A Day of Surprises: Henry Williamson's account of the Christmas Truce

The Christmas Truce portrayed rather romantically by the Illustrated London News in January 1915

On Boxing Day 1914, Pte. 9689 of the London Rifle Brigade, wrote to his mother Mrs Williamson at 'Eastern Road, Brockley, S.E.' :

"Dear Mother, I am writing from the trenches. It is 11 o'clock in the morning. Beside me is a coke fire, opposite me a 'dug-out' (wet) with straw in it. The ground is sloppy in the actual trench, but frozen elsewhere. In my mouth is a pipe presented by Princess Mary . In the pipe is tobacco. Of course, you say. But wait. In the pipe is German tobacco. Ha, ha, you say, from a prisoner or found in a captured trench. Oh, dear, no! From a German soldier. Yes a live German soldier from his own trench..."

Thus, teasingly, did Henry Williamson begin his first account of the Christmas Truce. Later in life as a famous author, he wrote again about the Truce both in fact and fiction for he was deeply affected by this fraternisation with 'the enemy' in No Mans Land, but for now he set down his experiences in letters to his family at 11 (now 21) Eastern Road. 

"It happened thiswise. On Xmas Eve both armies sang carols and cheered & there was very little firing. The Germans (in some places 80 yards away) called to our men to come & fetch a cigar & our men told them to come to us. This went on for some time, neither fully trusting the other, until, after much promising to 'play the game' a bold Tommy crept out & stood between the trenches, & immediately a Saxon came to meet him. They shook hands & laughed. Thus the ice was broken..."

Williamson wrote mainly to his mother Gertrude who is now buried in Ladywell cemetery. Henry was her only son and barely 18 years old when in January 1914, he volunteered as a part-time Territorial, never dreaming that before the year was out he would be serving on the Western Front. After mobilisation in August 1914, he trained for several weeks at military camps in the English countryside. His biographer Anne Williamson describes him as 'a very emotionally young and raw youth in a wild flux of alternating excitement and trepidation...separated from his family for the first time'. He was keen for news from home and to know who else had joined up. "Does the Hilly fields seem desolate of fellows?" he asked his mother in a letter of 2nd September from Bisley.

HW aged 19 in March 1915. He had hacked off the bottom two feet of his trenchcoat to relieve the weight of wet mud

On 5 November, he and his company arrived in France and later that month began their service near Ploegsteert in Flanders. The First Battle of Ypres had just ended with victory for the Allies after heavy loss of lives. The conditions at the Front were chaotic, the weather abysmal, the state of the trenches appalling. And of course, they were continually in the firing line from German shells and rifle fire. In his letters home, Williamson played down the fear that he felt and the horrors that he witnessed, but on 13 December he wrote to his mother about the physical hardships:

"It has been awful in the trenches. For two days and nights we have been in nearly 36 inches of mud & water. Can you picture us, sleeping standing up, cold and wet halfway up to our thighs, and covered in mud. ..The people at home cannot imagine the terrible hardships we go through. Think of us in the River Ravensbourne at home in the mud & water for 50 hours on end!"

To young Williamson and his fellow soldiers, the Christmas Truce came as a surprise though historians tell us that earlier truces had occurred elsewhere. He continues his Boxing Day letter home by describing the Germans they met in No Man's Land::

"Many are gentle looking men in goatee beards and spectacles, and some are very big and arrogant looking...We had a burial service in the afternoon, over the dead Germans who perished...the Germans put 'For Fatherland & Freedom' on the cross. They obviously think their cause is a just one".

Forty years later in his novel 'A Fox Under My Cloak', Williamson remembers the Truce through his fictional alter ego Phillip Maddison: 

'he walked into No Man's Land and found himself face to face with living Germans, men in grey uniforms and leather knee-boots...Moreover, the Germans were actually, some of them, smiling as they talked in English.' 

Phillip learns that some of the German soldiers worked as waiters in London before the war, hence their knowledge of English. He notes the difference between the friendly,  smiling Saxons and the tall silent Prussians who watch without taking part. Cigarettes and tobacco are exchanged and the troops show each other their official Christmas gifts: the Germans' pipe, which has the face of 'Little Willy' (the Crown Prince) painted on its white bowl and Phillip's gift box with a photograph of Princess Mary. And Phillip makes a point to one of the Germans: 

'Deutscher, Kronprintz Wilhelm!  Englischer, Princess Mary.  Cousins!' 

British and German soldiers in No Man's Land enjoying the truce. Mud but no snow!

