Famous German/British women in the time of the Christmas Truce

[Amitmis]

Hi guys,

 

It's me again with the weird questions :-)

 

So, I'm writing this novel about WW1, and one of the episodes is dedicated to the famous Christmas truce of 1914.

 

I am trying to think of topics that British and German soldiers could have been talking about while meeting in no-man's-land. As the British knew very little German, for the most part, I'm guessing the main form of communication between these young boys was through name-dropping of famous figures, preferably actresses and models.

 

For days now I've been trying to find famous German/British actresses/models and I can't find anything too convincing, especially on the British end (meaning, names the British have mentioned to the Germans of German actresses/models). For famous British actresses I came up with Lily Elsie and Maude Fealy, which the Germans probably heard of. But who did the British know? Who was the famous young German-born 'hottie' of the time? :-)

 

 

Thank you for the help!

I really appreciate it.

Amit.

[FROGSMILE]

Pre-ww1 there were just a few cinema theatres outside of the big cities of Britain and Germany.  As a great many soldiers came from outside of e.g. London, Birmingham and Liverpool, and Berlin, Breslau and Hamburg, I don't think that a great many soldiers had a cinema experience to share.  Some men from the emerging middle-classes with some disposable income would travel to the nearest city to watch a silent movie, but the scale of this was relatively small.  

 

I've no wish to discourage you, but what you are thinking of would have had more resonance during WW2.  I suggest that you look for some other theme of compatibility for 1914.  

 

Apart from between the educated officers, and a few Germans who had experience as waiters in London before WW1, very few of the fraternisers could understand each other's language (many officers of both sides used French to communicate) and most communication between the soldiery was by gesture and sign language.

Edited 21 March , 2020 by FROGSMILE

[Amitmis]

7 hours ago, FROGSMILE said:

Pre-ww1 there were just a few cinema theatres outside of the big cities of Britain and Germany.  As a great many soldiers came from outside of e.g. London, Birmingham and Liverpool, and Berlin, Breslau and Hamburg, I don't think that a great many soldiers had a cinema experience to share.  Some men from the emerging middle-classes with some disposable income would travel to the nearest city to watch a silent movie, but the scale of this was relatively small.  

 

I've no wish to discourage you, but what you are thinking of would have had more resonance during WW2.  I suggest that you look for some other theme of compatibility for 1914.  

 

Apart from between the educated officers, and a few Germans who had experience as waiters in London before WW1, very few of the fraternisers could understand each other's language (many officers of both sides used French to communicate) and most communication between the soldiery was by gesture and sign language.

 

So the names I did mention (Lily Elsie and Maude Fealy) - the odds are that the Germans didn't hear of them?

 

And what about, say, fashion models? Were there any famous German beauties the British might have heard of?

 

And if the answer is still 'probably not' - who might the Germans hear of in Britain? Anybody famous except for, say, Lloyd George?

 

 

Thank you!

[TwoEssGee]

I can't help you with your specific question regarding famous actresses of the time, but I can point you in the direction of letters written by an officer of one of the units involved in the Christmas Truce of 1914, who had personal interaction with the Germans and wrote to his mother telling her of the conversations he had.

 

Captain Sir Edward Hulse was the commander of Right Flank (company), 2nd Battalion Scots Guards on Christmas Day 1914. His personal letters to his mother were later published in a book titled "Letters Written from the English Front in France between September 1914 and March 1915".

 

It is available to read online free of charge Here

The letter concerning the Christmas Truce starts on Page 56 and is dated 28/12/1914.

 

I hope you find this of interest and that it helps with your novel.

[seaJane]

How about the music hall stars? Marie Lloyd, Vesta Tilley?

 

The only German star I can think a Londoner might have heard of is male - Richard Tauber.

[bif]

How about Ellen Terry or Lillian McCarthy or Lilly Langtry ?

Edited 22 March , 2020 by bif

[Amitmis]

6 hours ago, TwoEssGee said:

I can't help you with your specific question regarding famous actresses of the time, but I can point you in the direction of letters written by an officer of one of the units involved in the Christmas Truce of 1914, who had personal interaction with the Germans and wrote to his mother telling her of the conversations he had.

