Christmas in the Trenches
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"Christmas in the Trenches" is a melancholy ballad from John McCutcheon's 1984 Album Winter Solstice. It tells the story of the 1914 Christmas Truce between the British and German lines on the Western Front during the Great War from the perspective of a fictional British soldier.
[edit] Concept
The ballad is a first person narrative by Francis Tolliver, a fictional British soldier from Liverpool. He is relating the events which happened three years ago while he was a soldier in the trenches of the Great War. He and his fellow soldiers are dug in to their trench, where, as Tolliver relates, "the frost so bitter hung," while their German enemies occupy the trench at the opposite end of No Man's Land. The scene is one of quiet and cold; "the frozen fields of France were still; no songs of peace were sung." The men are reflecting on how their families back in England are making them, "their brave and glorious lads so far away," the subject of their Christmas toasts, when from the German lines they suddenly hear a young German voice singing out clearly. He is soon joined by his comrades, and the sound of their song fills the empty fields devastated by war. When they finish, some of the British soldiers from Kent sing "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," after which the Germans sing "Stille Nacht," to which the British soldiers accompany them, singing in English. The British troops are startled when their front line sentry cries out that a lone German figure has left their trench and is marching alone across No Man's Land, unarmed and with a truce flag. Though all of the men aim their rifles at him, nobody fires, and soon all of the men on both sides are leaving their trenches and meeting their enemies unarmed in No Man's Land. There, they trade chocolate and cigarettes and exchange photographs of their families back home, at which all of the men are struck by how similar their enemy is to themselves. One of the Germans plays his violin while a British soldier plays his squeezebox, and the men launch flares to light up the field in order to play a game of football (note: John McCutcheon's use of the word "soccer," along with his distinct accent, clearly betray his American, rather than British, identity.) Later, with the first signs of daylight, Tolliver relates that "France was France once more; With sad farewells we each began to settle back to war." But, McCutcheon sings, "the question haunted every man who lived that wondrous night; 'who's family have I fixed within my sight?'" It ends with the fictional Tolliver's lessons gleaned from the experience; that "the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame- and on each end of the rifle we're the same."
[edit] Similarities to other references in Popular Culture
In the episode "Bastogne" from the HBO series "Band of Brothers," the besieged American soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division encircled in the woods outside of Bastogne, Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, begin to hear a lone German voice singing "Stille Nacht," later joined by a chorus of voices from the German lines. As the American soldiers warm up to the Christmas spirit in the air resulting from the song, they build a fire in order to drive away the bitter cold. Rather than reacting with a truce flag, as in the John McCutcheon song, the Germans instead respond with a devastating artillery barrage, exemplifying the end of the period of European "gentlemen's wars" which many historians believe was another casualty of the First World War.
