Xmas Day 1914: where was the Truce?

I was recently in Belgium for a holiday. My son has been studying World War 1 history at school so we decided to visit the locations around Ypres that featured in the war. One site everyone was keen to see was the location of the Xmas day truce of 1914.

What was the truce?

By Christmas 1914, World War 1 was 4 months old. The front in Flanders around Ypres was pretty static with the race for the sea that established the salient at Ypres in the past and the great battle of Passchendaele in the future. That Christmas for the only time in the war a brief truce occured up and down the line. It did not occur everywhere and was definately not official but, in a few locations, tentative ceasefires were agreed formally or informally and soldiers emerged cautiously to search no-mans-land for the dead. In some places exchanges of conversation started up, food was passed around and then alcohol, carols were sung and then …somewhere… maybe in several places… someone got out a football!

Bruce Bairnsfather’s map showing the turnip field where he met Germans on Christmas Day 1914.

In one location near the vilage of St Yvon a certain (then) Seargent Bruce Bairnsfather of the Warwickshires was posted. He was injured not long after Christmas and took up drawing cartoons which in time became a definitive account of life in the trenches. He also drew a map of the exact location of the truce he was part of and recorded much of what went on.

“Christmas morning I awoke very early, and emerged from my dug-out into the trench. It was a perfect day. A beautiful, cloudless blue sky. The ground hard and white, fading off towards the wood in a thin low-lying mist. It was such a day as is invariably depicted by artists on Christmas cards—the ideal Christmas Day of fiction.

“Fancy all this hate, war, and discomfort on a day like this!” I thought to myself. The whole spirit of Christmas seemed to be there, so much so that I remember thinking, “This indescribable something in the air, this Peace and Goodwill feeling, surely will have some effect on the situation here to-day!” And I wasn’t far wrong; it did around us, anyway, and I have always been so glad to think of my luck in, firstly, being actually in the trenches on Christmas Day, and, secondly, being on the spot where quite a unique little episode took place

“Everything looked merry and bright that morning—the discomforts seemed to be less, somehow; they seemed to have epitomized themselves in intense, frosty cold. It was just the sort of day for Peace to be declared. It would have made such a good finale…”

“Walking about the trench a little later, … we suddenly became aware of the fact that we were seeing a lot of evidences of Germans. Heads were bobbing about and showing over their parapet in a most reckless way, and, as we looked, this phenomenon became more and more pronounced.

“A complete Boche figure suddenly appeared on the parapet, and looked about itself. This complaint became infectious. It didn’t take “Our Bert” long to be up on the skyline (it is one long grind to ever keep him off it). This was the signal for more Boche anatomy to be disclosed, and this was replied to by all our Alf’s and Bill’s, until, in less time than it takes to tell, half a dozen or so of each of the belligerents were outside their trenches and were advancing towards each other in no-man’s land.”

“A strange sight, truly!”

“I clambered up and over our parapet, and moved out across the field to look. Clad in a muddy suit of khaki and wearing a sheepskin coat and Balaclava helmet, I joined the throng about half-way across to the German trenches.“

An incident from the truce recorded by the cartoonist.

The turnip field where he met Germans on Christmas Day 1914.

Bairnfather’s map is so accurate and detailed that it is easy with a good map to locate the spot where this all happened. Indeed today (unlike 10 years ago when I visited before) the spot is marked on google maps.

This is the cottage built on the site of the original building where Bainfather lived.

The same road exists as did in 1914 with a bend in it and on the bend is a cottage located exactly where the one where Bairnfather lived.

The pond on the map still exists.

The map recorded a pond and that is still there.

The UEFA monument to the Christmas Day football of 1914 at St Yvon. There is much debate as to actually where the football occured with various locations mentioned by various soldiers. On his original map of the truce location, Bairnsfather did not mention football but later in interviews just before he died said they did occur here. His maps give us a firm location of the truce so UEFA decided it was a fair choice for their memorial to the football that occured this day somewhere in the area.

I recreate the incident with the help of my father.

Near to the location of the truce is the town of Mesen that was occupied by the Germans for much of the period. Another memorial to the incident is located in the square there. As we left the area we stopped briedly there and somehow this photo happened!