All is Calm, All is Bright

In December 1914, Germany was locked in a stalemate with Franco-British allies along the Western Front—a 400-mile line running through Belgium and France. Unaccustomed to trench warfare, troops were left exhausted and disillusioned. Both sides were separated by only a narrow strip known as no man’s land, and enemy soldiers were often within ear- and eyeshot of one another. This proximity, coupled with the deplorable conditions, set the stage for a radical act of peace depicted in Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell’s Silent Night.

On Christmas Eve and into Christmas Day, a series of spontaneous truces were called along the Western Front, primarily between British and German forces. Men from opposing sides fraternized, commiserated, made music, and traded souvenirs. There were even rumors of soccer matches played between Germans and Brits. While the war would rage on for another miserable four years, this brief moment of peace—which more than one soldier described as “extraordinary”—left a profound impression on participants.

Read from letters that British troops wrote about their experiences on that silent night of Christmas 1914.

“On Christmas Eve there was a great deal of singing and shouting on both sides, some of the German efforts being very pretty harmony. On Christmas Day the Germans stuck up a white light and shouted that if we refrained from firing, they would do the same.” —Pvt. Herbert Chappel

“Germans and ourselves have been walking about on top of the trenches while a few of our chaps have again been out to meet the Germans who gave them cigars in exchange for Christmas pudding. … I have managed to get a German button which one of them cut off his coat for me.” —Pvt. Malcolm Howard Grigg

“[The Germans] had just come over out of goodwill. They protested that they had no feeling of enmity at all towards us, but that everything lay with their authorities, and that being soldiers they had to obey. I believe that they were speaking the truth when they said this, and that they never wished to fire a shot again.” —Capt. Sir Edward Hamilton Westrow Hulse

“I understand (but from only one unreliable source) that on Friday in another part of the line the Germans played us at football between the trenches, but I don’t know which side won.”—Pvt. Malcolm Howard Grigg

“I think it’s the most extraordinary show I’ve ever heard of and refused to believe it for a long while.” —2nd Lt. John Wedderburn-Maxwell