Bullets & Billets

CHAPTER VIII

CHRIST­MAS EVE----A LULL IN HATE-- BRITON CUM BOCHE

Short­ly af­ter the do­ings set forth in the pre­vi­ous chap­ter we left the trench­es for our usu­al days in bil­lets. It was now near­ing Christ­mas Day, and we knew it would fall to our lot to be back in the trench­es again on the 23rd of De­cem­ber, and that we would, in con­se­quence, spend our Christ­mas there. I re­mem­ber at the time be­ing very down on my luck about this, as any­thing in the na­ture of Christ­mas Day fes­tiv­ities was ob­vi­ous­ly knocked on the head. Now, how­ev­er, look­ing back on it all, I wouldn't have missed that unique and weird Christ­mas Day for any­thing.

Well, as I said be­fore, we went “in” again on the 23rd. The weath­er had now be­come very fine and cold. The dawn of the 24th brought a per­fect­ly still, cold, frosty day. The spir­it of Christ­mas be­gan to per­me­ate us all; we tried to plot ways and means of mak­ing the next day, Christ­mas, dif­fer­ent in some way to oth­ers. In­vi­ta­tions from one dug-​out to an­oth­er for sundry meals were be­gin­ning to cir­cu­late. Christ­mas Eve was, in the way of weath­er, ev­ery­thing that Christ­mas Eve should be.

I was billed to ap­pear at a dug-​out about a quar­ter of a mile to the left that evening to have rather a spe­cial thing in trench din­ners--not quite so much bul­ly and Ma­conochie about as usu­al. A bot­tle of red wine and a med­ley of tinned things from home dep­utized in their ab­sence. The day had been en­tire­ly free from shelling, and some­how we all felt that the Boches, too, want­ed to be qui­et. There was a kind of an in­vis­ible, in­tan­gi­ble feel­ing ex­tend­ing across the frozen swamp be­tween the two lines, which said “This is Christ­mas Eve for both of us--_some­thing_ in com­mon.”

About 10 p.m. I made my ex­it from the con­vivial dug-​out on the left of our line and walked back to my own lair. On ar­riv­ing at my own bit of trench I found sev­er­al of the men stand­ing about, and all very cheer­ful. There was a good bit of singing and talk­ing go­ing on, jokes and jibes on our cu­ri­ous Christ­mas Eve, as con­trast­ed with any for­mer one, were thick in the air. One of my men turned to me and said:

“You can 'ear 'em quite plain, sir!”

“Hear what?” I in­quired.

“The Ger­mans over there, sir; 'ear 'em sin­gin' and playin' on a band or some­thin'.”

I lis­tened;--away out across the field, among the dark shad­ows be­yond, I could hear the mur­mur of voic­es, and an oc­ca­sion­al burst of some un­in­tel­li­gi­ble song would come float­ing out on the frosty air. The singing seemed to be loud­est and most dis­tinct a bit to our right. I popped in­to my dug-​out and found the pla­toon com­man­der.

[Il­lus­tra­tion: hay­seed]

“Do you hear the Boches kick­ing up that rack­et over there?” I said.

“Yes,” he replied; “they've been at it some time!”

“Come on,” said I, “let's go along the trench to the hedge there on the right--that's the near­est point to them, over there.”

So we stum­bled along our now hard, frost­ed ditch, and scram­bling up on to the bank above, strode across the field to our next bit of trench on the right. Ev­ery­one was lis­ten­ing. An im­pro­vised Boche band was play­ing a pre­car­ious ver­sion of “Deutsch­land, Deutsch­land, uber Alles,” at the con­clu­sion of which, some of our mouth-​or­gan ex­perts re­tal­iat­ed with snatch­es of rag­time songs and im­ita­tions of the Ger­man tune. Sud­den­ly we heard a con­fused shout­ing from the oth­er side. We all stopped to lis­ten. The shout came again. A voice in the dark­ness shout­ed in En­glish, with a strong Ger­man ac­cent, “Come over here!” A rip­ple of mirth swept along our trench, fol­lowed by a rude out­burst of mouth or­gans and laugh­ter. Present­ly, in a lull, one of our sergeants re­peat­ed the re­quest, “Come over here!”

“You come half-​way--I come half-​way,” float­ed out of the dark­ness.

“Come on, then!” shout­ed the sergeant. “I'm com­ing along the hedge!”

“Ah! but there are two of you,” came back the voice from the oth­er side.

Well, any­way, af­ter much sus­pi­cious shout­ing and joc­ular de­ri­sion from both sides, our sergeant went along the hedge which ran at right-​an­gles to the two lines of trench­es. He was quick­ly out of sight; but, as we all lis­tened in breath­less si­lence, we soon heard a spas­mod­ic con­ver­sa­tion tak­ing place out there in the dark­ness.

Present­ly, the sergeant re­turned. He had with him a few Ger­man cigars and cigarettes which he had ex­changed for a cou­ple of Ma­conochie's and a tin of Cap­stan, which he had tak­en with him. The séance was over, but it had giv­en just the req­ui­site touch to our Christ­mas Eve--some­thing a lit­tle hu­man and out of the or­di­nary rou­tine.

