JANUARY 1986 NEWSLETTER

LAST MEETING - JOHANNESBURG - 12TH DECEMBER 1985

This month the Society was treated to the film "The Battle of Britain". One could not help but to be impressed with the realism of the technical effects. Certainly, a film not to be missed.

Future Meetings - Johannesburg

Here follows the programme for the first half of 1986

January, 9th - Mr. W.J.P. Carr - "The Dreyfus Affair"

February, 13th - Mr. George Tremoulet - "The English Civil War of 1642/1648"

March, 13th - Dr. Roy Macnab - "Defence of the French Cavalry School at Saumur in June, 1940"

April, 10th - Annual General Meeting and Film

May, 15th - Mr. Peter R. Fox - "Air Crew Briefing"

June, 12th - Mr. Melvill Milner - "4th Field Battery, R.A., in the Cauldron Battle of June, 1942"

Christmas, 1914

The following extracts from Purnell's History of the First World War are Henry Williamson's (London Regiment) description of this unusual event:

It was still freezing hard on Christmas Eve. we had been detailed for what seemed to be a perilous fatigue in no man's land - going out between the lines to knock in posts in a zigzag line towards the German front line.

We debouched from the wood, and were exposed. After an initial stab of fear, I was not afraid. Everything was so still, so quiet in the line. No flares, no crack of the sniper's rifle. No gun firing.

Soon we were used to the open moonlight in which all life and movement seemed unreal. Men were fetching and laying down posts, arranging themselves in couples, one to hold, the other to knock. Others prepared to unwind barbed wire previously rolled on staves.

And not a shot was fired from the German trench. The unbelievable had soon become the ordinary, so that we talked as we worked, without caution, while the night passed as in a dream. The moon moved down to the treetops behind us. Always, it seemed, had we been moving bodilessly, each with his shadow.

After a timeless dream I saw what looked like a large white light on top of a pole put up in the German lines. It was a strange sort of light. It burned almost white and was absolutely steady. What sort of lantern was it? I did not think much about it; it was part of the strange unreality of the silent night, of the silence of the moon now turning a brownish yellow, of the silence of the front mist. I was warm with the work, all my body was in glow, not with warmth but with happiness.

Suddenly there was a short quick cheer from the German lines - Hoch! Hoch! Hoch! With others I flinched and crouched, ready to fling myself flat, pass the leather thong of my rifle over my head and aim to fire; but no other sound came from the German lines.

We stood up; talking about it, in little groups. For other cheers were coming across the black spaces of no man's land. We saw dim figures on the enemy parapet, about more lights; and with amazement saw that a Christmas tree was being set there, and around it Germans were talking and laughing together. Hoch! Hoch! Hoch!, followed by cheering.

Our platoon commander, who had gone from group to group during the making of the fence, looked at his watch and told us that it was eleven o'clock. One more hour he said, and then we would go back.

'By Berlin time it is midnight. A Merry Christmas to you all! I say, that's rather fine, isn't it?', for from the German parapet a rich baritone voice had begun to sing a song I remembered from my nurse Minne singing it to me after my evening tub before bed. She had been maid to my German grandmother, one of the Lune family of Hildesheim. Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht!

Tranquil Night! Holy Night! The grave and teender voice rose out of the frozen mist; it was all so strange; it was like being in another world, to which one had come through a nightmare; a world finer than the one I had left behind in England, except for beautiful things like music, and springtime on my bicycle. In the country of Kent and Bedfordshire.

And back again in the wood it seemed so strange that we had not been fired upon; wonderful that the mud had gone; wonderful to walk easily on the paths; to be dry; to be able to sleep again.

The wonder remained in the low golden light of a white-rimmed Christmas morning. I could hardly realise it; but my chronic, hopeless longing to be home was gone.

S T Stiles