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This year we are commemorating
a hundred years of the outbreak of the First World War, and we
are at the brink of the centenary of the Christmas Truce. As they
said, all gave some, but some gave all, and there have been
many commemorations this year marking the hundredth anniversary
of the First World War, which is the watershed between the
greatest century of missions and the worst century of persecution.
And all over the world it's time to reflect on what our great-grandparents
went through and suffered just a hundred years ago. The moths
have the principle that going down the sun in the morning we
will remember them, and Cape Town has the noon-day gun to
remind us at 12 noon to remember those who fell in the wars. But
100 years ago a most extraordinary Christmas was experienced. On
Christmas Eve 1914 a spontaneous ceasefire was observed across
the whole of the Western Front. And the Christmas Truce to the
First World War is a single event, virtually unprecedented, certainly
in its scope, in the history of warfare. It initially received
widespread media coverage in the New York Times of 31st of
December 1914, And this was followed up by the British newspapers
like the Mirror, the Illustrated, London News, the Times, which
in January 1915 printed front-page photographs of British and German
troops mingling and singing Christmas carols in no man's land. Absolutely
extraordinary. Now, this is before the censorship
bureaus got really cracking, but because of letters that had
gone home, and cards and extraordinary reports from the soldiers at
the front. You had Illustrated London News
and others showing pictures like this. The French government were
the first to see the incredible danger of this to their war efforts
and to severely censor any reports of what they called fraternization
with the enemy. I took this picture At the Imperial
War Museum, hate propaganda against the wicked Hun began as soon
as Britain went to war. The press was full of tales of
German atrocities, both real and imagined. In this poisonous
atmosphere, angry crowds smashed windows of shops owned by German-British
authorities and turned German men in camps. It was, according
to a poem by Rudyard Kipling, the most popular British right
at the time when the British began to hate. And they said,
reports of German atrocities were often lurid and false. They
included stories of mutilated nuns and butchered babies. But
people were all too ready to believe them. In Britain there
was a cleansing of everything German or German-sounding. London's
Coburg Hotel was renamed the Connacht. German shepherd dogs
had to become Alsatians. Many even got stoned to death.
German measles became Belgian flush. Orchestras stopped playing
Beethoven and Wagner. Absolute hysteria. And so political
pressure was brought to bear to censor all reports of the
event from the mainstream history books for decades. For years
this extraordinary event was known only by word of mouth from
some participants. And I remember hearing at moth
meetings, I remember meeting people who fought in the First
World War. Of course, the last ones have died out by now, but
when I was younger I spoke of people who fought on the Western
Front in the First World War. Some of them told me about this,
and I remember at the time thinking, that's strange, but I didn't
really appreciate the depth of it, because I was too young to
really appreciate the implications. But the damage caused by the
Christmas Truce to propaganda campaigns to demonize the enemy
was regarded as a serious threat to the war effort. It's taken
decades to unearth the details of this fascinating event that
surrounded Christmas 1914. Now, in the centenary year, you're
getting publications come out with the Christmas miracle, the
true story of the 1914 truce, and books have come out on the
Christmas truce, an absolutely extraordinary amount. To understand
the background, note that in the first five months of the
Great War, over a million Europeans had already been killed in action.
In five months. And all the politicians on all
sides had promised the soldiers, you will be back home by Christmas.
So, now they in mud and blood at the front facing terrible
elements of the cold and snow and frostbite and trench foot
and lice and they now are feeling more camaraderie with the men
on the other side they're fighting because they know they're going
through the same hell that we are but these low-life politicians
back home have sent us here you know that's something else and
they're feeling so alienated from the folks back home and
they're feeling more affinity for the people they're fighting
Now most of those who'd been killed in the Great War were
killed by artillery, over 67%. The initially fast-moving campaigns
had degenerated into static trench warfare with a continuous front
line of barbed-wine trenches running from the North Sea on
the Belgian coast all the way through to the Swiss frontier.
You may be surprised to know that one of our South African
heroines, Emily Hobhouse, was the most prominent campaigner
against British involvement in the First World War. It was that
famous Englishwoman Emily Hobhouse who exposed to the world the
horrors of Lord Kitchener's scorched earth campaigns against the Boer
Republics of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal and the
concentration camps. and it was sketches that she
either did or commissioned and photographs that she took that
documented the burning of the farmhouses. Over 30,000 British,
30,000 Boer farms were destroyed and that means not only the farm
dynamited, like look at this cold bloodedness, Before, during
the explosion, afterwards, smoking ruins. They dynamited wells,
they slaughtered the cattle and sheep, they destroyed the crops. That's Louis Bort's farmhouse
going up. They demolished and burned down
churches like at Lindley, and imprisoned the Boer women and
children into concentration camps like these, in areas that they
called them refugee camps. But notice the prisoners of war.
