Free Why was the Partridge in the Pear Tree? by Mark Lawson-Jones Page A

to retaliate in some way, so we sang ‘The first Noël’, and when we finished that they all began clapping; and then they struck up another favourite of theirs, ‘O Tannenbaum’. And so it went on. First the Germans would sing one of their carols and then we would sing one of ours, until when we started up ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ the Germans immediately joined in singing the same hymn to the Latin words ‘Adeste Fideles’. And I thought, well, this was really a most extraordinary thing - two nations both singing the same carol in the middle of a war.

    Tilley continues his letter, ‘This experience has been the most practical demonstration I have seen of Peace on earth and goodwill towards men’. Tilley even empathised with the German soldiers, ‘We hated their guts when they killed any of our friends; then we really did dislike them intensely … And we thought, well, poor so and so’s, they’re in the same kind of muck as we are.’ He concludes his letter ‘It doesn’t seem right to be killing each other at Christmas time’.
    The singing from the trenches eventually turned into something completely different, as soldiers disobeyed their superior officers and fraternized with the ‘enemy’ along two-thirds of the Western Front, the 450-mile line of trenches, machine gun nests and barbed wire between the sandy dunes of the borders of Belgium and the Swiss border.
    Thousands of troops streamed across a no-man’s land strewn with rotting corpses. They continued singing carols, exchanged photographs of loved ones back home, shared rations, played football, they even roasted some pigs. Soldiers embraced men they had been trying to kill and agreed to warn each other if their superior officers forced them to fire their weapons, and to aim high. In his book The Christmas Truce (Brown) a Corporal John Ferguson is quoted:

    Deliveries of presents in the trenches.

    We shook hands, wished each other a Merry Xmas, and were soon conversing as if we had known each other for years. We were in front of their wire entanglements and surrounded by Germans – Fritz and I in the centre talking, and Fritz occasionally translating to his friends what I was saying. We stood inside the circle like street-corner orators. Soon most of our company (‘A’ Company), hearing that I and some others had gone out, followed us … What a sight - little groups of Germans and British extending almost the length of our front! Out of the darkness we could hear laughter and see lighted matches, a German lighting a Scotchman’s cigarette and vice versa, exchanging cigarettes and souvenirs. Where they couldn’t talk the language they were making themselves understood by signs, and everyone seemed to be getting on nicely. Here we were laughing and chatting to men whom only a few hours before we were trying to kill!

    First World War Truce, 19January 1915.
    When news of this reached the high command it was decided that action needed to be taken. Popular urban legend would have it that the soldiers stopped fighting to play football, returning to battle the next day. This was not the case; soldiers declared their solidarity and refused to fight. On both sides, generals declared the spontaneous peacemaking as ‘treasonous’ and ‘subject to court martial’. It did however take until March 1915 to fully suppress the fraternization. By the time of the Armistice in 1918, fifteen million people would have been killed.

    The Illustrated London News ’ coverage of Christmas in the trenches 1914.
    Perhaps for Private Tilley and the countless other soldiers on both sides, the singing of ‘Adeste Fideles’, memories of past Christmasses and the sense of the waste and futility of war led in part to this ceasefire.
    Each time we hear ‘Adeste Fideles’ we can appreciate an extraordinary history of risings, war and death, but also those brave people who seek an end to war and persecutions.

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Angels from the Realms of Glory
    Angels from the