Last allied witness of WWI Christmas truce dies

Yahoo News ^ | 11/21/05 | By Peter Graff

[SmoothTalker]

LONDON (Reuters) - The last known surviving allied veteran of the Christmas Truce that saw German and British soldiers shake hands between the trenches in World War One died Monday at 109, his parish priest said.

Alfred Anderson was the oldest man in Scotland and the last known surviving Scottish veteran of the war.

"I remember the silence, the eerie sound of silence," he was quoted as saying in the Observer newspaper last year, describing the day-long Christmas Truce of 1914, which began spontaneously when German soldiers sang carols in the trenches, and British soldiers responded in English.

"All I'd heard for two months in the trenches was the hissing, cracking and whining of bullets in flight, machinegun fire and distant German voices. But there was a dead silence that morning across the land as far as you could see.

"We shouted 'Merry Christmas' even though nobody felt merry. The silence ended early in the afternoon and the killing started again."

Troops in the trenches swapped cigarettes, uniform buttons and addresses and even played football in one of the most extraordinary episodes of the war.

Parish priest Neil Gardner of Anderson's Alyth Parish Church in Scotland said he had died in his sleep and was survived by a large family, including 18 great grandchildren and two great great grandchildren.

"He was a wonderful old man: he was gracious, gentle, he had a great sense of humor and a fine sense of wisdom from his experience spanning three centuries," said Gardner, who also served as chaplain to Anderson's regiment, the Black Watch.

Anderson also served briefly as a member of the household staff of Queen Elizabeth's uncle, Fergus Bowes-Lyon.

With Anderson's death, fewer than 10 British veterans of the war remain alive, of whom only three or four were veterans of trench warfare on the Western Front.

Attention has turned to the last survivors in recent weeks, with filmmakers bringing out documentaries in time for this month's Armistice Day holiday, marking the day the guns fell silent on November 11, 1918.

[SmoothTalker]

A great generation has now almost completely left us.

[Fiddlstix]

R.I.P
Bump

[cjshapi]

This would have been an amazing man to have a conversation with.

[SquirrelKing]

Wow. Bonnie Rideout's bagpipe rendition of O Come All Ye Faithful just came across on internet Accuradio as I clicked this link.

R.I.P., Mr. Anderson.

[xrp]

Christmas Truce that saw German and British soldiers shake hands between the trenches in World War One

Astonishing. Somewhat proof that in very rare circumstances do large numbers of people want to fight, rather it is a small number of influential people who persuade them to fight. Sad.

[frogjerk]

Last allied witness of WWI Christmas truce dies

MSM, Liberals: "Cue the revisionist history books..."

[ZULU]

Another hero has gone on to his just reward.

God bless him and his generation. They were men.

[Lockbar]

Here is a pic of German and British troops together during the Christmas Truce.

[chudogg]

I wonder what their opinion of eachother was in 1913?

[CondorFlight]

Great book on the subject:

"Silent Night; the story of the World War I Christmas Truce",
by Stanley Weintruab

[cripplecreek]

My great grandfathers fought on opposite sides in that war. One immigrated from Germany as a young child then went back to fight on the American side at around 14 years old. The other wasn't much older when he fought on the side of Germany. The second grandfather immigrated here in the 30s as Hitler was rising to power.

[chimera]

You said it. I know every war has its own particular horrors, but from my reading I have always had the feeling that those who fought the Great War first hand went through the kinds of things the rest of us can only experience in our worst nightmares. What with trenches, mustard gas, tanks (which had never been seen before), mass advances against entrenched defenders, the most rudimentary medical aid for the wounded, etc. Nasty...

[ZULU]

I saw that in Barnes and Noble. Have to get it.

Thanks for the reminder.

For the most part, the war on the ground was pretty brutal, but the air war still retained a degree of civility and chivalry. I like reading about the air battles in WW1, the Red Baron, Bolcke, Immelman, some of the French and British aces. The Americans never really had any. We got into the air war too late.

Even the land war was pretty tame compared to WW1.

My grandfather was wounded and captured in the Argonne Forest. He said the Germans treated him pretty well. I remember him saying he didn't like the French though, although he thought the Brits were great.

[Tax-chick]

I think this deserves an implied Bagpipery ping!

[robowombat]

This is a pretty good article from the BBC from 1998. The actual cite contains an audio clip of an interview years ago with Frank Richards who was a long service enlisted man in the old 23rd Regiment (The Royal Welch Fusiliers) discussing the event.


The Christmas truce

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1998/10/98/world_war_i/197627.stm

The Christmas truce of 1914 really happened. It is as much a part of the historical texture of World War I as the gas clouds of Ypres or the Battle of the Somme or the Armistice of 1918. Yet it has often been dismissed as though it were merely a myth. Or, assuming anything of the kind occurred, it has been seen as a minor incident, blown up out of all proportion, natural fodder for sentimentalists and pacifists of later generations.

