The Silent Christmas

by M J Lee

  ‘You won fair and square.’ Tom held out his hand.

  ‘I was lucky. First goal I ever scored.’

  ‘It won the game. You can keep the ball.’

  Harald stared down at it for a moment, before handing it with both hands to Tom. ‘No, you keep it. No winners today, just friends playing football.’

  Tom thrust it away back to Harald. ‘Keep it. Give it back to me after the war, when you come to Manchester for your bike.’

  Harald smiled, tucking the mud-covered ball under his arm. ‘But you must promise me something.’

  ‘Of course.’

  He ran over to one of the Christmas trees standing near the German lines. He scrabbled amongst the pine needles for a moment before running back to Tom through the wire.

  ‘You must give me your address, so I can return it.’ He held out a label. Tom could see green lettering on one side. The other was clear. He took out his pencil and wrote his name, service number and address on the label.

  Harald searched in one of his inside pockets, finally producing a large fountain pen. He unscrewed the top and wrote ‘3-2’ in large letters on the back of the label, next to Tom’s name and address.

  ‘A memory of our game and of the result.’

  Harry ran over. ‘Better get back to our lines, Tom. We’re the last lot.’

  Tom stared out across no-man’s-land. It was empty of soldiers now, just the three of them standing out starkly against the wire and dark earth. The place was still and quiet, the air hardly moving, as if held in place by the ghosts of the men who had spent the afternoon there.

  Tom shook Harald’s hand. ‘See you in Manchester after the war.’

  Harald smiled. ’Not if I see you first, Tom.’ Then his face changed. ‘I wrote this letter for Rose. Could you post it for me? It will be easier on your side.’

  Tom took the letter, looking down at the address.

  Rose West,

  26 Makin Street,

  Chorlton-on-Medlock,

  Manchester.

  ‘We’d better hurry, Tom.’

  Above their heads, the first Very shell had exploded in the sky; a bright flash slowly drifting down to earth.

  ‘Bye, Harald, look after yourself.’

  ‘Bye, Tom.’

  They shouted to each other as they headed back towards their lines.

  Above their heads another Very light arced into the sky.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Saturday, December 23, 2017

  Macclesfield General Hospital, Cheshire

  Jayne held the phone away from her ear. Herbert’s voice was far too loud with excitement.

  ’I might have guessed it was you. What do you want, Herbert?’

  ‘It’s great news, Mrs Sinclair. Remember you asked me to check up on the leather thing?’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘You wouldn’t believe it. Charlie Robinson tells me it’s a football. A blooming football. Made by Mitre around 1913, according to him. Hand-sewn like I thought, with nine panels and a rubber insert that can be inflated. It was the first modern football, according to Charlie.’

  ‘A football? Are you sure?’

  ‘Me, no. But Charlie is and he’s got a great eye. He offered me 1200 quid for it.’

  ‘You didn’t accept, did you?’

  ‘Puhleese, Mrs Sinclair. I do have some honour. It belongs to the little boy. But I might give him a thousand for it, if he wants.’

  ‘Goodbye, Herbert. Thanks for the information.'

  ‘Hold your horses there, Mrs Sinclair, there’s something else. Charlie said the label is rare too. Wanted to give me four hundred quid for it.’

  ‘Four hundred pounds for a label? Why?’

  ‘He was a bit cagey but I finally managed to wheedle the truth out of him. Cost me twenty quid.’

  ‘Think of it as a Christmas gift to a young man in hospital, Herbert.’

  A loud sniff on the other end of the line.

  ‘What did he tell you?’

  ‘Charlie said these labels were only used once in the war by the Germans...’

  The phone went quiet.

  Finally, Jayne asked, ‘When?’

  ‘I thought you’d never ask. Apparently, only in 1914. The Germans – lovers of winter holidays, Santa Claus and all that tosh – sent a whole load of Christmas trees to the front line so they could celebrate while being shot at. Charlie says this is one of the labels attached to those Christmas trees.’

