This Week in Football History: The Christmas Truce

The Christmas Truce took place on Christmas Day, 1914

In today's special Christmas Day edition of This Week in Football History, Adrian North takes us back to the famous Christmas Truce between British and German troops during the Great War...

December 25, 1914 - The Christmas Truce   

Everyone knows the story - On Christmas Day, 1914, British and German troops laid down their weapons, promised each other not to open fire at any point during Christmas, and ended up playing a huge football match against one another. 

First off, the simple fact there was a Christmas truce during a continent-wide industrial war, the likes of which the world had never remotely seen before, is an utterly and completely amazing thing, and to my mind, an entirely inconceivable thing. How can two groups of soldiers, stationed for four straight months in some of the worst conditions imaginable and tasked with the job of killing the enemy at any cost simply pack all that in for a day to sing Christmas songs and play a game of football? The Christmas Truce truly is one of the most incredible things to have happened in the past 100 years.  

Of course, 12 months later in 1915 the scale of the First World War was almost infinitely larger than in 1914. Millions had died and prejudices and hatred ran too deep. By 1918, and especially by 1945, after everyone on Earth had witnessed in some form or another the absolute 'banality of evil' the fact there was a Christmas truce in 1914 would seem like pure fiction to many ears.   

But the letters home from those stationed in the trenches not only reveal that for one day the two teams of war put aside their goal of systematic annihilation, but that the two sides of war decided to form teams of an entirely different nature - football teams.  

Christmas 1914 was the first and only time during the First World War in which it seemed the ongoing mindless horror had a chance of ending. Many neutral nations, including the United States, and even the Pope had all encouraged a Christmas truce between the combatants ever since the fighting began.  

On Christmas Day munitions supplies were interrupted by a swathe of Christmas presents, cards, food and drink being delivered to both front lines, along with a huge number of Christmas trees being sent to many German trenches. Formal truces had already been made on Christmas Eve but the fraternising between the British and Germans was an entirely spontaneous occurrence.  

Christmas songs sprang up from both trenches and the mood in the air was one of sentimentality, sorrow and reflection. After a while soldiers began to stretch their legs out in no-man's land.  

The primary source of evidence we have for the events of Christmas Day, 1914 are from letters sent home from the troops and from newspaper reporting, particularly in England from the time. 

On January 2, 1915, the Bolton Chronicle published a letter from a Mr J.A.Farrell - "In the afternoon there was a football match beyond the trenches, right in full view of the enemy". It would seem that Mr Farrell was describing a kickabout between fellow English soldiers, but without any Germans taking part and several other letters sent home from the lines also claimed that football matches between the two sides were often on the verge of being organised before it fell through.  

However, there is more than enough compelling evidence that describes such socialisation over football taking place. 

On January 9, 1915, The Chester Chronicle published a letter from a Lance Corporal Hines who claimed he had met a German in no-man's land who exclaimed he wished to one day see Woolwich Arsenal play Tottenham.
Earlier in January however, The Times published the most compelling account we have of such a football game. They revealed letters from the Royal Army Medical Corps that described a game taking place between themselves and the Germans 133rd Saxons, who ironically sang "God Save The King" before playing a game that the Germans won 3-2. The German regimental records for the 133rd Saxons confirm that such a game happened with "caps laid out for goals and a Scot provided a ball".  

But this wasn't the only game of football to have cropped up on Christmas Day 1914. On December 31, 1914, The Newcastle Evening Mail published an interview from a Sergeant Major Frank Naden of the 6th Cheshire Territorials, stationed just outside of Ypres, Belgium, who had just returned to Newcastle on leave.  

"On Christmas Day one of the Germans came out of the trenches and held his hands up. Our fellows immediately got out of theirs, and we met in the middle, and for the rest of the day we fraternised, exchanging food, cigarettes and souvenirs. The Germans gave us some of their sausages, and we gave them some of our stuff. The Scotsmen started the bagpipes and we had a rare old jollification, which included football in which the Germans took part. The Germans expressed themselves as being tired of the war and wished it was over. They greatly admired our equipment and wanted to exchange jack knives and other articles. Next day we got an order that all communication and friendly intercourse with the enemey must cease but we did not fire at all that day, and the Germans did not fire at us"  

Frank Naden's account is backed up by another member of the 6th Cheshires, Ernie Williams who in 1983 recalled the same events.    

"The ball appeared from somewhere, I don't know where, but it came from their side - it wasn't from our side that the ball came. They made up some goals and one fellow went in goal and then it was just a general kickabout. I should think there were about a couple of hundred taking part".  

So it would seem that the evidence favours at least two instances of informal games of football played between German and British troops on Christmas Day 100 years ago and this one day of socialising, drinking and playing football led to an extended period of ceasefire among many of the front line trenches. The same Frank Naden who recalled the game of football later said that no firing from either side took place on the 26th, and his report is one of dozens from along the front lines that all said pretty much the same thing. In many areas the truce extended to just beyond New Years Day. 

The legacy of the Christmas Truce sadly remains as one-off, one-day peace deal between belligerents of war rather than the catalyst for the for the disengaging of the bloodshed that the Pope and Americans had wished it to be.  

Football quickly vanished from the trenches, replaced by an ever increasing body count, but where the front lines no longer saw any impromptu matches football was heavily played in training centers, drill squares, factories and POW camps. Over the course of the next four years millions of able-bodied young men were placed into the theatre of war via the training camps and drill squares, where the passion for football was at its most fervent. 

Before this football had strictly been a game of the elite, played by the rich upper class and watched by the rich upper class. With the mobilisation and employment of almost all of Britain's working class in the war effort the final sociological barrier that had seen football remain as a game for the wealthy had been broken. 

And if there is any silver lining to be taken from the First World War it is that during the four years of warfare footballing seeds were being planted that would eventually grow to see football become not only a simple favorite pastime of the British, but eventually a cultural cornerstone in just about every corner of the world. 

By 1918, football was the 'Peoples' Game' for the first time.