Then, as Williamson had mentioned in his Boxing Day letter, the Germans dig a grave for one of their dead 'stiff as a statue that had been lying out in No Man's Land for weeks'. Phillip and two other 'Englischers' stand to attention at the graveside with some of the German soldiers while a short service is held .

And then came an event repeated elsewhere along the Front which has come to symbolise the fraternal spirit of the day: 

'There was shortly afterwards another surprise in this day of surprises, when a football was kicked into the air, and several men ran after it. The upshot was a match proposed between the two armies, to be held in a field between the German lines'.

Historians are still debating whether the football games were proper matches or just kickabouts. Williamson's brief mention in 'A Fox Under My Cloak' suggests the former, at least where he was serving.

In Williamson's account, the truce (though not the fraternisation) lasted until New Year's Eve with each side taking the opportunity to repair their trench defences. Then, after an exchange of messages, the truce ended ('No more wavings, like children saying goodbye, no more heads above parapets') and at midnight Berlin time:

'the machine guns opened up all along the line, and from the British trenches the up-slanting flashes were seen. Flights of bullets sissed overhead...'

Thus the business of warfare was resumed. Not long afterwards, Williamson was invalided back to England and after medical treatment and convalescence returned home on leave in early March 1915. Sixty years later, his sister Kathie still remembered the occasion:

'He was a terrible sight; when he first appeared at the bottom of Eastern Road we could hardly recognise him. He was very pale and thin. He looked like a scarecrow; his uniform coat was torn and covered in mud. He had dysentry and red puffy swollen feet from being constantly wet and frozen.'

Williamson served again on the Front as a Lieutenant in 1917 and 1918 and continued to write home to 'Dear Mother', 'Dear Mum', 'Dear Mater' and even 'Dear Darling Old Mother'. But he had also heard the words 'Mother, mother' on the lips of dying British comrades and the words 'Mutter, mutter' from the lips of dying Germans. The horror and tragedy of it all, as well as the memory of that brief outbreak of friendship on Christmas Day 1914, stayed with him for the rest of his life.

Commemorative cross near Ploegsteert in Belgium where Williamson served

Footnote: a remarkable television interview with Henry Williamson from 1963 in which he talks about his experiences in WW1 and about the Christmas Truce ("all of No Man's Land as far as we could see was grey and khaki") can be found here. 

The Christmas Truce website contains many more letters home from soldiers who took part in the Truce.

Many thanks to Anne Williamson for permission to quote from her book 'Henry Williamson and the First World War' and from Henry Williamson's novel 'A Fox Under My Cloak' and for providing the photograph of Henry Williamson used in this article. Details of all Henry Williamson's books can be found here.

'Gentle Courage': Gertrude Eliza Williamson

The grave of Gertrude Eliza Williamson lies in the Ladywell section of the Brockley & Ladywell cemeteries. It is a simple grave which many people will have walked past without a second glance and the faded inscription on the headstone gives little away. The words 'my dear wife' indicate that Gertrude was married, but her husband's name is not recorded, nor are the names of her three children. And there is no mention that one of those children - Henry - grew up to be the famous author of Tarka the Otter and many other books.

Gertrude, known as 'Gertie', was one of five children of Thomas Leaver, a prosperous businessman. The family lived in Sutton where Gertie met William Leopold Williamson and fell in love. Their romance was kept quiet as Thomas Leaver disliked the Williamson family and did not approve. In May 1893, however, the couple married at Greenwich Register Office without Thomas Leaver's knowledge - quite a daring act of defiance in that era, although Gertie's mother was present at the ceremony. For a brief period, Gertie continued to live at the Leaver family home until she became pregnant and Thomas had to be told.




William Leopold and Gertrude Williamson when first married (1893)

Gertie and her husband then set up home in Brockley at 66 Braxfield Road. Their first child, Kathleen, was born in 1894, the second Henry on 1 December 1895 and the third Doris in 1898. In 1899, William purchased 11 Eastern Road, a newly-built house alongside Hilly Fields for the sum of £480 (!) and the family moved in. Today, it is No 21 Eastern Rd and a plaque on the front records that 'Henry Williamson writer...lived here'.

