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When you read the preface to Storycatcher, you discover the story of Christmas Eve in 1914, when two lines of homesick soldiers, one British, one German, were dug into trenches on the Western Front in the midst of World War I. After tentatively singing Christmas carols and hefting Christmas trees over the lip of the trenches, the two armies emerged from hiding and met in the 'no man’s land' to exchange treats and gifts and according to some renditions of the event, even to play soccer.
Among these men was an eighteen-year-old Scottish recruit named Alfred Anderson. For the next 90 years he remembered the "eerie sound of silence" when the shooting stopped. And he often spoke of feeling guilty to be a survivor in a war that killed or wounded 8% of the British population, 11% of the French, and 9% of the German.
A few weeks before Christmas 2005, Alfred Anderson died at the age of 109. For ninety years, he carried the story of the Christmas Truce as one of the defining moments of his life. In the recent years, as his sheer longevity earned him the distinction of being "the one man in the world still alive who spent 25 December 1914 serving in a conflict that left 31 million people dead, wounded or missing," Anderson was interviewed in depth in the British press. The following quotes come from those interviews now archived on the web, with the sites noted.
"Speaking to The Observer, Anderson has revealed remarkable new details of the day etched on history, including pictures of Christmas gifts sent to the troops.
 His unit, the 5th Battalion The Black Watch, was one of the first involved in trench warfare. He had left his home in Newtyle, Angus, in October, taking the train from Dundee to Southampton, then a ferry to Le Havre.
He was happy, healthy and surrounded by most of his former school friends, who had all joined the Territorial Army together in 1912. In October 1914 they thought that they were at the start of an exciting adventure. But by the first Christmas of the war they had already experienced its horror and the death of young friends was commonplace.
On 24 and 25 December, Anderson's unit was billeted in a dilapidated farmhouse, away from the front line, so he did not participate in any football matches. 'We didn't have the energy, anyway,' he said. But he can still recall vividly what happened on Christmas Day 1914.
'I remember the silence, the eerie sound of silence,' he said. 'Only the guards were on duty. We all went outside the farm buildings and just stood listening. And, of course, thinking of people back home. All I'd heard for two months in the trenches was the hissing, cracking and whining of bullets in flight, machinegun fire and distant German voices.
'But there was a dead silence that morning, right across the land as far as you could see. We shouted "Merry Christmas," even though nobody felt merry. The silence ended early in the afternoon and the killing started again. It was a short peace in a terrible war.'
In some parts of the front, the ceasefire lasted several weeks. There are also numerous trench yarns, some possibly apocryphal, about the impromptu fraternising. One, detailed in Michael Jurgs's book The Small Peace in the Big War, involved a young private who was led to a tent behind German lines by an aristocratic officer and plied with Veuve Clicquot. In another tale, a barber supposedly set up shop in no man's land, offering a trim to troops from either side.
Now aged 108 and living alone in Alyth, Perthshire, Anderson still treasures the gift package sent to every soldier a few days before the first Christmas of the war from the Princess Royal. The brass box, which is embossed with a profile of Princess Mary, was filled with cigarettes.
It also contained a cream card, with 1914 on the front, which says: 'With best wishes for a happy Christmas and a victorious New Year, from the Princess Mary and friends at home.'
'I'd no use for the cigarettes so I gave them to my friends,' he said. 'A lot of the lads thought the box was worth nothing, but I said someone's bound to have put a lot of thought into it. Some of the boys had Christmas presents from home anyway, but mine didn't arrive on time.'
To his delight, he discovered that his most treasured possession - a New Testament given to him by his mother before he left for France and inscribed with the message: 'September 5, 1914. Alfred Anderson. A Present from Mother' - fitted the box perfectly.
He kept both in his breast pocket until 1916 when a shell exploded over a listening post in no man's land killing several of his friends and seriously injuring him.
'This is all I brought home from the war,' he said, showing the box and Bible, but forgetting about his beret with its famous red hackle, which is the first thing you see when you step into his home.
There are still many aspects of the war that Anderson finds difficult to talk about. 'I saw so much horror,' he said, shaking his head and gazing into the middle distance. 'I lost so many friends.'
He recalled one incident that gave him a 'sore heart'. When he was first home on leave, he visited the family of a dead friend to express his condolences. He knew them well but soon realised that he was getting a frosty reception. 'I asked if they were going to ask me in and they said no. When I asked why, they just said, "Because you're here and he's not." That was awful. He's one of the lads I miss most.'
. . . . .
photo by Walter Nielson, http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=2279822005
see also: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1376965,00.html
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Anderson
With Alfred Anderson’s death, the Christmas Truce of 1914 shifts from living memory to human history. The last person to have had direct experience of the event is gone: what remains is the story. This shift happens all the time in our lives in little and big ways. When it happens around an historical event, we pause and take notice. Alfred Anderson carried the story of the life-defining, death-defying moment faithfully all his life. Now, we have scholarly books, a song, and a movie. What will we make of the story of ordinary men caught in dreadful circumstances over which they felt no control who for one day took charge of the war and made peace? How might this spontaneous, self-organizing action inform us in today’s world? How will we preserve mention of this moment in the stories we tell for coming generations?
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