If you cross the inner line, the sentries have strict orders
to shoot any prisoners passing by. So in Britain they called
them refugees, but on the ground they knew that they were actually
prisoners. 250 per thousand were dying every
year. This means that in four years
all the Boer women and children would have been dead. A quarter
were dying every year. These are pictures taken by Emily
Harpass to show to the world the horrors of concentration
camps. And this brave British woman
who came from a very privileged background, she had a relative
who was a Member of Parliament, her father was a Church of England
minister, but here you can see some of her artwork of the Lindley
Church, of homes, cemeteries, concentration camps, burning
out of farms, the women and children eking out a sparse existence
on inadequate provisions in the wilderness without even a tree
for shelter, literally put out in the wilderness. If you drive
across the Karoo and you see places like Polesburg where they
put the people, it's shocking. And this was a disgrace. Now, Emily Hobhouse, known as
that Englishwoman, authored the open Christmas letter calling
for peace. She got 101 very prominent British
women to sign this open Christmas letter which was endorsed by
155 prominent German and Austrian women in response. You can see
first name Emily Hobhouse. She is the draft of it. May Christmas hasten that day. Peace on earth is gone, but by
renewal of our faith that is still reigns at the heart of
things. Christmas should strengthen both you and us and all womanhood
to strive for the return of peace. We are yours in a sisterhood
of sorrow." And the brave letter, you can imagine she would have
been considered something like a traitor at the time for having
written it, Under the heading, On Earth Peace, Goodwill Towards
Men, Emily Hobhouse wrote, Sisters, the Christmas message sounds
like mockery to a world at war. But those of us who wished and
still wish for peace may surely offer a solemn greeting to such
of you as feel as we do. And so She mentioned that as
in the South African War during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899 to
1902, the brunt of modern war falls upon non-combatants, and
the conscience of the world cannot bear the sight. And so, here
are the names of these very prominent individuals who courageously
put their names to the speaking out against the involvement of
civilized nations, Christian nations, fighting their brothers
and sisters. Is it not our mission to preserve life? Do not humanity
and common sense alike prompt us to join hands with the women
and urge our rulers to stave off further bloodshed? May Christmas
hasten the day." And what they were trying to say is, look,
this war should never have been entered into, but now that it is, let
us stop on Christmas. We're going nowhere. In fact,
the world would have been a better place if they had stopped on
Christmas, because nothing was achieved after 1914 anyway. The
German mothers responded with a letter of their own saying,
to our English sisters, sisters of the same race, our warm and
heartfelt thanks for Christmas greetings. Women of the belligerent
countries with all faithfulness, devotion and love to the country
can go beyond it and maintain true solidarity with the women
of other belligerent nations that really civilized women never
lose their humanity. And of course they're speaking
as Christians. Because they had a, even if they weren't all born
again, they had a basic Christian ethos and worldview. Emily Hobhouse
also oversaw the raising of funds and the shipping of foods and
medicines to the women and children of Germany and Austria who were
starving because of the British naval blockade. And you can see
here how these are the dark blue are the minefields. The British
Institute, the first such, in the history of the world, total
blockade, not just in weapons, but of food going into a nation.
And Germany, of course, their only opening to the open sea
and to the colonies was through this. So closing off these areas,
these are the minefields. And in between the minefields,
the warships rampaged and made sure that no food reached them.