 

Captain Sir Edward Hulse was the commander of Right Flank (company), 2nd Battalion Scots Guards on Christmas Day 1914. His personal letters to his mother were later published in a book titled "Letters Written from the English Front in France between September 1914 and March 1915".

 

It is available to read online free of charge Here

The letter concerning the Christmas Truce starts on Page 56 and is dated 28/12/1914.

 

I hope you find this of interest and that it helps with your novel.

 

This is GOLD!

 

Thank you so much!!!

[Amitmis]

6 hours ago, seaJane said:

How about the music hall stars? Marie Lloyd, Vesta Tilley?

 

The only German star I can think a Londoner might have heard of is male - Richard Tauber.

 

I may use Marie Lloyd and Vesta Tilley (never heard of them before). Can one do an impression of either one of them, though?

 

And about Richard Tauber - Did young people know tenor singers? And wasn't he a little too young to be famous at 1914?

 

 

Thank you!

[FROGSMILE]

You have received some good advice, but I think you need to consider more carefully the types of media available to communicate at that time.  How many young men would buy a national newspaper, rather than say a local town paper? How many owned one of the embryo wireless radio devices?  How many could afford a record player or stylophone? These were all largely activities confined to a relatively small (compared with today) middle class who could afford the expense.  The vast majority of the working class of Britain and Germany were simple, unsophisticated men, whose interests were confined to food, drink, tobacco, sport (mainly football) and their local girls. You clearly are relatively young and used to the mass media and mass communication of today, which has a scale and extent unheard of between 1914-1918 and you have to be careful not to apply to past times (remember it’s 100 years ago) the social circumstances of today.  The officers might have been able to share some common shared experiences based on their social class and education, but very few of the men would have been able to do so.  They were more interested in fresh bread, good tobacco and schnapps or rum.  From 1916 on, as conscription took effect in Britain it brought to the trenches men from every corner of society, and then a far greater cross section of social experience began to mix more freely.

Edited 22 March , 2020 by FROGSMILE

[Dai Bach y Sowldiwr]

May I make a suggestion?

If you are going to write a book, a novel or any piece for publication, first become an expert in a field, then write about what you know.

Don't just think of a plot and try to pad it out with snippets gathered from here and there.

It won't work.

It won't sell.

[Steven Broomfield]

3 hours ago, Dai Bach y Sowldiwr said:

May I make a suggestion?

If you are going to write a book, a novel or any piece for publication, first become an expert in a field, then write about what you know.

Don't just think of a plot and try to pad it out with snippets gathered from here and there.

It won't work.

It won't sell.

 

I second that.

[Marilyne]

Three…

 

took me twenty years of WWI researching before finding the courage to put a WWI novel to paper… and this only because it's based on real facts and because my sister's been pestering me about it for ages that I should do it… still haven't found the guts to send the chapters to a publisher… imagine that! 

With regards to your question… when reading the question (before reading the answers), what came to my mind was the scenes of the movie "Joyeux Noël"... great (fiction) movie, fantastic voices of course but… the soprano IN the trenches??? euh… NO!! Please don't go there!!

 

M.

 

 

[Moonraker]

I'm afraid that I have to echo the past few comments. You seem to be  wanting to write a very wide-ranging book and however much advice you glean from us and other sources, there is very strong potential for errors of fact and understanding to creep in.

 

If you do persevere - and in the present circumstances you may have plenty of time to do so - try to identify a person or persons with knowledge of the Great War to look at a draft. But the wider the canvas the more experts you are likely to need, as there will be very few people with sufficient knowledge and inclination to help.

 

However much help we give you, I suspect that you may not be able accurately to capture the zeitgeist of the period.

 

Perhaps you should concentrate on researching and writing just one chapter and see if someone, perhaps here on the Forum, will cast their eye over it. Some of us are going to have plenty of time over the next few months.

 

I've been researching my own very narrow aspect of the Great War for 24 years and perhaps I could write a novel based in Wiltshire (there's an idea). I have a  little knowledge of other aspects of the war, but I know that I would stumble very quickly once my soldier left for service overseas.

[BullerTurner]

Apparently one topic was the comparison of Little Willie with The Prince of Wales, both of whom were considered good eggs/prächtiger Kerls.

