Carol Ann Duffy’s The Christmas Truce

Christmas Eve in the trenches of France,
the guns were quiet.
The dead lay still in No Man's Land –
Freddie, Franz, Friedrich, Frank . . .
The moon, like a medal, hung in the clear, cold sky.

Silver frost on barbed wire, strange tinsel,
sparkled and winked.
A boy from Stroud stared at a star
to meet his mother's eyesight there.
An owl swooped on a rat on the glove of a corpse.

In a copse of trees behind the lines,
a lone bird sang.
A soldier-poet noted it down – a robin
holding his winter ground –
then silence spread and touched each man like a hand.

Somebody kissed the gold of his ring;
a few lit pipes;
most, in their greatcoats, huddled,
waiting for sleep.
The liquid mud had hardened at last in the freeze.

But it was Christmas Eve; believe; belief
thrilled the night air,
where glittering rime on unburied sons
treasured their stiff hair.
The sharp, clean, midwinter smell held memory.

On watch, a rifleman scoured the terrain –
no sign of life,
no shadows, shots from snipers,
nowt to note or report.
The frozen, foreign fields were acres of pain.

Then flickering flames from the other side
danced in his eyes,
as Christmas Trees in their dozens shone,
candlelit on the parapets,
and they started to sing, all down the German lines.

Men who would drown in mud, be gassed, or shot,
or vaporised
by falling shells, or live to tell,
heard for the first time then –
Stille Nacht. Heilige Nacht. Alles schläft, einsam wacht …

Cariad, the song was a sudden bridge
from man to man;
a gift to the heart from home,
or childhood, some place shared …
When it was done, the British soldiers cheered.

A Scotsman started to bawl The First Noel
and all joined in,
till the Germans stood, seeing
across the divide,
the sprawled, mute shapes of those who had died. 

All night, along the Western Front, they sang,
the enemies –
carols, hymns, folk songs, anthems,
in German, English, French;
each battalion choired in its grim trench.

So Christmas dawned, wrapped in mist,
to open itself
and offer the day like a gift
for Harry, Hugo, Hermann, Henry, Heinz …
with whistles, waves, cheers, shouts, laughs.

Frohe Weinachten, Tommy! Merry Christmas, Fritz!
A young Berliner,
brandishing schnapps,
was the first from his ditch to climb.
A Shropshire lad ran at him like a rhyme.

Then it was up and over, every man,
to shake the hand
of a foe as a friend,
or slap his back like a brother would;
exchanging gifts of biscuits, tea, Maconochie's stew,

Tickler's jam … for cognac, sausages, cigars,
beer, sauerkraut;
or chase six hares, who jumped
from a cabbage-patch, or find a ball
and make of a battleground a football pitch.

I showed him a picture of my wife.
Ich zeigte ihm
ein Foto meiner Frau.
Sie sei schön, sagte er.
He thought her beautiful, he said.

They buried the dead then, hacked spades
into hard earth
again and again, till a score of men
were at rest, identified, blessed.
Der Herr ist mein Hirt … my shepherd, I shall not want.

And all that marvellous, festive day and night,
they came and went,
the officers, the rank and file,
their fallen comrades side by side
beneath the makeshift crosses of midwinter graves …

… beneath the shivering, shy stars
and the pinned moon
and the yawn of History;
the high, bright bullets
which each man later only aimed at the sky.

The title of the poem refers to an extraordinary event happened during the First World War. In the night between the 24^th and the 25^th of December 1914, an unofficial ceasefire involving rather 100,000 British and German troops took place along the western front. The soldiers declared a momentary truce in recognition of what united them as human beings, rather than the war that divided them as killing machines. Therefore, if the reader knows that event, he might immediately understand what the title refers to. 

The poem consists of nineteen stanzas, made up of five lines of different length, and it doesn’t follow a determinate pattern nor a regular rhyme scheme.

The opening stanza sets the scene and creates a suspended atmosphere of silence. The poetess describes in detail a slice of life in the trenches in order to brings the reader into that little world that was the trench. She exploits the juxtaposition of images, of fragments of life in order to create the quite atmosphere of the truce, where silence gradually descended upon the battle field. The battle field is called the No Man’s Land, a ground completely destroyed and upset by the bombs, covered by the soldiers’ blood and corpses, a place that has lost its original beauty, that is dead as the soldiers.

The quite suspended atmosphere of the truce during the night creates a contrast with the confusion of the conflict and the roars of the bombs during the day. The poetess doesn’t hide the horrors of war through its evocative imagery of the damage it inflicted on the soldiers (Men who would drown in mud, be gassed, or shot,or vaporisedby falling shells, or live to tell). War kills English and German soldiers as well, therefore the poetess underlines the dual nature of the truce writing some lines also in German. The German song becomes a sudden bridge from man to man, not only between German and English soldiers, but between soldiers from each country involved in the conflict. Singing brought fraternization between French, German and English, followed by gifts and exchanges of food, alcohol and cigarettes at daylight. Duffy communicates the fast-growing warmth and brotherhood between the soldiers through the linguistic mixture: I showed him a picture of my wife, iche zeigte ihm, ein Foto meiner frau. Sie sei schon, sagte er. He thought her beautiful, he said. Writing in both language the poetess manages to recreate how the night of the truce sounded, conveying the idea of the soldiers’ fraternity beyond the linguistic differences.

In conclusion, the aim of Duffy’s poem is to remember that essentially we are all human beings, there are no differences between us since we belong to the same humanity. Her poem is a sharp accusation against war but also against racism and discrimination. She is inviting the readers to reflect on the intimate equality of men and to take as the Christmas Truce an example of humanity. Carol Ann Duffy proposes an ideal of global and long-lasting peace, not only for Christmas, not only between two nations, but forever and between peoples of the whole world.