And the result was this. And this picture I took again
in the Imperial War Museum in London. children starving in
Vienna, Austria. And it was such children that
Emily Hobhouse sought to raise supplies to go through neutral
countries like Sweden and Switzerland to reach some of those who were
the victims of her own nation's blockade. Numerous ministers
picked up this theme from Emily Hobhouse and the mothers. And
they started proclaiming from the pulpits, may the guns fall
silent at least upon the night when the angels sang. And although
these messages were officially rebuffed and suppressed in a
heavily censored media, many of the soldiers in the front
lines seemed to share these sentiments. Whether they knew what Emily
Hophouse had said or not, or whether that's spread by the
Bush telegraph, people plainly picked up the message of what
Kitchener called that bloody woman. From the first week of
December, informal truces were being observed by soldiers on
the front line. In a letter dated 7 December 1914, Charles de Gaulle,
who later would become the famous President of France, expressed
his dismay at fraternisation of the enemy, where French and
German troops exchanged newspapers and recovered their dead, organising
burial parties in no man's land. He was shocked and thought this
was a terrible thing. French General de Herbal expressed alarm
over soldiers staying too long in the same sector because they
became friendly with the enemies. Some battle lines were 70 metres,
100 metres apart and they would carry on conversations between
the trenches sometimes. And some even visited one another's
trenches. And so at the beginning the men
followed the call to arms If you just think of Harry Patch,
the last survivor of the First World War who fought in the trenches,
he died at age 111 I think. Now he was born 1898 and Sir
Harry Patch is the last surviving British Tommy who fought in the
trenches. He said that he had always been
against war. He had told the other men that
we must make a pact we never will kill another human being
and they will always aim to miss and aim high and he said a number
of occasions when people tried to associate with him like Tony
Blair and Prime Minister Brown, he rebuffed him and said, you
bloody politicians should take up the rifles and go and sort
out your problems with one another. Don't send other people's youngsters
to go and fight your useless wars. And he said, this is ridiculous. Here we had civilized people,
Christian people fighting one another. And so he was totally
against it. And he said, you know, don't use me for your propaganda.
I never killed anyone. I deliberately made sure I never
killed anyone." So he said, I never thought you wise. I was a Conchie.
You would have put me against the wall and had me shot, as
they did to many others for being conscientious objectors. There
were thousands who were shot for refusing to fire on the enemy,
just as he did. But he said he managed to survive
the war, and so he regarded the real enemy as his own politicians
had sent him there. And there's extraordinary sympathy between
one another. After heavy rains near Ypres,
where the Germans held the high ground, the British held the
low grounds, the English troops came out their flooded trenches in
full view of the Germans who expressed their sympathy and
didn't open fire on their soaked and vulnerable enemies. This
is early December still. This isn't Christmas yet. Then
on the 11th of December, the 2nd Essex Regiment recorded in
their war diary that the officers and men met the German-Saxon
corps halfway between the trenches, exchanging food, cigarettes,
chocolates and conversations. This is 11 December. the people of all the combatant
nations had this terrible sense of horror that the war was not
stopping for Christmas and that everyone was meant to be home
by Christmas and the short sharp war had not materialized, it
had become static and stuck the death tolls were horrific and
so all the nations started to urge the people to send gifts
and cards to the men in the trenches and so the soldiers were actually
deluged with wine and cigarettes and here and with all kinds of
gloves and bullies and chocolates and you name it. Well what started
it? Just bring us back a little bit.
Oh that's another presentation let's stick let's stick to well
I mean we've dealt with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by
communist terrorists of the Serbian Black Hand and all of that I
mean basically the war started because of assassins who had
assassinated many heads of state. The Austrian Archduke was just
the last in a long line. Even the Empress of Austria,
the wife of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, had been murdered by one of these
Marxist terrorists. Queen Victoria's granddaughter
had a wedding procession in Spain bombed by the anarchists. There
was assassination attempts on even up to the Emperor of Austria,
failed attempts. the grandfather of Tsar Nicholas
had been assassinated by the same communists. So there were
communist revolutionaries fighting assassinations and the Serbian
terrorists had started the war with this assassination. So plainly,
I mean that's where it all started. But the soldiers at the front
were now being deluged not only with gifts, but cards. I mean this is from King George. Every soldier was to get one
of these cards in the front With our best wishes for Christmas
1914, may God protect you and bring you home safe. There's
one of hundreds of thousands of such cards printed and distributed
to British soldiers at the end of the First World War. But at
the end of the first five months of the First World War, the British
Army had suffered 85% casualties in the first five months. By
December 1914, 85% of the British Army was wiped out. they'd lost their entire regular
army, and now they had to train up the new army of new volunteers. On Christmas Eve, German soldiers
began decorating the trenches with Christmas trees and candles.
