Christmas Concert in the Trenches
Today we attended our children's school Christmas Concert (sorry, Winter Concert for the PC). The parents sat in rows, on chairs and wooden benches. We were sat quite closely for the three hour show. Late during the second half one of the teachers pulled out his guitar and sang us a song entitled "Christmas in the Trenches" by an American folk singer named John McCutcheon.
This song is about an informal truce that took place between German and British soldiers near the town of Ypres, Belgium on December 24, 1914. The Germans had been singing carols in their trenches and the Brits responded with their own. Eventually the men emptied out of their respective trenches and met in the middle, in no man's land, to exchange cigarettes, booze and chocolates. They exchanged stories of home and pictures of family. They buried the dead that had been lying in the no man's land. They played a football match. Boys having fun in a school yard - a school where none of them wanted to be. There had to be a winner and a loser as in all good sporting matches and apparently the Germans won the match 3-2. Not long after the game ended the madness resumed. Each side was intent in winning this, more serious, game as well.
Those men, eighteen years old, would have, a short eight years prior, in 1906, sung songs at a Christmas concert in their schools or townhall. They would have been innocent and full of aspirations and dreams. Their mums and dads might have been teary-eyed as many were today in our children's school. In those few months before Christmas 1914 most of their innocence would have been destroyed. But clearly, and thankfully, not all. Some of it remained and, even in the darkest of times, their spirit found a way to present itself to their mates across no man's land. For a brief period of time the insanity stopped, a silent pause on a cold night. Silent Night.
While I imagine that the lyrics of the song sung today were lost on the few children that were actually listening to its words I hope that other parents paid attention to them. The song has a message for us all. Let us hope that in eight years time these children will not have lost their innocence through another act of madness caused by egocentric grown-ups.
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