POETIC INTERPRETATION

Finally, what is our view about the ambiguous evidence about the truces’ prevalence? Our view remains the same – poetic licence reveals a deeper truth, a truth far beyond the confines of shallow empiricism. So our view remains one derived from licensed premises:- (read the poems below Whatever Next?, Remembrance & Christmas 1914)

'BALDRICK: […] And then, shortly after, we all met up, didn't we? Just before Christmas, 1914.

GEORGE: Yes, that's right. I'd just arrived and we had that wonderful Christmas truce. Do you remember, sir? We could hear "Silent Night" drifting across the still, clear air of No Man's Land. And then they came, the Germans, emerging out of the freezing night mist, calling to us, and we clambered up over the top and went to meet them.

BLACKADDER: Both sides advanced more during one Christmas piss-up than they managed in the next two-and-a-half years of war.

BALDRICK: Do you remember the football match?

BLACKADDER: Remember it? How could I forget it? I was never offside! could not believe that decision!

WHATEVER NEXT?

Men who a few short months before the slaughter
Had voted Socialist,
And who had voted internationalist,
Who had struck for higher wages,
Against their respective employers and Capital,
Were now once more united
In common purpose and on common land -
Propertyless,
Fritz and Tommy met in No Man’s Land,
And briefly shared a deepened understanding
Of how nationhood had hoodwinked them,
And destroyed lives and mutual empathy;
Not for them the knowledge
That British shells paid royalties to enemy patents,
As Capital respected Capital,
Instead,
Christmas trees and fags and beer,
And frost-breath football,
Silhouetted against a setting blood-red sun –
And who cares about the score?
Who cares if Germany won 3 – 2?
The deeper question is
“What if they had played again the next day?”
And the day after that?
And what if they had played mixed sides,
And dispensed with birthplace
As the sole criterion for selection?
Whatever next?

© Stuart Butler - 12 Dec 2000

REMEMBRANCE DAY - FOOTBALL IN THE TRENCHES

When War broke out, the British public cried
“We’ll be in Berlin by Christmas”. But
By Christmas hundreds of thousands had died,
As Mons, The Marne, Ypres and Messine cut
Down the youth of Europe, while Flanders’ flood
Drowned dying, dead and alive. Summer’s dream
Was swamped by winter’s mud, rats, death and blood
In No Man’s Land; a hell hole night mare scene
Of jagged wire, flares, shells, screams and shrapnel,
(A choreographed commonality
That saw each side’s men attack, flail and fall
In ceaseless dance of death’s banality)
Until, at Christmas, nineteen fourteen, when
Hamburg, Berlin, London and Manchester
Said “No!” to the killing fields’ mad mayhem
Ordered by Kaiser, Flag, Map and Officer,
And met instead in friendship, walking tall
And slow, comrades in war’s adversities,
They embraced in No Man’s Land and Football
Harmonised nations’ animosities;
And what if the playing of the Peoples’ Game
Had continued beyond that Christmas time?
What on earth would have happened next?
Well, I suggest to you that none of the following
Would have occurred –
The Battle of the Somme; Verdun; The Bolshevik Revolution;
The Russian Civil War; Stalin; Hitler; Fascism; World War Two;
Nuclear weapons; the Cold War; Remembrance Day;
Think about it.
And play the Peoples’ Game.

© Stuart Butler - 2000

Christmas 1914

Christmas Eve in 1914, stars were gleaming, gleaming bright
And all along the Western front guns were lying still and quiet
Men lay dozing in the trenches, in the cold and in the dark
As far away behind the lines a village dog began tae bark

Some lay thinking of their families, some sang songs to others quiet
Playing brag and rolling fags to pass away the Christmas night
As we watched the German trenches, something moved in no man's land
Through the dark there came a soldier carrying a white flag in his hand

Then from both sides men came running, crossing into no man's land
Through the barbed wire, mud and shell-holes, shyly stood there shaking hands
Fritz he brought cigars and brandy, Tommy brought corned beef and fags
And as they stood there quietly talking, the moon shone down on no man's land

Then Christmas Day we all played football in the mud of no man's land
Tommy brought some Christmas pudding, Fritz brought out a German band
And when they beat us at the football we shared all our grub and drink
Then Fritz showed me a tattered photo of a brown-haired girl back in Berlin

For four days after no side fired, not one shot disturbed the night
For old Fritz and Tommy Atkins, they'd both lost their will to fight
So they withdrew us from the trenches, sent us back behind the lines
They brought fresh troops to take our places and told the guns, Prepare to fire

The next night in 1914, flak was beaming, beaming bright
The orders came, Prepare offensive! Over the top we go tonight
And men stood waiting in the trenches, gazed out across our football park
As all along the Western front the Christmas guns began tae bark

© Words & music - Mike Harding

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