In fact, one of the more strange things was that the Kaiser ordered
that they provide Christmas trees for every trench, so basically
they had a Christmas tree every two meters, which was phenomenal
logistics, and it drove the supply people to distraction that they
had to supply so many wagons just to carry the gifts that
came from Frankfurt alone to the soldiers in the front. Parcels
from the families required multiplied trains with hundreds of wagons
to be able to transport just the packages. So the logistics
to get hot food to the men in the trenches, to get some Christmas
cake to them, to get the parcels and This ran everyone into overdrive
to be able to see that the men in the front could at least have
some kind of Christmas celebration. And so it is recorded that the
Christmas truce began in the region of Ypres and I've been
at that very spot where they've got a cross marking the spot
where The Germans began enthusiastically singing Christmas carols in their
trenches, and the British soldiers joined in singing Silent Night,
because they recognised the tune, so you had them literally sing
Silent Night in German and English, and then there was this kind
of carol competition, as they sang different carols, and then
each side started shouting Christmas greetings to one another. And
here's one soldier's letter. They finished their carol, and
we thought we ought to retaliate in some way, so we sang the first
Noel. When we finished that, all began
clapping, and then they struck up another favourite of theirs,
O Tauernbaum, O Christmas Tree. And so it went on. First the
Germans would sing one of their carols, then we'd sing one of
ours, until when we stood up, O come all ye faithful, the Germans
immediately joined in, singing the same hymn to their Latin
words. And I thought, well, this was really a most extraordinary
thing. Two nations both sing the same carol in the middle
of a war. Shortly after that, soldiers spontaneously came out
of their trenches and walked across no-man's land to greet
one another, exchanging gifts and souvenirs. And this truce
spread rapidly across the entire Western Front. Officially, over
100,000 German and British troops were involved in this unofficial
cessation of fighting. And soon Australian troops, New
Zealand troops, Canadian, Belgian, French troops joined in the Christmas
celebrations in the frozen strip of no man's land. And it was
an extraordinary thing. Joint worship services were held
at numerous of the locations. And respectful burial services
were conducted by the combatants for the dead between the lines.
And you can still see some of the markers of where people were
killed down there. 10th of November 1914. Soldiers swapped their ration
packs and wine and pies and chocolates and souvenirs and buttons and
badges and hats. In fact there's one intriguing
story, because these stories are now coming out at the Imperial
War Museum, they've got quite a few out there, and one of the
more amusing ones is this German soldier gave his spiked hat,
which of course was quite a treasured item for the British as a souvenir,
in exchange with one the British soldier gave his cap. And later
on they had an inspection coming, a parade, and he needed his spiked
helmet again, so he sent a note back crossing, could you send
along just for this one day and I'll get back to you. And such
was the trust that they went across, swapped, he had his helmet
there and he sent it back. And the soldier got his his spiked
helmet back, amazing things. And these are some of the cards
that people sent, a friendly check for the enemy. This is
contemporary, and these are now on display at the Imperial War
Museum. Pictorial proof of the Christmas
Day truth showing Britain and German friends between the trenches
in Belgium. Phenomenal as it may appear that
soldiers can fight to the death one day and fraternize the next,
it is after all only strictly in accordance with human nature.
I don't think so. I think this journalist is missing
the point. This didn't happen on the Queen's birthday. This
didn't happen on the 4th of July. This didn't happen on Id. This
happened on Christmas Day. And that's the difference. And
by the way, what is utterly confusing to many people, when you look
at some of these pictures, you can be absolutely confused, because
of the bewildering mixture of uniforms. It's because they've
swapped helmets and hats, and they've swapped jackets, and
so you've got British soldiers wearing German hats, you've got
German soldiers wearing British hats, and if you recognize the
uniforms, you'll immediately get quite confused, because there
was such an enormous amount of swapping everything. It's like
when When my son goes on karate tours, he swaps his South African
colours for someone else's. He's now wearing a Swiss outfit. And when Calvin goes on scout
things, they swap their scout badges and their scout scarves.
And next thing you know, everyone's wearing someone else's. Non-commissioned
officers were souvenirs of the Christmas Day Truce of 1914.
And there you can see, there's the very famous spiked helmets
that were so popular for the British to come home with. The
next day, Christmas Day, football matches were played between the
lines. British officer Robert Grayes wrote of the football
match between the 133rd Saxon Regiment and his Scottish troops.