[Steven Broomfield]

13 hours ago, BullerTurner said:

Apparently one topic was the comparison of Little Willie with The Prince of Wales, both of whom were considered good eggs/prächtiger Kerls.

 

Little Willie was (until the outbreak of the war) Colonel in Chief of the 11th Hussars. He made a visit to his regiment a couple of years before the war (at Shorncliffe, IIRC) and was received extremely warmly everywhere e went.

[Amitmis]

On 22/03/2020 at 10:56, FROGSMILE said:

You have received some good advice, but I think you need to consider more carefully the types of media available to communicate at that time.  How many young men would buy a national newspaper, rather than say a local town paper? How many owned one of the embryo wireless radio devices?  How many could afford a record player or stylophone? These were all largely activities confined to a relatively small (compared with today) middle class who could afford the expense.  The vast majority of the working class of Britain and Germany were simple, unsophisticated men, whose interests were confined to food, drink, tobacco, sport (mainly football) and their local girls. You clearly are relatively young and used to the mass media and mass communication of today, which has a scale and extent unheard of between 1914-1918 and you have to be careful not to apply to past times (remember it’s 100 years ago) the social circumstances of today.  The officers might have been able to share some common shared experiences based on their social class and education, but very few of the men would have been able to do so.  They were more interested in fresh bread, good tobacco and schnapps or rum.  From 1916 on, as conscription took effect in Britain it brought to the trenches men from every corner of society, and then a far greater cross section of social experience began to mix more freely.

 

What you're saying makes sense, but I also think about people like Charlie Chaplin, that were famous all over the world just a few years after the war has ended. I read about a few more movie stars that pretty much every person in the west hemisphere knew about, that rose to prominence just a few years after the war. So I'm not sure it's SUCH a far cry from my initial assumption that there could have been some few people known to all soldiers back then...

As for all the other commenters - well... I kind of agree. But it's not like it's a textbook about ww1. It's a novel about a young man coming home to England after having been in the war. The facts I do use about the war, I do everything in my power to make sure they are correct. I also read a bit about life in the British trenches etc. If I had been an expert in this subject, that would probably have made the book much better, sure. But as long as I don't make awkward mistakes, that'll be o.k with me. Because it's a fictional novel about guilt and post-trauma and grief, and this story may as well have taken place during or after any war in history. I try not to venture too far out of my (relative) comfort zone in the book with regards to using factual information in it.

What I am more worried about is, as one of you mentioned, my abillity to actually capture the zeitgeist of the period. I'm more worried about my characters not behaving accordingly with the etiquette of 1920's Britain. Not so much about the words they use, because I am trying to make sure that those words were in fact used there and then, but more with the way people conducted themselves back then, the ease and fluidity with which they formulated their sentences etc.

I'm operating under the assumption that people are people, and people always have been people. And so my characters talk like... people. But it does worry me that even though people are people, something in the way they articulated themselves (mainly verbally) was drastically different from how we do today (For example, did they use as many "eh..."s and "ummm..."s in their sentences like we do today? Were they less 'touchy' with one another, physically? Those kinds of things).

By the way, I would love some insights on this subject as well I mean, if I wrote a novel about Victorian era aristocracy, obviously I wouldn't operate under the assumption that "they talked like us". But these are the trenches, young boys, perpetually tired, 1917. Is it that far fetched to assume they talked like we do, more or less? Plain English, not too many mannyerisms of British 'table manners' etc.? Am I wrong here?

[FROGSMILE]

2 hours ago, Amitmis said:

 

What you're saying makes sense, but I also think about people like Charlie Chaplin, that were famous all over the world just a few years after the war has ended. I read about a few more movie stars that pretty much every person in the west hemisphere knew about, that rose to prominence just a few years after the war. So I'm not sure it's SUCH a far cry from my initial assumption that there could have been some few people known to all soldiers back then...
 

 

If you were writing about 1918-1920, I would agree with you, but you're not, you're writing about 1914, regular (professional) Army British soldiers and regular reservists, and German regulars and reservists.  They are a gulf apart from the young men of the end of the war, when such artistes as Charlie Chaplin began to take off.  I stand by my comments, and suggest that you do a bit more targeted historical reading before embarking on this.  Good luck.

