Christmas Truce Christmas truce

[Malcolm]

Searched but can't find the Observer on-line for 19th Dec but article reads.

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Last survivor of 'Christmas truce' tells of his sorrow

The First World War's horrors still move us but one man recalls his moment
of peace amid the bloodshed

Lorna Martin, Scotland editor
Sunday December 19, 2004
The Observer

The words drifted across the frozen battlefield: 'Stille Nacht. Heilige
Nacht. Alles Schlaft, einsam wacht'. To the ears of the British troops
peering over their trench, the lyrics may have been unfamiliar but the
haunting tune was unmistakable. After the last note a lone German
infantryman appeared holding a small tree glowing with light. 'Merry
Christmas. We not shoot, you not shoot.'
It was just after dawn on a bitingly cold Christmas Day in 1914, 90 years
ago on Saturday, and one of the most extraordinary incidents of the Great
War was about to unfold.

Weary men climbed hesitantly at first out of trenches and stumbled into no
man's land. They shook hands, sang carols, lit each other's cigarettes,
swapped tunic buttons and addresses and, most famously, played football,
kicking around empty bully-beef cans and using their caps or steel helmets
as goalposts. The unauthorised Christmas truce spread across much of the
500-mile Western Front where more than a million men were encamped.

According to records held by the World War One Veterans' Association, there
is only one man in the world still alive who spent 25 December 1914 serving
in a conflict that left 31 million people dead, wounded or missing.

Alfred Anderson was 18 at the time. Speaking to The Observer, Anderson has
revealed remarkable new details of the day etched on history, including
pictures of Christmas gifts sent to the troops.

His unit, the 5th Battalion The Black Watch, was one of the first involved
in trench warfare. He had left his home in Newtyle, Angus, in October,
taking the train from Dundee to Southampton, then a ferry to Le Havre.

He was happy, healthy and surrounded by most of his former school friends,
who had all joined the Territorial Army together in 1912. In October 1914
they thought that they were at the start of an exciting adventure. But by
the first Christmas of the war they had already experienced its horror and
the death of young friends was commonplace.

On 24 and 25 December, Anderson's unit was billeted in a dilapidated
farmhouse, away from the front line, so he did not participate in any
football matches. 'We didn't have the energy, anyway,' he said. But he can
still recall vividly what happened on Christmas Day 1914.

'I remember the silence, the eerie sound of silence,' he said. 'Only the
guards were on duty. We all went outside the farm buildings and just stood
listening. And, of course, thinking of people back home. 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, right 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. It
was a short peace in a terrible war.'

In some parts of the front, the ceasefire lasted several weeks. There are
also numerous trench yarns, some possibly apocryphal, about the impromptu
fraternising. One, detailed in Michael Jurgs's book The Small Peace in the
Big War, involved a young private who was led to a tent behind German lines
by an aristocratic officer and plied with Veuve Clicquot. In another tale, a
barber supposedly set up shop in no man's land, offering a trim to troops
from either side.

Now aged 108 and living alone in Alyth, Perthshire, Anderson still treasures
the gift package sent to every soldier a few days before the first Christmas
of the war from the Princess Royal. The brass box, which is embossed with a
profile of Princess Mary, was filled with cigarettes.

It also contained a cream card, with 1914 on the front, which says: 'With
best wishes for a happy Christmas and a victorious New Year, from the
Princess Mary and friends at home.'

'I'd no use for the cigarettes so I gave them to my friends,' he said. 'A
lot of the lads thought the box was worth nothing, but I said someone's
bound to have put a lot of thought into it. Some of the boys had Christmas
presents from home anyway, but mine didn't arrive on time.'

To his delight, he discovered that his most treasured possession - a New
Testament given to him by his mother before he left for France and inscribed
with the message: 'September 5, 1914. Alfred Anderson. A Present from
Mother' - fitted the box perfectly.

He kept both in his breast pocket until 1916 when a shell exploded over a
listening post in no man's land killing several of his friends and seriously
injuring him.

'This is all I brought home from the war,' he said, showing the box and
Bible, but forgetting about his beret with its famous red hackle, which is
the first thing you see when you step into his home.

There are still many aspects of the war that Anderson finds difficult to
talk about. 'I saw so much horror,' he said, shaking his head and gazing
into the middle distance. 'I lost so many friends.'

He recalled one incident that gave him a 'sore heart'. When he was first
home on leave, he visited the family of a dead friend to express his
condolences. He knew them well but soon realised that he was getting a
frosty reception. 'I asked if they were going to ask me in and they said no.
When I asked why, they just said, "Because you're here and he's not". That
was awful. He's one of the lads I miss most.'

Two years ago Prince Charles paid him a private visit after learning that he
had served briefly as batman to the Queen Mother's brother, Captain Fergus
Bowes-Lyon, who, along with hundreds of Mr Anderson's regimental colleagues,
was killed at the Battle of Loos in 1915.

The seemingly invincible Anderson, who was awarded France's highest honour -
the Légion d'Honneur - in 1998 for his services during the First World War,
was recently in the rare position of witnessing one of his six children's
golden wedding anniversaries. His children, he said, five of whom are still
alive, are what keeps him going.

Alfred Anderson has spent 90 years trying to forget the war. But it has been
impossible. So on Saturday he will look back. 'I'll give Christmas Day 1914
a brief thought, as I do every year. And I'll think about all my friends who
never made it home. But it's too sad to think too much about it. Far too
sad,' he said, his head bowed and his eyes filled with tears.


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Aye
Malcolm

[ianw]

Thanks for that Malcolm.

What strikes me most is the guilt felt by the survivors - still keen and capable of raising tears 90 years on. I sometimes think they feel they would have been better off falling with their friends. Oh how sad to be cut adrift from so many of your generation - men who shared the friendship that only war can create.

[Anthony Pigott]

If I read it correctly, this chap is probably the last of the Old Contemptibles - I hadn't realised there were any left at all.

Regards

Anthony

[Malcolm]

Anthony,

Exactly! I wonder what Mr Anderson makes of the Hoon/Jackson Regiment cuts.

Aye

Malcolm