  The pieces of the puzzle were beginning to come together in Jayne’s head. Wasn’t Tom Wright already in the army and in Flanders in 1914? For a fleeting second, a vague memory raced across her mind and then vanished like a will-‘o-the-wisp. She needed to get online quickly.

  ‘Hello, anybody there?’ asked Herbert.

  ‘I’ll pick up the ball and the label tomorrow morning, Herbert.’

  ‘But it’ll be Christmas Eve.’

  ‘You don’t believe in Christmas, remember? And anyway, it would be better if temptation was removed.’

  Silence on the end of the phone, followed by a long sigh. ‘Yes, I think you’d better come. I don’t trust myself with them. If Charlie’s offering 1600 quid for the ball and the label, they must be worth a lot more.’

  ’See you tomorrow, Herbert.’ Jayne put down her phone.

  ‘It’s getting stranger and stranger,’ she said out loud. But at least she knew exactly what to do now.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Friday, December 25, 1914 – Christmas Day

  No-man’s-land, Wulverghem, Belgium

  That night, Tom, Harry and Bert sat in their usual positions, crouched over a brazier. It was a cold, frosty evening with the moon casting eerie shadows over no-man’s-land.

  For once, their sector was quiet. The distant lightning of an artillery barrage was absent. The faint crump of the trench mortars was silent. The crack of the sniper’s rifle could not be heard.

  The Very lights still illuminated the sky, but that was out of habit rather than anything else.

  ‘Not a bad bunch of lads,’ said Harry.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Fritz. Just like us, really.’

  Bert sat up straight. His pale green eyes could just be seen, glinting in the firelight, sandwiched between the peak of his cap and the edge of a green scarf wrapped around his face and ears. When he spoke the sound was muffled. ‘Don’t be thinking like that. Those thoughts get you killed.’

  ‘I was just sayin’—’

  ‘Don’t “just say” anything. Given a chance, he’ll kill you tomorrow soon as look at you.’

  ‘Nah, he won’t. Not the player from Leipzig. We is mates.’

  Bert pulled the scarf away from his mouth. ‘Mates, my arse. If his hofficer tells him to shoot you, he’s gonna do it. Same as if Captain Lawson gives you the order.’

  It was the most animated Tom had ever seen his friend. ‘Take it easy, Bert, Harry was just—’

  ‘Harry was just getting his stupid self killed. Today was good, but tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, we are going to be killing them and they are going to kill us. Get it straight in your head.’

  Harry laughed. ‘With a bit of luck we’ll be pulled out of the front line and back into billets tomorrow. Then nobody will be killing anybody.’

  Bert’s hand snaked out and clamped Harry’s throat. 'If I tell you to kill, you kill. Understand?’

  Harry nodded, his eyes wide with fear.

  Bert released his grip and stared into the fire. ‘Had a friend in the Boer War; thought like you, he did. One day, he was lighting a cigarette for a prisoner, turned his back and the man knifed him. I shot the man dead on the spot but it was too late, George was dying.’ He shifted his eyes from the fire to Harry. ‘You know what he said before he died?’

  Harry shook his head.

  ‘“Forgive him, Bert, forgive him.” Well, I never did. A soldier’s job is to kill or be killed. That’s why I’m here. That’s why you’re here. That’s why
Tom’s here. Get it?’

  Bert went back to staring into the embers of the brazier, his bottom lip covering his moustache as he clamped his jaw shut.

  It was Tom who spoke first. ‘We’re not machines, Bert, and neither are they. It’s Christmas, a time of love and understanding.’

  Bert snorted.

  ‘I watched you out there today. You were having as much enjoyment as the rest of us.’

  ‘I saw you too,’ said Harry, ‘filling your pipe with that German tobacco like you were stuffing a turkey.’

  Bert’s jaw relaxed. ‘Was good tobacco.’

  He reached into the voluminous pockets of his greatcoat and pulled out a pipe, its porcelain bowl decorated with the crest of the 35th Regiment. ‘One of the buggers gave me this, filled it with tobacco too.’ He took a spill from the brazier and touched it to the bowl of the pipe. After a few seconds, a cloud of smoke issued from his mouth, filtering through the walrus moustache. ‘Draws well, a lovely smoke.’

