Letter from a soldier
Dearest Mother,
Merry Christmas to all of you, I’m writing this letter from my tent because I want to tell you
that something extraordinary happened yesterday, *on
during the Christmas Eve, in our camp in the Western Front/I want to tell you
about something extraordinary
that happened yesterday, on
during the Christmas Eve, in our camp in the Western Front/
It was very cold and we were hungry as always, the Germans’ camp
was is about 100 m from us and there was silence, all was still… at some point we heard someone singing a Christmas song in German, the sound was almost inaudible… but after a couple minutes it became louder because someone else began to sing and we could hear it clearly. Something was happening I thought; we all went outside and
we saw a German coming near
to our camp, despite the fog we could see he was disarmed. Many disarmed Germans followed him and so we decided to exit from our refuge and go towards them.
I saw the most extraordinary thing
we could see: we were about to shoot that German and shortly after we were celebrating Christmas Eve all together: Fritz brought cigars and brandy, Tommy beef and cigarettes. There were even those who were photographed in groups, we played football and laughed together; there wasn’t a single moment of hatred, for a while nobody thought about the war anymore. It is hard to express the strong sentiment which I feel today.
After few hours of light-heartedness, we said goodbye to each other and went back to the trenches, then we heard sounds of gunfire, the war started again.
I’m anxious to get back and out of
the service to come back to you.
Your loving son, George.
* 'during' is possibly correct, but 'on' is what most Australians would use at least, so it sounds more natural to me (British people might say 'at' but I'm not sure).