Edited 23 March , 2020 by FROGSMILE

[Steven Broomfield]

2 hours ago, Amitmis said:

 

Is it that far fetched to assume they talked like we do, more or less? Plain English, not too many mannyerisms of British 'table manners' etc.? Am I wrong here?

 

With all due respect, I suggest (as have others) that you indulge in some deep reading. To find out how people spoke in the Great War, try reading books of the time, such as The Middle Parts of Fortune by Frederic Manning: that is a novel, based on the author's time as a Private in the King's Shropshire Light Infantry, and reflects very well the modes of speech of the other ranks. There are many other books which will do the same. 

[Amitmis]

2 hours ago, FROGSMILE said:

 

If you were writing about 1918-1920, I would agree with you, but youre not, your writing about 1914, regular (professional) Army British soldiers and regular reservists, and German regulars and reservists.  They are a gulf apart from the young men of the end of the war, when such artistes as Charlie Chaplin began to take off.  I stand by my comments, and suggest that you do a bit more targeted historical reading before embarking on this.  Good luck.

 

I acknowledge your comment. So maybe we'll try this: was there any German politician the British may have known more than just by name? Was there someone, on either side, who had certain mannerisms that could be impersonated by the soldiers (speech, movement, physical appearance)?

Edited 23 March , 2020 by Amitmis

[FROGSMILE]

7 minutes ago, Amitmis said:

 

I acknowledge your comment. So maybe we'll try this: was there any German politician the British may have known more than just by name? Was there someone, on either side, who had certain mannerisms that could be impersonated by the soldiers (speech, movement, physical appearance)?

 

A very few of the slightly better educated might, perhaps, have heard perhaps of Otto Von Bismarck, but in 1914 it would have been a tiny number.  The same would have applied to senior members of the Royal Families of Britain and Germany, all of whom were related to Queen Victoria.  You don't seem to understand the working class of the times, which virtually all enlisted members (as opposed to officers) of the regular British Army belonged to.

Edited 23 March , 2020 by FROGSMILE

[Amitmis]

38 minutes ago, Steven Broomfield said:

 

With all due respect, I suggest (as have others) that you indulge in some deep reading. To find out how people spoke in the Great War, try reading books of the time, such as The Middle Parts of Fortune by Frederic Manning: that is a novel, based on the author's time as a Private in the King's Shropshire Light Infantry, and reflects very well the modes of speech of the other ranks. There are many other books which will do the same. 

 

I have some reservations about that. Mainly because the literature of the time, I believe, had a tendency to 'round the edges' of day-to-day speech. I doubt it (and please correct me if I'm wrong) that any stammering or curse words would be included in a literary dialogue. I couldn't be able to tell, say, whether there's an overdramatization of the soldiers' speech or was that really the way they spoke back then.

 

Am I making any sense here?

 

 

[FROGSMILE]

15 minutes ago, Amitmis said:

 

I have some reservations about that. Mainly because the literature of the time, I believe, had a tendency to 'round the edges' of day-to-day speech. I doubt it (and please correct me if I'm wrong) that any stammering or curse words would be included in a literary dialogue. I couldn't be able to tell, say, whether there's an overdramatization of the soldiers' speech or was that really the way they spoke back then.

 

Am I making any sense here?

 

 

 

Not really.  Steven gave you excellent advice exactly as was.  'The Middle Parts of Fortune' uses soldier's (working men's) uncensored argot throughout, but make sure you get the unexpurgated edition.  You'll get a shock. 

 

Two other good examples, but without the swearing, are Old Soldier's Never Die, by Frank Richards DCM and There's a Devil in the Drum, by John F Lucy.  Both were regular soldiers in 1914.  Used copies can be had cheaply online.

Edited 23 March , 2020 by FROGSMILE

[Chasemuseum]

 

On 22/03/2020 at 19:56, FROGSMILE said:

How many owned one of the embryo wireless radio devices?

 

All good comments about trying to capture the "flavour" of the time. But the comment above is misleading, wireless at this period was in its infancy, it was only a direct communication tool, there was no public broadcast (music, news etc) of any sort, this did not come until the early 1920s. Absolutely no soldier private or officer would have owned their own radio transmitter or receiver in the field.