But the truce did take place, and on some far greater scale than has been generally realised. Enemy really did meet enemy between the trenches. There was for a time, genuine peace in No Man's Land. Though Germans and British were the main participants, French and Belgians took part as well. Most of those involved agreed it was a remarkable way to spend Christmas. "Just you think," wrote one British soldier, "that while you were eating your turkey, etc, I was out talking and shaking hands with the very men I had been trying to kill a few hours before! It was astounding!"

"It was a day of peace in war," commented a German participant, "It is only a pity that it was not decisive peace."

So the Christmas Truce is no legend. It is not surprising, however, given the standard popular perception of World War I, that this supreme instance of "All Quiet on the Western Front" has come to have something of a legendary quality. People who would normally dismiss that far off conflict of their grandfathers in the century's teens as merely incomprehensible, find reassurance, even a kind of hope, in the Christmas truce.

This was not, however, a unique occurrence in the history of war. Though it surprised people at the time - and continues to do so today - it was a resurgence of a long established tradition.

Informal truces and small armistices have often taken place during prolonged periods of fighting and the military history of the last two centuries, in particular, abounds with incidents of friendship between enemies.

In the Peninsula War British and French Troops at times visited each others lines, drew water at the same wells and even sat around the same campfire sharing their rations and playing cards.

In the Crimean War British, French and Russians at quiet times also gathered around the same fire, smoking and drinking. In the American Civil War Yankees and Rebels traded tobacco, coffee and newspapers, fished peacefully on opposite sides of the same stream and even collected wild blackberries together. Similar stories are told of the Boer War, in which on one occasion, during a conference of commanders, the rank and file of both sides engaged in a friendly game of football.

Later wars too have their small crop of such stories. It is rare for a conflict at close quarters to continue very long without some generous gestures between enemies or an upsurge in the 'live and let live' spirit. So the Christmas truce of 1914 does not stand alone; on the other hand it is undoubtedly the greatest example of its kind.

There are certain misapprehensions regarding the Christmas truce. One widely held assumption is that only ordinary soldiers took part in it; that it was, as it were, essentially a protest of cannon-fodder, Private Tommy and Musketier Fritz throwing aside the assumptions of conventional nationalism and thumbing their noses at those in authority over them.

In fact, in many cases, NCOs and officers joined in with equal readiness, while others truces were initiated and the terms of armistice agreed at 'parleys' of officers between the trenches.

There is also some evidence that while some generals angrily opposed the truce, others tolerated it and indeed saw some advantage in allowing events to take their own course while never for a moment doubting that eventually the war would resume in full earnest.

One other misapprehension about the truce calls for rebuttal. There has grown up a belief, even among aficionados of World War I, that the Christmas truce was considered to be so disgraceful and event, one so against the prevailing mood of the time, that all knowledge of it was withheld from the public at home until the war was over.

In fact, the truce was fully publicised from the moment news of it reached home. Throughout January 1915 numerous local and national newspapers in Britain printed letter after letter from soldiers who took part; in addition they ran eye-catching headlines ("Extraordinary Unofficial Armistice", "British, Indians and Germans shake hands"), and even printed photographs of the Britons and Germans in No Man's Land. Germany also gave the event press publicity, though on a smaller scale and for a shorter period of time.

Publishing a year later, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his history of 1914 called the Christmas truce "an amazing spectacle" and in a memorable description, saluted it as "one human episode amid all the atrocities which have stained the memory of the war".

The phrase sums up the attraction of the truce: it is the human dimension which means that this relatively obscure event in the fifth month of a 52-month war is still remembered and will continue to catch the imagination.

In a century in which our conception of war has changed fundamentally, from the cavalry charge and the flash of sabres to the Exocet, the cruise missile and the Trident submarine, the fact that in 1914 some thousands of the fighting men of the belligerent nations met and shook hands between their trenches strikes a powerful and appealing note. It is perhaps the best and most heartening Christmas story of modern times.

Adapted from the book Christmas Truce by Malcolm Brown and Shirley Seaton

[ZULU]

Great photo.

[stuartcr]

We should go back to making the leaders of countries, and other political leaders, fight between themselves...I bet there would be way fewer wars.

[GMMAC]

Farewell brave and noble Scot.

Here's the official BLACK WATCH website with lots of background on arguably Scotland's most famous Regiment from its founding to present day service in Iraq.

[ccmay]

In memoriam

Sgt. John Charles May
2/6 City of London Rifles, 1916-1919.
Military Medal, 1916. Gassed at Passchendaele, 1917.

[Frank_2001]

Thanks for the link!