Author’s Notes: The Christmas Truce
My Inspiration behind THE FOUR BELLS: The Christmas Truce of 1914
My debut novel, The Four Bells, tells the story of ex-Tommy Al Weldy’s Great War experiences with his dead comrade-in-arms, Eddie Beane. Al and Eddie go to war with youthful enthusiasm but come of age in the tumult and tragedy of battle. Al and Eddie and their messmates take part in the celebrated Christmas Truce of 1914, when the battlefield went quiet and enemy soldiers met in no-man’s land for impromptu Christmas greetings.
An Author’s Inspiration
I was truly fortunate to appear in Myfanwy Cook’s “New Voices” feature in the February 2020 edition of the Historical Novels Review. Myfanwy’s article captured perfectly how The Christmas Truce of 1914 inspired me to write The Four Bells:
The Four Bells (Westy Vista Books, 2019) by Brodie Curtis is linked to Salazar’s novel The Flight Girls by focusing on “ordinary” people who were willing to sacrifice everything. Curtis’s novel, he says, was “set in motion years ago, in a homey lounge… I heard a gorgeously mournful acoustic version of John McCutcheon’s song about the Christmas Truce of 1914. The song follows Francis Tolliver, a Tommy from Liverpool, as his mates and the Germans trade carols and meet in no-man’s land and ends with Francis’s reflections of the lessons of the Truce. For me, the Truce sparks the imagination like few events in war. Thousands upon thousands of common soldiers of the line shared Christmas greetings or met in no-man’s land. What if they had decided enough was enough and laid down their weapons? Could that have emboldened folks at home to pressure the political leaders to stop the madness?”
These questions sparked Curtis’s quest to learn more. “I researched reports on the Truce in contemporaneous writings and non-fiction works and walked the fields of Flanders. I searched for a novel on the topic and, finding that there wasn’t much fictional treatment of the Truce, I decided to write about it.”
Curtis then “took a deep dive into all things the Truce and Flanders, and then put pen to my yellow pad. I soon learned that my characters would take me down their own roads, and the Truce became just one important scene in the story.”
Thank you Myfanwy for your piece! It was singer-songwriter Tom Munch’s soulful rendition of “Christmas in the Trenches” that is mentioned by Myfanwy. Here is Tom’s amazing performance of “Christmas in the Trenches”:
The Christmas Truce of 1914
The Truce actually happened during the first year of the War, 1914. Letters home from the soldiers, diaries, and contemporary newspaper articles chronicled how enemy soldiers laid down their weapons and interacted in different ways up and down the front. They traded souvenirs, like coat buttons and the belt buckle I have described in The Four Bells. They stood around the fire, exchanged greetings while sharing booze, plum pudding and other treats, and smoked cigars. They kicked a football about. A pig was roasted in one sector, and soldiers joined together in an impromptu joint burial detail in another, with a religious service for the dead. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s history of 1914 (published in 1915) sums up the Truce as “one human episode around all the atrocities which have stained the memory of the war.”
Gatherings of Tommies and Germans were photographed, and this one turned up in an English newspaper, The Daily Mirror:
Soldiers at the Truce
In fact, The Daily Mirror pondered the meaning of the Truce on January 2, 1915 with words that were no doubt blasphemous to warmongers of the time:
“The soldier’s heart rarely has any hatred in it. He goes out to fight because that is his job. What came before—the causes of the war and the why and wherefore—bother him little. He fights for his country and against his country’s enemies. Collectively, they are to be condemned and blown to pieces. Individually, he knows they’re not bad sorts….”
Two books provide rich details of the Truce:
Christmas Truce, Malcolm Brown and Shirley Seaton, 1984
Silent Night, Stanley Weintraub, 2001
A Stark Contrast
I suspect I was most inspired when I heard “Christmas in the Trenches” by the stark contrast between popular knowledge of the horrific nature of trench warfare and the seemingly improbable observance of the Christmas spirit by soldiers locked in a struggle to the death. So, the realization that there had been a cease-fire was a pleasant surprise. As was the notion that soldiers’ thoughts had drifted away from weapons and tactics and personal deprivations to their ordinary lives, the ways of home and those they left behind, with feelings of benevolent grace and empathy for their enemy counterparts who surely felt the same.
Please check out the excerpt from The Christmas Truce scene in my debut novel, The Four Bells:
Excerpt: The Christmas Truce from THE FOUR BELLS by Brodie Curtis
Al and Eddie sat on the trench steps on Christmas Eve, drinking cups of tea. The sky was gray, but not yet completely dark. Rifleman Parker shouted from his perch: “There’s something moving!”
“Are they attacking?” Corporal Jenkins asked.
Al and Eddie raised their rifles.
“No. Not yet, at least,” Parker said. “Wait! Something’s on their parapet.”
“Shoot ’im!”
Al pressed his shoulder against the forward trench wall and sighted his rifle, watching for movement from the Huns.
“It’s not a Hun. It’s a little pine tree.”
Two more trees popped up on the trench wall. All three were lit by electric lamps.
A German voice shouted, “Happiest Christmas, Tommy!”
Al lowered his rifle, and a wave of relief passed through him as though his blood pressure had dropped fifty points. Faces up and down the British trench were all smiles, and Eddie grinned at him. Then Johnson, a deep-voiced lad from Oxford, shouted out, “Happy Christmas to you, Fritz!”
The German voice shouted back, “Tommy, we have sum-ting for you dis night.”
Al snickered at the speaker’s German-accented broken English. Then a rich chorus of German voices sang a holiday carol Al and his mates knew, ‘O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum.’
Al and his mates applauded when the Germans finished, and Johnson whistled his approval. Lieutenant Travers shouted, “Okay, lads! Now our version back at ’em!” Al sang, loudly with the rest, ‘O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree ….’
As the last note trailed off, the Huns gave enthusiastic applause and shouted “Bravo! Bravo! Trotzen! Vell dun, Tommy! Gute Arbeit!”
Then it became quiet again, and the Huns broke into the most beautiful rendition of ‘Silent Night’ Al had ever heard. A sense of tranquility floated over him as he listened to the solemn, crystal-clear pitch of ‘Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht.’ All the Tommies were quiet. Eddie stared up at the stars in the frosty sky. Al relished each word as German voices soared across the plain, sure that the finest choir at St. Paul’s couldn’t have bettered them. For that moment, the Huns had made Flanders a beautiful place to be.
Al and the rest of his mates took a respectful pause, as if they were gathering themselves, and taking meaning from what they had heard.
“Lads, we might not match their singing, but we have to give account of ourselves,” Lieutenant Travers said, and counted out, “One, two, three.”
Al’s voice joined with the rest of the Tommies’ singing “Silent Night.”