“No War Today”
“No War Today”
The Christmas Truce as Reported in Official War Diaries and Regimental Histories
Although the myths about the truce insist that military leadership was horrified by it and punished the junior officers involved, the official war diaries kept by each regiment, brigade, and division instead demonstrate that the frontline officers involved in truces generally had no compunction about including them in their units’ official records. Two-thirds of the fifty-five regiments involved in the truce reported it in their war diaries in some form, from simple one-sentence summaries to multipage narratives, contradicting the conventional view that the truce was covered up by those in the lines for fear of retribution from military headquarters. Additionally, reports of the truce found their way into both regimental histories and the British official history of the war, demonstrating that no authority was particularly bothered by the event.
Keywords: Christmas truce, Western Front, Regimental history, Battalion diary
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