exchanges are now gone. We can only look back and ponder on what it must have been like and to think that those soldiers that survived must have remembered that short timeframe the rest of their lives.
I often think of the terrific 1980s video by Paul McCartney called 'Pipes of Peace'. If you can ever view that, I highly recommend it as the former Beatle illustrated the friendly exchanges between the Germans and the British.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention, amigo.
Ironmike
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Re: To Kaos - Pipes of Peace video info
Oct 18, 2006 8:52 AM
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Pipes of Peace" is a song written by Paul McCartney, which was first released on his album also called Pipes of Peace on 31 October 1983. It was also released as a single on 5 December 1983 and reached #1 in the UK singles chart for two weeks.
I found this little bit of info but cannot seem to actually locate the great video itself.
'At Chobham Common, Surrey, a video was shot for "Pipes of Peace", depicting the famous 1914 Christmas truce between English and German troops. The video was produced by Hugh Symonds, featured more than 100 extras, and for added realism McCartney had his hair cut short specially for the shoot.
"Pipes of Peace" was originally recorded in September 1983.'
Perhaps somebody can search around and locate this video and share it with us. It was terrific and filmed perfectly. Well worth seeing if possible. McCartney plays both a British infantryman and a German soldier.
Ironmike
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Re: To Kaos - Pipes of Peace video info
Oct 18, 2006 10:44 AM
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Heres one place where I found the video Mike  .
http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=909d8f639955906671e43b1bc06e8888.676202
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"Intelligence is a weapon... which, like Claymore mines, must be pointed in the right direction to be most effective for our side."
Just remember that your weapon was built by the lowest bidder
Guerrillas never win wars but their adversaries often lose them -Charles W. Thayer
For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman
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Re: Letter documenting historic 'WWI Christmas truce football match' found
Oct 18, 2006 11:31 AM
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last december a movie was supposed to come out about the christmas truce. I saw it advertised at the theaters yet it never came out as far as I know. Does anyone know what happened to it?
I have one book related to this subject, which is nothing but a complitation of all the evidence.
There is also a song by Danny McCetchen called Christmas in the trenches about this event. A very good song.
spondulix
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Re: Letter documenting historic 'WWI Christmas truce football match' found
Oct 18, 2006 11:32 AM
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last december a movie was supposed to come out about the christmas truce. I saw it advertised at the theaters yet it never came out as far as I know. Does anyone know what happened to it?
I have one book related to this subject, which is nothing but a complitation of all the evidence.
There is also a song by Danny McCetchen called Christmas in the trenches about this event. A very good song.
spondulix
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Re: To Kaos - Pipes of Peace video
Oct 18, 2006 3:27 PM
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Excellent, Kaos, bloody excellent.
Seek and ye shall find.
That is the video done back when videos were telling a story and creative instead of head-thumping trash with gold-encrusted teeth, caps on backwards and young women gyrating and wetting their lips for the next rapper star.
Paul should be proud of that little video. Haven't seen it in years. In fact, I will re-post your web link for others to watch as they might miss in down here on this post.
Great job, buddy. Thanks
Ironmike
PS
I thought the production effort was top notch on Paul's video. Nice work with the uniforms, weapons and trench atmosphere
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Re: To spondulix - 'Joyeux Noel'
Oct 18, 2006 3:44 PM
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Here ya go, laddie,
Merry Christmas (Joyeux Noel) Movie Review
'Noel' is a didactic Christmas card
By Wesley Morris
Between the movies released there and the slightly older ones that made it here, 2005 was a pretty terrific year for France. Jacques Audiard's "The Beat That My Heart Skipped," Michael Haneke's "Caché," Agnes Jaoui's "Look at Me," Philippe Garrel's "Regular Lovers," Arnaud Desplechin's "Kings and Queen," and Claire Denis's "The Intruder" were major works, any one of which would have made a sterling French submission for the foreign language Academy Award. (Audiard's movie almost made a clean sweep of the Cesars.)
But why submit a masterpiece when you can turn in a mediocrity? The French understand their Hollywood audience: Schmaltz sells. To prove it, they gave Christian Carion's "Joyeux Noel" the nod, and the Academy made it a nominee. To be fair, the film was a Cesar nominee for best picture, too. It's a heart-warmer, a well-meaning movie that sets out to wring a modern message (and preferably some tears) from a famous but largely forgotten moment in history. Set in 1914 at the start of World War I, "Joyeux Noel" tells the story of how Scottish, French, and German factions carried out a brief, happy cease-fire in time for Christmas.