These events are re-created with a little poetic license in the early books of Henry Williamson's novel sequence A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight in which Henry is 'Phillip' Maddison', Gertie becomes 'Hetty' and William Leopold is 'Richard'. The Chronicle covers sixty years and is - as Henry's biographer Anne Williamson puts it - 'a fictionalised social history of England in the first half of the 20th century'. The first volume The Dark Lantern is the story of how Henry's parents met. Set between 1893-95, the novel is full of dramatic incident and packed with detail of everyday life in late Victorian times. It also paints a fascinating picture of Brockley and Ladywell when the area was still 'semi-rural' with farmland covering much of Ladywell and Crofton Park.

The Dark Lantern ends with the birth of Henry or rather 'Philip' who becomes the central character in the rest of the series. The next three volumes - Donkey Boy, Young Phillip Maddison and How Dear Is Life - deal with his childhood in South East London and Gertie or 'Hetty' remains one of the major characters. Even when 'Philip' departs for the Western Front in 1914 at the age of 18, he still writes to her, while his father standing on Hilly Fields hears 'guns on the wind' from across the channel.

Sledging in Hillyfields 1913, courtesy of Great War Photos 

The union of William Leopold and Gertie turned out to be far from idyllic and both were disappointed in each other from an early stage. This is reflected in the novels where 'Richard' is overbearing and constantly critical of 'Hetty' while she has 'the slight feeling of dread which...always came over her whenever his presence was imminent' (The Dark Lantern). They were not - their son infers - a good match in 'mind and outlook'. However, despite various crises, their marriage survived. No doubt this was partly due to social convention, but Gertie's self-sacrificing nature and her wish to maintain family harmony would have played a vital role. Her love for the three children (who were all 'difficult' at times) is evident in life and in the novels.

There are plenty of local references in the Chronicle and 'the cemetery' is often mentioned. Nightingales are heard singing there and an old man remembers working in the 'Great Field' of Bridge House Farm which became the designated land for the cemeteries in 1858. In The Dark Lantern 'Richard' and 'Hetty' walk down Ivy Lane noting the stone-mason's yards at both entrances 'heaped with white marble tombstones and monuments...a blank and dolorous sight'. This walk ends when the pregnant Hetty is taken ill and brought home in a horse and cart. Driving down Brockley Road, they pass the cemetery and while 'Hetty' turns her head away, the reader sees 'beyond the hedge of laurel' and the railings: '...the slow figures standing by an extensive common grave, depressed figures in black. The women were heavily veiled and draped, some of them weeping, flowers in hand, where their children had been buried, after the severe winter'. As they near the entrance, an elaborate funeral procession approaches which allows Williamson to depict the gulf between rich and poor. His precise description of the procession is too long to quote in full, but it begins: 'The hearse was an elaborate affair of decorated plate-glass enclosing nickel-silver railings with scrolls within which rested the coffin, wreaths of lilies laid upon it...' Its occupant is unlikely to be headed for a 'common grave'. The procession is watched by 'a little group holding brown paper parcels in their hands underneath the three gilt balls of the pawnbroker's across the road'.

Gertrude Williamson in her final years

Henry Williamson moved to Devon in March 1921 where he married and wrote Tarka the Otter, published in 1927. William Leopold and Gertie stayed on at Eastern Rd together, but in 1933 Gertie suffered a stroke. In 1935, she was diagnosed with cancer and entered a nursing home in Greenwich where Henry visited her. She died on 18 April 1936 and two days later William Leopold wrote to his son: 'The funeral is fixed for Thursday the 23rd of this month at 11 a.m Ladywell Cemetery & leaves this house at 10.45 am. Please let me know if you are coming...' Henry did attend and wove the story of Gertie's illness and death into his novel The Phoenix Generation. But his account of the funeral is disappointingly brief: 'The sides of the grave were smooth yellow clay. Phillip dropped the first handful of soil on the coffin'. There are a few comments about other family members present, but no description of the cemetery.

Gertrude Willamson gravestone

William Leopold sold the Eastern Road house shortly afterwards and moved to Bournemouth, where he died and was cremated in October 1946. Of the two daughters, Doris stayed in the Ladywell area while Kathleen moved to Bournemouth. Henry died in 1977 and is buried in Georgeham, Devon. It may have been partly due to this dispersal of the wider family that Gertie's headstone was left as it had been in 1936.

Henry had not always been the best son and The Phoenix Generation records his guilt in this regard, but perhaps it also contains a fitting epitaph for Gertie when 'Philip', after visiting his mother for the last time, writes: 'Mother was unselfishness itself...her life had been a pure flame of gentle courage'.

The FOBLC wishes to thank Tom Moulton, the author of this account, as well as Anne Williamson for the photographs of William Leopold and Gertrude and for permission to quote from the novels.