And this happened on multiple occasions. There are newspapers
that reported the scores all the way through to Glasgow. For
example, the Germans won 3-2 in that match. The Glasgow News
on the 2nd of January reported the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders
won their match 4-1. And the Royal Field Artillery
Lieutenant Albert Bain wrote of their soccer match against
the Hanoverians near Ypres on Christmas Day. Now numerous commanders
threatened repercussions for lack of discipline and I mean
this was actually treason by a military discipline lord. You're
not meant to fraternize with the enemy under point of death
but you can't shoot a hundred thousand men in one go. Numerous
officers ordered their artillery to open fire on the fraternizing
troops in no man's land. But the artillery officers realized
that that would mean killing their own men too. And so on
none of these occasions did the artillery obey the orders. They
realized, you're wanting me to kill our troops as well? And
so, no, we can't do this on Christmas Day. And you can imagine some
of these officers going through the roof. There are numerous
complaints on record of officers shocked at the total breakdown
of discipline as men point blank refused orders to open fire on
their own soldiers. And they were mingling with the
enemy in no man's land on Christmas Day. And so the truce is the
day that stopped the war. Extraordinary thing. What else
could have stopped? a world war, other than the birth
of Christ. General Sir Horace Smith Dorrian
commanded the British Second Corps. Now there were two British
Corps making up the British Army in Belgium and France and Smith
Dorrian was in charge of half of the British Army there, the
Second Corps. And Smith Dorrian was one of the very few British
survivors of the Battle of Isolwana. 35 years earlier, in the Anglo-Zulu
War of 1879, 6,600 British troops were annihilated
that day, 22nd of January, 1879, but Smith Dorian was one of the
few survivors whose eyewitness accounts make up a huge amount
of what we know about what happened that terrible day. Well, General
Sir Horace Smith Dorian issued strict orders forbidding fraternization
with the enemy in the build-up to Christmas because he knew
the dangers, because there had already been these outbreaks,
and he complained that his orders were disregarded by the soldiers.
He was horrified. And here you can see two encounters,
friendly and otherwise. Incidents in the French fighting
line. Here you've got the French and Germans meeting one another,
saluting and doing joint burial parties. Here's another newspaper
cutting. Foes in trenches swap pies for
wine. British and Germans exchange
gifts during Christmas truce on the firing line. Past season's
compliments. English and Saxon officers photographed
together between the hostile trenches. This report, 30th of
December. And here's the daily graphic,
British and Germans, the truce of Christmas. And initially this
is considered, now isn't this great and grand, but the politicians
were furious and so they cracked down on all these newspapers
and this was so expunged from the history books that most people
weren't even aware of this for decades. Richard Sherman was
so impressed by the camaraderie experienced between his German
regiment and the French soldiers during the Christmas truce and
even exchanging addresses with one another, he went on to found
the Youth Hostel Association 1919 to provide meeting places
where young men of all countries could get to know one another.
And you read stories of people saying, you know, I remember
this place in, you know, this town they found, you had the
same hairdresser and there were cases of a German hairdresser
cutting a Frenchman's hair in no man's land during Christmas
Day and a British hairdresser cutting a German's hair What
also astounded me as I investigated this is there was a general observance
of the Christmas Truce in the Eastern Front. Now we normally
think of the Eastern Front being very, very vicious, but the Eastern
Front, unlike the Western Front where it was spontaneous, the
Eastern Front was official. The Russian High Command ordered
their men no hostile acts. over Christmas. If you are fired
on, you fire back, but you don't initiate any hostilities. The
Austrian-German High Commands on the Eastern Front also issued
the same orders. The only people who didn't observe it were the
Serbs. The Serbs continued fighting through Christmas Day, and so
the Austrians on the Serb Front did fight there. But on the whole
of the Eastern Front, there was a general ceasefire for more
than two weeks. Just remember the Western Christmas
is 24th to 25th of December. But the Eastern Christmas is
the 6th into the 7th of January. Eastern Orthodox. And the German-Austrian
respected the Russian Christmas, and the Russians respected the
Western Christmas. And so for two weeks there was
complete ceasefire on the Eastern Front. On few occasions did they
come out of the trenches and meet one another, unlike the
Western Front. But they had a more official ceasefire on the Eastern
Front. German, Austrian, Russian commanders ordered ceasefires
for the duration of Christmas and in some cases enemy troops
came and actually danced together in the Russian Cossack fashion.
Extraordinary. There were attempts to crush
the Christian spirit of the soldiers. Numerous French and British officers
were court-martialed for participating in fraternization with the enemy.
Officially 500 Frenchmen were sentenced to death. Hold units
had to be pulled from the front, sent to other fronts when they
displayed reluctance to open fire on the enemy that they had
just celebrated Christmas with. Numerous artillery units began
to fire only at precise locations at pre-range times to avoid casualties,
informing by notes first, we have to open fire at this time,
but we'll concentrate in this spot here. And there were even
cases of coming across warning, they're about to bombard your
trenches, you'd better come and rest in ours, and vice versa. That
actually happened on some fronts. There were so many incidents
reported of soldiers firing high and ineffectually. On Easter
Sunday, In 1915 there was an attempted truce by German units,
but that was suppressed by British artillery fire. But what I've
discovered since is there was a successful Easter truce along
the Eastern Front. The Russians, Austrians and Germans
observed a truce for Easter, which went again from the Western
to the Eastern calendar, which took it over two weeks, because
there's a difference in how the Eastern observe Easter and the
way we do. So the Easter truce was a bigger
truce on the Eastern Front. In November 1915 a Saxon unit
briefly fraternised with the Liverpool Battalion and conducted
burial services together. In December 1915 there were explicit
orders directed by Allied commanders and elaborate procedures made
to forestall any repeat of the previous Christmas truce and
they ordered on Christmas Day multiple artillery barrages along
the entire front line throughout Christmas Day to prevent a recurrence
of 1914. But that didn't stop a number
of truces being observed on the Western Front even December 1915.