 

The earliest signals recruits to the Royal Engineers wireless squadrons included men who were radio amateurs aka "hams" (radio experimenters) in civilian life. But they would not have taken their own equipment with them. For most of the war the only thing transmitted was morse signal. Late in the war the first voice transmissions began, but these were only very limited, mainly short range aircraft - to - aircraft and aircraft - to - ground. Even at the armistice the vast majority of aircraft wireless were still morse only.

 

Before someone asks, there are no reliable numbers of how many wireless machines capable of voice transmission were actively deployed before the armistice, as opposed to experimental demonstrations. The actual number may be nil.

 

Public broadcasting such as the BBC was a product of the technology developed during the war and created the massive wave of mass communications that is part of our lives, but it had not been part of the social fabric of the lives of the soldiers in the trenches. They depended totally on newspapers and letters.

 

 

[FROGSMILE]

1 hour ago, Chasemuseum said:

 

 

All good comments about trying to capture the "flavour" of the time. But the comment above is misleading, wireless at this period was in its infancy, it was only a direct communication tool, there was no public broadcast (music, news etc) of any sort, this did not come until the early 1920s. Absolutely no soldier private or officer would have owned their own radio transmitter or receiver in the field.

 

The earliest signals recruits to the Royal Engineers wireless squadrons included men who were radio amateurs aka "hams" (radio experimenters) in civilian life. But they would not have taken their own equipment with them. For most of the war the only thing transmitted was morse signal. Late in the war the first voice transmissions began, but these were only very limited, mainly short range aircraft - to - aircraft and aircraft - to - ground. Even at the armistice the vast majority of aircraft wireless were still morse only.

 

Before someone asks, there are no reliable numbers of how many wireless machines capable of voice transmission were actively deployed before the armistice, as opposed to experimental demonstrations. The actual number may be nil.

 

Public broadcasting such as the BBC was a product of the technology developed during the war and created the massive wave of mass communications that is part of our lives, but it had not been part of the social fabric of the lives of the soldiers in the trenches. They depended totally on newspapers and letters.

 

 

Thank you for putting that so cogently. In reality I knew it at the back of my mind because I’ve only ever read and seen reflected the playing of gramophone records and was aware of the BBC setting up.  I was really just trying to convey to the inquirer a general flavour of how limited and unsophisticated mass entertainment opportunities for working men were, but I should have researched and recounted the details properly.  No matter, you’ve done a much better job now.

Edited 24 March , 2020 by FROGSMILE

[Moonraker]

On 23/03/2020 at 15:27, Amitmis said:

 

I acknowledge your comment. So maybe we'll try this: was there any German politician the British may have known more than just by name? Was there someone, on either side, who had certain mannerisms that could be impersonated by the soldiers (speech, movement, physical appearance)?

Undoubtedly there were mannerisms, but very few soldiers would get that close to a prominent figure to notice them, and any newsreel film was very jerky. Some British officers might have known that the Kaiser had a weak arm from a tricky birth and a few senior German officers might have met Kitchener who had an eye defect. (You would need to check out exactly what these features were for yourself, it's past my bedtime.) Ordinary soldiers would be unaware of them.

On 23/03/2020 at 15:34, Amitmis said:

 

I have some reservations about that. Mainly because the literature of the time, I believe, had a tendency to 'round the edges' of day-to-day speech. I doubt it (and please correct me if I'm wrong) that any stammering or curse words would be included in a literary dialogue. I couldn't be able to tell, say, whether there's an overdramatization of the soldiers' speech or was that really the way they spoke back then.

 

Am I making any sense here?

 

 

Seeing none of us were there, we can't be sure how they spoke, and any primitive phonographs recordings that may exist are of well-spoken people, singers and so on. We may be confident that bad language featured prominently but for obvious reasons was seldom included in books. On the British side, and probably on the German too, regional accents would have been far more pronounced than they are today. Attempts at replicating the accents in written form usually serve to distract readers as they struggle to make out unfamiliarly-rendered words. (To go off topic, I found annoying P C Wren's "writing" an American accent for "Hank Miller" in one or more of the Beau Geste books.)