David Powell and The Speekers

Lyrics

The 9th track on the album 'Love' by David Powell and The Speekers

No one really knows where it began, nor whether it spread or broke out simultaneously along the trenches. However, it is believed that about 100,000 soldiers, two-thirds of the troops, took part in the truce.

The majority talk of carol singing from the trenches on Christmas Eve.

Albert Moren of the Second Queens Regiment described “a beautiful moonlit night, frost on the ground, white almost everywhere”.

Graham Williams of the Fifth London Rifle Brigade said:

“First the Germans would sing one of their carols and then we would sing one of ours, until when we started up ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’ the Germans immediately joined in singing the same hymn to the Latin words Adeste Fideles. And I thought, well, this is really a most extraordinary thing ­– two nations both singing the same carol in the middle of a war.”

On Christmas Day, in some places, German soldiers came out from their trenches, calling out “Merry Christmas” in English. Some Germans held up signs reading “You no shoot, we no shoot.” Allied soldiers slowly came out into “no man’s land” to greet them.

During the day troops exchanged cigarettes, food, buttons and hats. Both sides were also able to bury their dead, whose bodies still lay between the trenches in “no man’s land”.

Murdoch M. Wood, a British soldier, speaking in 1930, said: “I then came to the conclusion that I have held very firmly ever since, that if we had been left to ourselves there would never have been another shot fired.”

Lyrics:
Moonlight
Frost white
Trenches, and
barbed wire
Christmas Eve, 1914
Christmas Eve, 1914

Live and let live
We, no shoot
You, no shoot
Christmas truce, 1914
Christmas truce, 1914

Sing a carol
And bury the dead
In no man’s land
In no man’s land
Christmas Day, 1914
Christmas Day, 1914

Come all ye faithful
Merry Christmas, 1914
Christmas Day, 1914
Christmas truce, 1914