On some sections of the Western Front carrels and gifts were
exchanged between German and British troops and at least one
football match with about 50 soldiers on each side was recorded
in 1915. And so the football has become
very symbolic of the rivalry and the camaraderie between the
nations. Sir Ian Cullohan of the Scots
Guards was court-martialed in 1915 for defying orders by maintaining
a short truce just to bury the dead between their lines on Christmas
Day. Fortunately he is related to the British Prime Minister
HH Ashworth and so his punishment was commuted. He was not sentenced
to death which he could have been under the law of fraternising
with the enemy. The German attempts to observe
Christmas truces in December 1916-1917 were rebuffed by British
artillery barrages who opened up when some of them came out
of their lines unarmed, hands raised in order to try and initiate
another truce and that was snuffed out. But very recently, evidence
has come to light of a successful Christmas truce in 1916 between
the German and Canadian troops on Vimy Ridge, where they exchanged
Christmas greetings and presents, and the Canadians and Germans
even visited one another's trenches on 25 December 1916. And this
is something that most people have never heard of. And here's
one of the Canadian veterans writing about this Christmas
Day 1916 and he's speaking about all of this that took place even
on Christmas Day 1916 and what's happened is some people who have
died and then their grandchildren have opened up some of the cases
and they found letters written to grandma from granddad who'd
been involved in the First World War writing about And this had
been so expunged from the history books and from the popular records. They said both sides stopped
shooting on Christmas Day. And you can go today to Belgium
and you'll see the landscape still pockmarked by the shell
fire at one place in Passchendaele where Harry Patch fought, he
said, amongst the blood and the mud. 300,000 people died in Passchendaele. The British planted five tons
of high explosives on every square meter of land, which in a place
like Belgium, which is low lands, it just meant it was turned into
mud. And when they advanced, most of the men were killed just
by drowning in the mud. They marched into the mud. and
then their own artillery killed about the rest. Most of the British
casualties at Passchendaele were own goals, basically, so-called
friendly fire. And so amidst all the horrors
of the First World War, this Christmas miracle, and these
are some of the carols that people have put together. Here you can
see some of the mingling of uniforms and people and the Christmas
trees and the extraordinary experience. Everyone has said, along the
whole Western Front, that Christmas day, 25 December 1914, crystal
clear. not a cloud in the sky, clear
frost on the ground, but it was a clear, neat day. They said
it was actually quite good because the biting air acted like some
kind of, instead of the smell of death that we normally have,
that icy conditions, it didn't stink on that day. It was the
first day we could breathe fresh air in many cases months. I don't know how many people
are aware of the fact that famous authors, Christian authors like
C.S. Lewis, who produced the Narnia series, fought on the
Western Front. J. R. R. R. Tolkien, who was born
in Bloomfielding, who wrote Lord of the Rings, he also fought
on the Western Front, and he injected a lot of his experiences,
his hatred of industrialization, and he saw how the beautiful
village in England got annihilated by the factories of Birmingham
just expanding over their lovely little idyllic scenes, and he
put in a lot of his experiences Also he is bitten by a baboon
spider when he is in Plumfersay and so the hatred for spiders
comes in also into The Hobbit and into The Lord of the Rings
too. A. A. Milne who wrote Winnie
the Pooh, he also fought in the Western Front. A Christmas truce
memorial was unveiled in Freilingen in France on 11 November 2008
at the spot where in 25 December 1914 the Royal Welsh Fusiliers
played football with the German 371 Battalion. The Germans won
2-1. And so here, here's the Freilingen
newspaper in France with the Anglais, the Germans, the Belgians
and the French commemorating Christmas 1914. Isn't that an
extraordinary thing? And here's the Christmas Truce
Memorial in France. So there are re-enactors gathering. There's military history tours
where you can visit different sites where the Christmas Truce
took place. This is one that I went to, where Harry Patch
also laid a wreath. And this was set up by the Australians. They're called the Karki Chums. 1999, 85 years later, some people
who had been part of the Christmas Truce 85 years before came and
set up this cross and put some footballs and wreaths and poppies
down. And there was Felix, or Nestor, the cat, or at least
the great great great great great grand kitty of the one that was
in on that famous truce. And if you've seen the film, Joyce Noel on the Christmas Truce,
you might think that they've invented stories like the cat
but that's absolutely true and it's there's even the fact that
the French high command ordered this cat to be court-martialed