  ‘Here’s what I think, Bert,’ said Tom. ‘And, as it’s Christmas, think of it as my gift. This war’s not going to last for ever, the killing’s not going to carry on. But one thing it’s taught me is if we can’t learn how to get on – the Germans and the French and the Brits and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all – well, if we can’t learn to get on, there ain’t much hope for us or our children.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  Tom nodded.

  Bert puffed on his pipe. ‘Well, happen you’re right, Tom Wright, happen you’re right.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Saturday, December 23, 2017

  Macclesfield General Hospital, Cheshire

  Jayne went back into her father’s ward. He was still lying there, asleep on the bed, his back supported by three pillows. The machines still beeped quietly beside him.

  The covers on his bed rose and fell slowly with each inhalation. He looked peaceful now, the most comfortable she had seen him in a long time.

  Was he ready to die? She had read somewhere of people giving up on life, simply deciding they didn’t want to go on with the struggle any more.

  But she knew her father, he never gave up on anything. There was his new wife, Vera, and his travels with her. And, of course, there was Jayne. They still had so much to share, so much to say to each other.

  The machines beeped endlessly on. Strange how one’s life was measured by the metallic pings of a heart monitor. A sharp angular green line of life. Was it true that when we are born, our hearts had just so many beats assigned to them and, once they were used up, our lives were finished? She was sure it was just an old wives’ tale, one of those propagated by her mother.

  Her father was a fighter; he would never give up.

  She sat down on the hard chair next to his bed. A nurse had drawn the curtains to stop the night lights coming in and disturbing the other patients. Like her father, they were sleeping too. Were they all under sedation, or was sleep the body’s way of healing itself?

  She would ask the doctor when she saw him next time. Meanwhile, she had the puzzle of Tom Wright to solve.

  She picked up her laptop, thought for a moment and then googled ‘Christmas 1914’.

  A host of images and Wikipedia entries popped up within 0.12 seconds. They were a bit slow today. She clicked on Google Images and saw a black-and-white picture of a group of soldiers, both German and English, stood smoking in no-man’s-land. Two British officers, one wearing a macintosh and the other smoking a pipe, mingled with both sides. It was as if they had been asked by the photographer to line up and smile for the camera.

  Another shot was a close-up of four Germans and one British soldier. Nobody was smiling at the camera; they all looked bedraggled and careworn. The eyes of one of the German soldiers were drooping and tired, a look that said ‘I don’t want to be here, in this war’.

  She clicked the next photograph, of three German officers smiling at the camera this time. Behind them an English officer was chatting away while, next to him, an old English sergeant leant on a long stick.

  The war seemed a world away as they fraternised, all wrapped up in a variety of scarves, balaclavas, caps, overcoats, macs, sheepskins, woollen mittens and heavy mud-caked boots. Most seemed to be smoking or exchanging stories, posing for the camera with a self-consciousness which was not seen so often in the age of the selfie.

  There were also pictures of football games; men in puttees and khaki against Germans in field-grey and long boots. But on clicking the links, Jayne found that most of these pictures were re-enactments or re-imaginations. There seemed to be no pictures of football games taken on Christmas Day 1914.

  She scrolled down further and clicked on the front page of the Daily Mirror, dated January 8, 1915 – a full two weeks after Christmas. The headline read ‘An Historic Group. British and German Soldiers Photographed Together.’ Below was a picture of a line of British and German soldiers in front of the bare branches of a dead tree sticking out of the ground. The men were huddled together, as if encouraging the photographer to hurry up because it was cold.

  Beneath the picture a caption read: ‘Foes become friends on Christmas Day, when British and Germans arranged an unofficial truce. The men left the trenches to exchange cigars and cigarettes and were even photographed together. This is the historic picture and shows the soldiers from opposing Armies standing side by side.’