Af­ter months of vin­dic­tive snip­ing and shelling, this lit­tle episode came as an in­vig­orat­ing ton­ic, and a wel­come re­lief to the dai­ly monotony of an­tag­onism. It did not lessen our ar­dour or de­ter­mi­na­tion; but just put a lit­tle hu­man punc­tu­ation mark in our lives of cold and hu­mid hate. Just on the right day, too--Christ­mas Eve! But, as a cu­ri­ous episode, this was noth­ing in com­par­ison to our ex­pe­ri­ence on the fol­low­ing day.

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. I should like to have sud­den­ly heard an im­mense siren blow­ing. Ev­ery­body to stop and say, “What was that?” Siren blow­ing again: ap­pear­ance of a small fig­ure run­ning across the frozen mud wav­ing some­thing. He gets clos­er--a tele­graph boy with a wire! He hands it to me. With trem­bling fin­gers I open it: “War off, re­turn home.--George, R.I.” Cheers! But no, it was a nice, fine day, that was all.

Walk­ing about the trench a lit­tle lat­er, dis­cussing the cu­ri­ous af­fair of the night be­fore, 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.

It all felt most cu­ri­ous: here were these sausage-​eat­ing wretch­es, who had elect­ed to start this in­fer­nal Eu­ro­pean fra­cas, and in so do­ing had brought us all in­to the same mud­dy pick­le as them­selves.

This was my first re­al sight of them at close quar­ters. Here they were--the ac­tu­al, prac­ti­cal sol­diers of the Ger­man army. There was not an atom of hate on ei­ther side that day; and yet, on our side, not for a mo­ment was the will to war and the will to beat them re­laxed. It was just like the in­ter­val be­tween the rounds in a friend­ly box­ing match. The dif­fer­ence in type be­tween our men and theirs was very marked. There was no con­trast­ing the spir­it of the two par­ties. Our men, in their scratch cos­tumes of dirty, mud­dy kha­ki, with their var­ious as­sort­ed head­dress­es of woollen hel­mets, muf­flers and bat­tered hats, were a light-​heart­ed, open, hu­mor­ous col­lec­tion as op­posed to the som­bre de­meanour and stol­id ap­pear­ance of the Huns in their grey-​green fad­ed uni­forms, top boots, and pork-​pie hats.

The short­est ef­fect I can give of the im­pres­sion I had was that our men, su­pe­ri­or, broad­mind­ed, more frank, and lov­able be­ings, were re­gard­ing these fad­ed, unimag­ina­tive prod­ucts of per­vert­ed kul­ture as a set of ob­jec­tion­able but amus­ing lu­natics whose heads had _got_ to be even­tu­al­ly smacked.

“Look at that one over there, Bill,” our Bert would say, as he point­ed out some par­tic­ular­ly cu­ri­ous mem­ber of the par­ty.

I strolled about amongst them all, and sucked in as many im­pres­sions as I could. Two or three of the Boches seemed to be par­tic­ular­ly in­ter­est­ed in me, and af­ter they had walked round me once or twice with sullen cu­rios­ity stamped on their faces, one came up and said “Of­fizier?” I nod­ded my head, which means “Yes” in most lan­guages, and, be­sides, I can't talk Ger­man.

These dev­ils, I could see, all want­ed to be friend­ly; but none of them pos­sessed the open, frank ge­nial­ity of our men. How­ev­er, ev­ery­one was talk­ing and laugh­ing, and sou­venir hunt­ing.

I spot­ted a Ger­man of­fi­cer, some sort of lieu­tenant I should think, and be­ing a bit of a col­lec­tor, I in­ti­mat­ed to him that I had tak­en a fan­cy to some of his but­tons.

We both then said things to each oth­er which nei­ther un­der­stood, and agreed to do a swap. I brought out my wire clip­pers and, with a few deft snips, re­moved a cou­ple of his but­tons and put them in my pock­et. I then gave him two of mine in ex­change.

Whilst this was go­ing on a bab­bling of gut­tural ejac­ula­tions em­anat­ing from one of the laager-​schifters, told me that some idea had oc­curred to some­one.

Sud­den­ly, one of the Boches ran back to his trench and present­ly reap­peared with a large cam­era. I posed in a mixed group for sev­er­al pho­tographs, and have ev­er since wished I had fixed up some ar­range­ment for get­ting a copy. No doubt framed edi­tions of this pho­to­graph are repos­ing on some Hun man­tel­pieces, show­ing clear­ly and un­mis­tak­ably to ad­mir­ing strafers how a group of per­fid­ious En­glish sur­ren­dered un­con­di­tion­al­ly on Christ­mas Day to the brave Deutsch­ers.

Slow­ly the meet­ing be­gan to dis­perse; a sort of feel­ing that the au­thor­ities on both sides were not very en­thu­si­as­tic about this frat­er­niz­ing seemed to creep across the gath­er­ing. We part­ed, but there was a dis­tinct and friend­ly un­der­stand­ing that Christ­mas Day would be left to fin­ish in tran­quil­li­ty. The last I saw of this lit­tle af­fair was a vi­sion of one of my ma­chine gun­ners, who was a bit of an am­ateur hair­dress­er in civ­il life, cut­ting the un­nat­ural­ly long hair of a docile Boche, who was pa­tient­ly kneel­ing on the ground whilst the au­to­mat­ic clip­pers crept up the back of his neck.