and shot for fraternizing with the enemy because this cat went
between the lines between the Germans and the French and that's
actually in the history books it happened that the French high
command was they didn't just shoot 500 their own men they
shot a cat for fraternizing with the enemy bizarre, but it didn't
snuff out the hostility, the friendliness of the people. Here
you can see some of the Australian flags, the Khaki Chums Christmas
Truce. An extraordinary thing. These
wheat fields used to be the killing fields across which they fought. The German trenches were curved,
the British trenches were zigzagged. You can see the Germans tend
to use the wooden wicker in between. The British tended to use corrugated
iron or sandbags. And here you can see an extraordinary
event that just took place this month. You can see German and
British forces and Scottish coming together with the football and
they're at one of these sites to commemorate and they had an
official soccer match. In fact here you can see that
they took it very seriously. The German team And here's the
film Joe Ex Noël. 2005, the French produced this
film, Joe Ex Noël, dramatising the Christmas Truce of 1914 through
the eyes of French, Scottish and German soldiers. And I've
got a short clip to show you tonight on that too. And it's
quite extraordinary. What's also extraordinary, I've
got a short clip from, is Sainsbury, that's one of the top British
department stores, They've produced a lovely, heart-moving tribute
to the soldiers of the First World War with their Christmas
1914 advert. To think it's an advert means
better than most films. So well done, and using re-enactors,
people who know how soldiers of 1914 were different from 1915,
what the trenches looked like, everything. They've got the details
very accurate. When I went to the Imperial War
Museum in July this year, I saw that the Christmas truce is now
openly acknowledged at the Imperial War Museum, which once it would
have been strength-reported on the Kennungstanderkette, don't
even mention it. Now they've got photographs of German-British
troops celebrating Christmas together on display. By the end
of 1914, exhausted armies had sought safety in trenches. In
opposing front lines, men endured the same wretched conditions,
often with an earshot upon another. At Christmas, German and British
soldiers emerged to meet in the frozen strip of mud between the
trenches. They sang carols, exchanged presents from cigarettes and
cigars to buttons and badges. But the seasonal goodwill could
not last. Indeed, because the high commands reassigned them
from one side to the other. And yet, even later, because
in the first year nobody had helmets. Helmets only came in
from about 1915. So this shows us later. But here
you can see a French soldier trapped in the mud, being helped
out by his concerned enemies. Verdun, where German and French
fought one another to a standstill, were the most terrible slaughter
of the war. And they today gather as friends. My father, who fought
six years in the Royal Artillery in the Second World War, told
me of the Christmas truce that they observed in North Africa
in the Second World War, which I haven't read anywhere in any
history book. And he said, oh no, no, that
happened twice. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in North Africa.
We stopped fighting, we sang Christmas carols, and we went
and shared ration packs the next day and showed pictures of our
families. And my mother, as a young girl with her father who was
in Africa Corps, I remember hearing that Grandad was going to come
and visit my Dad. And I was really concerned. My brother and I were
wondering what's going to happen when Dad and Grandad meet because they
fought one another in the war. Grandad was in the African Corps.
Dad was in the 8th Army. They embraced as brothers. Extraordinary
thing. Never forgot that even though
I was very young. to see people who had been enemies in a war
able to embrace and respect my father. My dad was king in an
empire, he was queen in an empire person, everything for the British
Empire, but his respect for Erwin Rommel and the Afrika Korps was
sky high, and he said they were gentle, they were honourable
people, and Here's another Christmas story from 1943. In 1943 this
B-17 fighter bomber, this bomber had been bombing Germany and
on the way out it obviously got horribly shot up and this Charlie
Brown leading his American B-17 bomber and this is a German fighter
ace, Lieutenant Stagler and Along came Steigler and he saw this
plane shot up and he knew his duty was to shoot down the plane.
It was 20th of December, just before Christmas, 1943. And he
flew alongside and Charlie Brown says, when he saw this, he closed
his eyes. He said, this can't be real.
And he looked up again and he said, this man owned me. He said, we
couldn't fight back. All of our men and the gunners
were, they were wounded or killed. And he said, the plane was nearly
finished. And instead, this Messerschmitt
pilot indicated, follow me, and he escorted him out of the country,
across the North Sea, and then let him, once he was safe, get
back to Britain where they landed, and most of the crew survived.
