The Royal Welch Fusiliers play soccer with their German opponents, the Saxons of the 133 Infantry Regiment and the Prussians of the 6 Jager Battalion, in No Mans Land during the Christmas Truce of 1914.
Old friend, can you remember the tiny lights that sprung up over no man’s land? And how without a signal, we threw down our weary arms and how without a second thought we stood and ran.
Old friend, can you remember the frozen muddy wasteland suddenly pristine? For the first and last time ever, I could hear myself think over the grinding voice of the machine.
Corporals translated our delight as Christmas Day turned into night. With laughter on our tongues where there’d been only orders and screams. We danced along the bodies like children in a dream.
Old friend, can you forgive me? The Pidgin English promises I’ll never keep. Christmas Eves that I spent drinking at my writing desk and Christmas mornings my children watched their father weep.
And nothing I’ve done since has felt as real as the first step I took across that frozen field. When we said our last goodbyes, I can’t remember who blinked first, but I can see your face as clearly as I read this scribbled curse, this scribbled address that I hid away in shame.
Long after we had found out
All the slaughtered soldiers’ names,
Can you forgive me my old friend?
I picked my rifle up again on Boxing Day.
– Bread & Roses, “Boxing Day, 1914″
(Hat tip to Peter Lee)
