Bairnsfather joined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment as a second lieutenant in 1914. He served as the Machine Gun Officer in France until 1915, when he was hospitalised with shellshock and hearing damage sustained during the Second Battle of Ypres.

The British Expeditionary Force were now occupying crude trenches that in places were not even fully connected and in places the German trenches were only 30-40 yards away. With barbed wire stretched in front of each trench and a shell pocked strip of No-Mans Land between. Crude but effective but with none of the communication and secondary lines leading into the rear areas, that eventually were constructed from 1915 onwards.

The line stretched from Wytschoete near Messines in Belgium down to the La Bassee canal in France. The BEF now five Corps were set up as shown right. With 5 Corps of troops instead of the 2 that entered the fray in August.

'It was now nearing Christ- mas Day, and we knew it would fall to our lot to be back in the trenches again on the 23rd of December, and that we would, in consequence, spend our Christmas there. I remember at the time being very down on my luck about this, as anything in the nature of Christmas Day festivities was obviously knocked on the head. Now, however, looking back on it all, I wouldn't have missed that unique and weird Christmas Day for anything.'

Says Bairnsfather...

Battalions were being rotated in and out of the 'Front Line' every four days, so exposure to the conditions, so the fury of the German artillery and machine guns was limited and gave welcome rest between Duty Rotations...

well, as I said before, we went "in" again on the 23rd. The weather had now become very fine and cold. The dawn of the 24th brought a perfectly still, cold, frosty day.

The spirit of Christmas began to permeate us all; we tried to plot ways and means of mak- ing the next day, Christmas, different in some way to others. Invitations from one dug-out to another for sundry meals were beginning to circulate. Christmas Eve was, in the way of weather, everything that Christmas Eve should be.

He Went on...

Every man had been issued parcels and letters from home, which included food items like xmas cake or 'Plum Duff', what we now know as Christmas Pudding. Officers would recieve bottles of wine and spirits but everyone recieved Cigarettes, Tobacco or Cigars from home. All troops were issued with a small tin containing Chocolate, Cigarettes and a Card from the King and Queen. Coming to be known as the Queen Alexandra's Christmas Gift an example is pictured left…

I was billed to appear at a dug-out about a quarter of a mile to the left that evening to have rather a special thing in trench dinners—not quite so much bully and Maconochie about as usual. A bottle of red wine and a medley of tinned things from home deputized in their absence. The day had been free from shelling, and somehow we all felt that the Boches, too, wanted to be quiet. There was a kind of an invisible, intangible feeling extending across the frozen swamp between the two lines, which said "This is Christmas Eve for both of us something in common."

Later that day...

Given the propaganda at the time about the 'Dastardly and Beastly Hun' this thought of 'something in common' is an 'odd' thing to remark. However at that time the BEF was made up of Professional Soldiers with a reinforcement of 'Territorial Force' soldiers and given any soldiers low boredom threshold, any lull in attacks were gladly greeted.

There was a good bit of singing and talking going on, jokes and jibes on our curious Christmas Eve, as contrasted with any former one, were thick in the air. One of my men turned to me and said

"You can 'ear 'em quite plain, sir!"
"Hear what?" I inquired.
"The Germans over there, sir; you can

'ear 'em singin' and playin' on a band or somethin'."

I listened;—away out across the field, among the dark shadows beyond, I could hear the murmur of voices, and an occasional burst of some unintelligible song would come floating out on the frosty air.

Given that the enemy were so close conversations and shouted insults had become quite common place.

Suddenly we heard a confused shouting from the other side. We all stopped to listen. The shout came again. A voice in the darkness shouted in English, with a strong German accent,"Come over here!"

A ripple of mirth swept along our trench, followed by a rude out- burst of mouth organs and laughter. Presently, in a lull, one of our sergeants repeated the request, "Come over here!"

"You come half-way—I come half-way," floated out of the darkness.

one of our sergeants went along a hedge which ran at right-angles to the two lines of trenches. He was quickly out of sight; but, as we all listened in breathless silence, we soon heard a spasmodic conversation taking place out there in the darkness.

Presently, the sergeant returned. He had with him a few German cigars and cigarettes which he had exchanged for a couple of Maconochies and a tin of Capstan, which he had taken with him.

The seance was over, but it had given just the requisite touch to our Christmas Eve—something a little human and out of the ordinary routine.

Bruce Bairnsfather...

And so the Christmas 'Truce' began. Most historians record these facts in various publications and popular myth has taken hold of this 'wierd event' and a certain meaning has been read into the 'happenings'. Most believe the 'Futile Waste' of the First World War but miss the point that, at a time when static warfare was unkown, tactics were being made ad-hoc and developing through trial and error. So men began to write home about this strange phenomena, with some letters being sent to local newspapers, it took the national press several days to pick up on this, especially as there should have been a level of censorship of letters being sent home to England.

By Christmas Day in most of the line, mainly II and IV Corps, hundreds of men had appeared in No-mans land following a strange evening. There were cases of communal Carol singing and the Germans began to place lanterns and small lit Christmas trees on their parapets. Before rising in ones and twos from thier trenches calling out across no-mans land. By morning this seems to have become a frequent happening but by no means was it universal. Some units refused to meet and in some Battalions the Germans were fired on, to force them back inot thier trenches. Indeed certain troops Prussian mainly remained hostile throught this period. Where Saxon or Wurtemburg troops for instance were manning the line this seems to have been prevalent.

By the middle of Christmas Day men were congregating and giving gifts to one another, mainly Buttons Caps or Tobacco, one German unit is recorded as bringing across barells of beer from a nearby brewery. in the area where Bruce Bairnsfather was he recorded that 'one of his men, a barber in peacetime' set up shop in no-mans land giving shaves and cutting hair.

There doesn't appear to be much objection from senior officers and indeed only General Smith-Dorien had pre-empted these events by issuing orders that no-one should leave the trenches. Only two officers seem to have been 'chastised' one of them Capt Iian Colquhoun of the 1st Scots Guards was charged and court Martialled, he was sentenced to 'Admonishment' but that was later dropped by field Marshall Haig. Battalion war diaries also recorded the events that took place, some however took advantage to report the identity of German units in the line and also to map out thier trenches. There appears in the diaries, reports that the 'Truce' allowed units both British and German to recover and bury the bodies of men killed and still lying in no-mans land. In one case of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders the Padre held a short burial service with a German lay preacher acting as interpreter.

Whilst first reports had begun appearing in local papers, eventually both the Times and the Guardian reported on it...