And they never spoke about it to the high command, until years
later they met as good friends, and today they have reunited
and written a book which is extraordinary. It's called A Higher Call. And
that was 1943. Nobody knew about this for decades. This is what someone said. If
they would have known what would have become of their countries,
they wouldn't have fought against each other, they would have fought
side by side. No more brother wars. Next time we fight it side
by side against a real enemy, which is Islam and communism.
If these guys can get along, you can make it through dinner
with your relatives. It remains an extraordinary testimony
to the power of the gospel that during such a terrible time of
world war, soldiers of so many armies on opposing sides could
stop fighting and come out of their trenches and embrace their
enemies in honour of the Prince of Peace. It was a miracle. For unto us a child is born,
unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon his shoulder,
and his name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting
Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government
and peace, there will be no end." That is the fact. When you speak
about government, capital G, you've got to talk about God.
He is the government who determines when the sun rises, when it sets,
when we live, and when we die. He is the government. Civil governments
are small g. always capitalized G for Gospel
and S for Savior, L for Lord, B for Bible, and decapitalized
State and Government, when it refers to civil government. I
think that's just one important point to make the distinction.
God is the government. Municipal or national governments,
those are small fry in the scheme of things. God's government,
his kingdom is forever. And so we do have a higher core.
And no matter what our duties on earth, our highest allegiance
is to God. And that means we'll have allegiance
with brothers in Christ, even if they're on the other side
of a line in a war. Of course, when you're fighting
Radical Islam or Atheist Communism, that's a different story. They
are not gentlemen. They do not obey the rules of
law. This film I highly recommend, Jerks Noel. We've just produced
the newsletter, the latest Christian action with the Christmas truce
details. We've got a lot on history to help us recognize the lies
of propaganda by studying the Word of God and studying history.
There's a lot of these materials on our website. We've in fact
got the Christmas Truce on the ReformationSA.org website with
pictures. And on our Facebook page we are
placing a lot of different materials. Now this year we've covered a
lot on the catastrophe of the First World War, what led to
it and evaluating the propaganda of the Great War, the clash of
civilizations, the war on Christians in the Middle East, the Holocaust
in Rwanda, evaluating Hollywood films. These are all just different
facts that we can look at and you'll find a lot of these different
resources available. So, Rudolf Hess, The Real Turning
Point of World War II, Best of Enemies. This is a great book.
Britain and Germany, Truth and Lies in Two World Wars. The Church
History Manual, Church History Overview, these are some of the
things we've covered this year, but what I'm particularly glad
that we've now got available is the whole South African History
box set, which includes these articles that have been done
over the last couple of years for Joachim Taitzgriff on the
French Huguenots and the Great Trek, and on Volta at Volta Madre,
and the Battle of Blood River, and the Day of the Covenants,
the 1860 revival. So these are on in both English
and in Afrikaans, in typesetting and in lecture format, and the
PowerPoints and the audio lectures, all in a box set to help for
anybody wanting, any teacher wanting history resources. Especially
our South African history is so under attack and the average
child is not getting access to these great facts about our history
which is being stolen. A country that does not remember
its past does not have much of a future. It's vital that we
know our past, and what a woman, Ebilee Hobbes, what a heroine,
courageous to go against her own government at a time of madness,
and to have done that twice. Goodness me, she must have been
super unpopular in her own country for having done that, but to
have people with that kind of conscience means a lot. The symbolism
of the Christmas tree. Martin Luther said the Christmas
tree should remind us of the tree of life that was forfeited
in the garden. It should remind us of the wood
of the crib into which Jesus was born, a humble place of inclination. The wood of the cross on which
he is nailed. The gold around it should remind us that he's
destined not just for the crib and the cross but the crown.
He's the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The gifts around the
tree should remind us of the gift of the Holy Spirit. The
decoration of the tree should remind us of the fruits of the
Holy Spirit. And the candles remind us of you are the light
of the world. And the star on the top to remind us of the star
of Bethlehem. So he used the Christmas tree
to symbolize the gospel. The red of Christmas, the blood
of Christ. The green, growth. So there's
a lot that you can use. But Christmas should be all about
Christ. We need to remind people of the reason for the season.
Even something like Holly, it's to remind us of the crown of
thorns. Wise people still seek Christ.
The Christmas Truce
Series World War I
| Sermon ID | 1215419274 |
| Duration | 48:23 |
| Date | |
| Category | Teaching |
| Language | English |
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