In the interest of symmetry, each army forms a side of the movie's equilateral triangle. But Carion's fidelity to narrative geometry leaves him with a redundant and hopelessly blocky movie. It jumps from the French to the Scots to the Germans, telling a similar story several times. The thrust of each telling is that the war has not robbed its soldiers of their holiday spirit.
On Christmas Eve, Nikolaus Sprink (Benno Furmann), a German tenor turned soldier, bravely walks around the trenches singing "O Little Town of Bethlehem." The Scots play the bagpipes, and soon all are enjoying champagne and chocolate, listening to the yuletide sermon of a Scottish priest (Gary Lewis) and later to a song by Sprink's lady love Anna Sorensen (Diane Kruger), a Danish star of the Berlin opera, whom he has brought to the front lines. Kruger also played Helen in "Troy"; she appears to enjoy roles that inspire fighting men to drool.
The soldiers exchange photos of their wives, two soldiers bicker over the nationality of a cat, and the following day a soccer match is played. Amid all the harmonizing, the film's one genuinely intriguing character, a Scottish solder played by Alex Ferns, falls down over the corpse of his best friend.
Carion goads us to tear up with a well-done sequence of mass burials and the reading of the soldiers' letters. But the real dramatic meat of the movie comes after the truce evaporates and its consequences are clear. Not until the key members of all three crews are chewed out for their humanist escapade do you realize that relatively young men were calling the shots. Their castigators are elders who arrive to restore the bellicosity almost as a matter of tradition.
The priest's English higher-up goes so far as to insist that Germans good and bad be killed as a preventive ideological measure. This sounds reminiscent of the movie's unsubtle opening, in which three schoolchildren (one French, one Scottish, one German) stand in front of a blackboard and recite the lessons of the war.
The movie's determination to showcase the momentary goodness of three nations produces scarcely any interesting filmmaking, storytelling, or characters. Carion has taken one of the more astounding and surreal moments in 20th-century history and turned it into a moral greeting card. It's hard not to admire the film's sense of nobility. It's harder not to find the movie dull.'
Ironmike
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Edited by ironmike at 10/18/2006 3:46 PM
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Re: To spondulix - 'Joyeux Noel' details on another web site
Oct 18, 2006 3:51 PM
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Hiya spondulix,
I was hoping to catch this film myself, but it vanished in two shakes of a lambs tail (when was the last time you heard that expression?).
Check out www.imbd.com for more details
Ironmike
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Re: To spondulix - 'Joyeux Noel' - on DVD at Amazon.com
Oct 18, 2006 3:55 PM
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Hiya spondulix,
I just checked Amazon.com and the DVD is due out soon. Check the region playing abilities as there is a note on the DVD details on the web site.
Might be a good one. Sure looks good from the still photos and it has gotten rave reviews from those lucky enough to have seen it at the big screen.
Ironmike
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Re: Letter documenting historic 'WWI Christmas truce football match' found
Oct 19, 2006 2:06 PM
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If anyone's interested I recently came across A War in Words: The First World War in Diaries and Letter by Svetlana Palmer & Sarah Wallis. The book is made up entirely of diary extracts and letters however when it comes to the Christmas Truce letters or diary extracts are sorely lacking. Nonetheless I would advise everyone here to read it. Among the diaries include Rudolf Hess's, Vaso Cubrilovic and Dimitry Oskin.
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Oct 19, 2006 3:07 PM
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Wow, those sound great but my teetering stacks of 'must read' books forbids me from obtaining more books. My wife would defiantly give me more than the evil eye if I got a new load of books.
Ironmike
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Re: Letter documenting historic 'WWI Christmas truce football match' found
Nov 7, 2006 8:22 PM
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In fact, today November 7th 2006, this letter fetched around £13,000 British pounds in auction-that's around $23,000 US Dollars in auction-so much for estimates of £1,000!.
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Re: Letter documenting historic 'WWI Christmas truce football match' found
Dec 24, 2009 1:51 PM
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Christmas Bump. I hope you all have a good one!
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"Ok for the thousandth time. I SUPPORT BOTH Palestine and Israel. I want the peace process to go on and end with a final solution that will be embraced by both. I wants them to live together or seperately peacefully with eachother. I want the killings to STOP on BOTH SIDES.And I have condemned and praised BOTH for their actions bad or good"
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