  Jayne scanned the rest of the page. Just so his readership wouldn’t forget there was a war on, the editor had placed two other large pictures below. One was of a smashed German artillery piece with the headline, ’German Gun Shattered By British Shells’. Next to it was a picture of a man and dog, captioned: ‘Dog Saves Sailor’s Life’.

  ‘Mustn’t forget the human interest stories even in the middle of a war,’ she muttered out loud.

  Her father snuffled in his sleep. Was the oxygen mask too tight? He seemed to be breathing well and the mask covered his mouth and nose without digging into the skin. She decided to leave it. The nurses knew what they were doing, and she was sure Vera had checked before she had left.

  She went back to her chair and itemised what she had found out. Tom Wright had apparently taken part in one of the most famous episodes in the First World War; the Christmas Truce. He probably exchanged the button with a member of a German Regiment during the ceasefire on Christmas Day, along with the label from one of the Christmas trees the Germans had put up in front of their trenches. Some reports had the men playing games of football with the Germans. Is that what the numbers ‘3-2’ on the label showed? Was this the result of a game they played that day? And if it was, was the football used to play the game? Could the old leather found by David Wright be the very football they had used?

  Jayne recognised all the conditional words she was using. Apparently. Probably. Could.

  She laughed to herself. That was the problem with genealogical research; you could guess at what happened from the facts, but you could never be absolutely certain.

  And then she remembered the opening line from her presentation. ‘The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.’

  She yawned, checking her watch: 9 p.m. Vera would be here soon for the night shift. Her father was sleeping quietly now; already his colour had gone from a pale white to a healthier rosy hue.

  Perhaps he was getting better.

  It was time to rest for an hour. She made herself as comfortable as she could on the hard chair, folded her arms and closed her eyes.

  She would finish her research tomorrow morning and then meet David afterwards.

  In the meantime, what she needed above all was sleep.

  As her eyes closed, in that still moment between consciousness and sleep, a thought flitted across her mind.

  How can I prove this was the ball?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Saturday, December 26, 1914 – Boxing Day

  No-man’s-land, Wulverghem, Belgium

  As Harry had predicted, the company was moved
out of the front line on Boxing Day, pulling back east of Bailleul on December 28 for much-needed rest and recuperation.

  They packed up their gear, and handed over their brazier and orange crates to the relieving soldiers of the Bedford Regiment.

  ‘What’s the line like?’ asked a sergeant.

  ‘Quiet.’

  The sergeant peered over the parapet.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that, though. Their sniper’s good, have your head off.’

  The sergeant ducked down as if he had already been hit. ‘Thanks for telling me. Your wire looks clean, no bodies.’

  ‘We buried them all.’

  ‘Germans too?’

  ‘All of them,’ Bert said, ‘by the tree stump on the left.’

  ‘Heard you lot had a bit of a party on Christmas Day.’

  The three friends looked at each other but didn’t say anything.

  ‘Anyway, that's all over. My lieutenant has ordered a raiding party for this evening. We’re to snatch some of their men. This live-and-let-live stuff has to stop.’

  ‘Don’t get killed,’ said Bert quietly, hefting his kit bag on his back. ‘Don’t want to have to bury you when we come back next week.’

  With that, they stumbled down the trench, walking their weary way through the support trenches and the rear lines to their new billets.

  At one point, Tom thought he could hear firing from the section of the trench they had just left.

  ‘Sounds like war has started again, Bert.’

  ‘Reckon you’re right, Tom.’

  Off to the left was the soft crump of mortar shells as they were fired into the German line.

  Harry picked up a newspaper lying in the mud, dated November 9. He scanned the sports headlines. ‘Looks like United lost, hammered by bloody Everton. Oldham still top of the table, beating Bradford. Wednesday lost at Spurs. At least the football is still going strong.’

  Tom thought of his family and his wife. How was their Christmas? Did the children enjoy themselves? How did Norah manage to cope on her own?

  He would have to write and tell her what had happened to him in the middle of no-man’s-land. How did he make friends with the enemy?