Regular readers will know that every year at this time I like to set aside my interest in construction and write about Christmas events from years ago.
Most often those events occurred on the Canadian Prairies. That’s where I’m from after all. That’s where my roots are.
The information I pass along is gleaned from a variety of sources — collections of letters, diaries, newspaper clippings — what professional historians would call primary sources. These are found most often in special collections held at university libraries and some of the better municipal libraries.
Sometimes, though, the information is drawn from contemporary sources. That’s where I found a brief account of a Christmas celebrated on a muddy, bloody battlefield in France: Vimy.
Amid all the celebrations, the special events that were held this year to celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday, the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge was overlooked by most of us. But Vimy was one of the decisive battles of the First World War.
On Easter Sunday in April 1917, four Canadian divisions stormed the ridge. When the battle ended three days later, 3,598 Canadian soldiers had been killed and another 7,000 wounded. But the Canadians had won the battle.
Since then, many historians and writers have said the victory was a defining moment for Canada, the moment when our country emerged from under the wings of Britain and felt capable of its own greatness.
Early in that war, in September, even in October, 1914 there was a feeling on the Allied side that “the boys will be home for Christmas.”
When they weren’t, reality began to set in. By the time the war was a year old, no one expected the boys to be home for Christmas 1915.
But that first wartime Christmas gave us an enduring image of the war: Opposing troops put aside their differences and gathered in small groups to wish one another well, to sing some carols and to exchange simple gifts.
As the war became ever more brutal, however, the divisions between the troops deepened and such informal scenes of unity were never repeated — or so many historians tell us.
But Thomas Weber, a historian at the University of Aberdeen, in Scotland, has challenged the belief that fraternization of that first wartime Christmas was a one-time event. He has unearthed evidence suggesting those unofficial cease-fires continued to occur throughout the war, although they were downplayed in unofficial war records.
He argues the artillery, machine-gun and sniper fire ordered by Allied commanders in anticipation of new Christmas truce attempts, meant the gatherings that did occur were small and much more localized than the events of 1914, which is why they have been largely overlooked.
“In fact,” Weber writes, “soldiers never stopped trying to fraternize with their opponents during Christmas.”
He acknowledges that brutalization did occur, but after the battle, after the adrenaline surge had faded, “remorse tended to set in, and there were many incidents recorded were soldiers tried to help injured soldiers from the other side.”
And that, he argues, is why continued Christmas truces were possible.
A number of years ago, Weber met a man whose uncle, Ronald MacKinnon, of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, was in the trenches at Vimy at Christmas, 1916.
The official version of events that day state that the Germans tried to interact with the Canadians opposite, but no one reciprocated, but private MacKinnon’s letters home tell a different story.
“Quite a good Xmas, considering,” he wrote in one. “Up to the hips in mud of course. We had a truce on Xmas Day, and our German friends were quite friendly. They came over to see us, and we traded bully beef for cigars.”
Vimy was one of the bloodiest battlegrounds of the war, even before Canadians stormed the ridge. But even there, there were incidents of goodwill to all men.
Korky Koroluk is an Ottawa-based freelance writer. Send comments to editor@dailycommercialnews.com.
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