The Christmas truce of 1914 was a spontaneous gesture despite the letter that 101 British suffragettes wrote to German and Austrian women and the proposal of Pope Benedict XV (“may the cannons be silent at least on the night when the angels sing”) officially rejected. According to multiple reconstructions, especially English ones, the Germans were the first to emerge from the trenches, after greeting signs and Christmas carols. Around 100,000 soldiers were involved in voluntary truces along the Flanders front, German, English, but also French and Belgian. Boys exchanging greetings and addresses. They buried their dead, gave each other food, cigarettes, showed photos of their girlfriends, admired their opponents’ weapons, celebrated masses. For many the truce lasted only on December 25th, for a few days, the luckiest did not shoot each other until the new year.

Christmastruce.co.uk

There is a site, christmastruce.co.uk, which remembers those moments, thanks above all to the letters from the front which told the public what had happened: “Just think that, while you were eating the turkey, I was speaking and shaking hands with the same men I had tried to kill just hours earlier.” A truce that unleashed the wrath of the respective commands and was revealed only thanks to the New York Times which on 31 December 1914 published the reports of the soldiers involved, then followed by the British Daily Mirror, Daily Sketch And Times. The letters to the newspapers were brought by incredulous relatives, in a climate in which it was hoped that a peace agreement was close, unaware of the ferocity that would be unleashed in the following years, including chemical weapons. In Germany the news arrived much more muted, while in France it was completely censored.

Has the game of peace been played?

The game of peace, played in no man’s land between the Germans and the English during the First World War, on Christmas Day 1914, was commemorated by Michel Platini one hundred years later in Belgium, inaugurating a monument to Ploegsteert, in the Saint-Yvon area . The match that would be won by the Germans 3-2 is mentioned in a document by Kurt Zehmisch, soldier of the 134th Saxon regiment: “The ball had replaced the bullets and for the duration of a football match humanity had regained the upper hand over the barbershop”. According to another reconstruction, that match could never have been played because the two regiments identified were separated by the river Lys. Ernie Williams, English soldier of the 1/6th^th Cheshires, however he played that match and recounted it in a television interview in 1983: “At a certain point a ball appeared, I can’t say whether it came from our trench or theirs, first there was a few passes, we had fun, in the end it became one big scrum, without any referee or score, also because the leather of the ball was completely soaked”; according to other sources it was made of rags.

War, peace and hope

Similar episodes were not repeated, except to a much lesser extent; in fact, the commands began to rotate the regiments so that they did not become familiar with the enemy and as the holidays approached they intensified the bombings to discourage a broad truce like that of 1914. The first friendly between England and Germany was played in Berlin on 10 May 1930 and ended 3-3, while the first time at a World Cup was the final in London on 30 July 1966 won by the hosts 4-2. It is difficult to say whether on Christmas Day one hundred years ago a football match was actually played between the soldiers of the two trenches, perhaps more than one was played, perhaps it was a fun and entertaining scrimmage, other sources say that only the the English. However, the idea remains strong that in the midst of a war some boys found the courage to lower their bayonets and look into the eyes of the enemy that someone had designated for them. And we like to believe that with mud and leather they gave themselves the deepest and most Christian sense of Christmas.