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00:00The First World War begins in August 1914.
00:16Ten million men are about to die.
00:21Running up out of your secure area and exposing yourself to enemy fire,
00:24this was the most terrifying thing that anybody could imagine.
00:27Thoughts of a quick victory soon fade.
00:30They were promised that the war would be over by Christmas.
00:33And the Western Front becomes the deadliest place on earth.
00:37The weather certainly becomes a bigger enemy than the enemy.
00:42Then in December, there is an extraordinary victory.
00:48It is not a victory of generals or of weapons.
00:51What if they decide not to fight it?
00:55What are we going to do then?
00:56It's a victory, the likes of which will not be seen again.
01:00The Great War, as World War I is known,
01:16has gone down in history as the prime example of the brutality and senselessness of total war.
01:23The fighting is at its most savage in the thin strip of land between Germany, France and Belgium.
01:29The war zone known forever as the Western Front.
01:33As the fighting begins, everyone believes it will be over in just a few months.
01:41But the roots of the war lie in over 200 years of European history.
01:46By the end of the 19th century, an uneasy peace was maintained between Britain, France and Germany
01:54by a complex structure of alliances with their European neighbours.
01:58But by 1910, Germany felt surrounded by its rivals and began making long-range plans of war.
02:06As H.G. Wells wrote,
02:08Every intelligent person in the world knew that disaster was impending and knew no way to avoid it.
02:16On June 28th, 1914, Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip kills Austro-Hungarian crown prince Franz Ferdinand.
02:25By the time he is buried, Europe is thrown into turmoil.
02:33By August 3rd, Germany declares war against Russia and France,
02:38and England is drawn in when Germany invades Belgium.
02:42The original plan that the Germans had, the strategic plan,
02:45which made a lot of sense on a piece of paper, was called the Schlieffen Plan.
02:49And the idea was that the Germans would come down through Belgium and take Paris, take France.
02:56What they didn't count on was the Belgians resisting,
02:59and the French and the British mobilising to stop them.
03:03From the start, both sides think they will achieve a swift victory.
03:08There is almost a carnival spirit in the beginning.
03:12The First World War began as not only the war that would end all wars,
03:18but also, the First World War was seen as a big picnic,
03:21and it would all be over by Christmas.
03:25August 7th, 1914.
03:29The first British expeditionary forces crossed the channel to join the French army
03:33in an attempt to halt the German advance.
03:37By this time, the Germans have conquered most of Belgium and the French border area.
03:42But after six weeks of furious fighting, they are stopped in their tracks.
03:53So the Schlieffen Plan, when it was as simple as a drawing on a blackboard,
03:58was described as a revolving door motion.
04:00The Germans would come down, they would quickly sweep through France,
04:02and then they would be able to go and take on the Russians.
04:05But the problem was that when the British and the French came to stop them,
04:08the revolving door jammed, and it jammed permanently.
04:14All along the Belgian-French border, the Allies dig in,
04:18bringing men and materials up to the front to hold the line.
04:221914, it's very, very primitive.
04:25Both sides have just dug in wherever they've just happened to come to rest,
04:29if you like, after the early opening battles.
04:31Trenches are just cut through muddy fields.
04:35In Flanders, certainly around Plug Street, the water table is very, very high.
04:39So three and a half feet down, you strike water.
04:42Tactically, the Germans always occupy the high ground,
04:44so we find ourselves left in a dip.
04:46Men, literally, almost up to their necks in water.
04:49Now, that's no condition to fight.
04:51When people first arrived in the trenches,
04:54it was a shocking, arresting, frightening environment.
04:58It's a subterranean world.
05:01You're in these trenches that are cut in the ground,
05:03lined with planks on the floors.
05:05There's barbed wire up above.
05:07You can't see over the trench,
05:09and if you do go up and look over,
05:11there's a good chance you'll get your head shot off.
05:14By the time the trenches are all dug,
05:17the trench system stretches 600 miles from the North Sea
05:21all the way down to Switzerland,
05:22and trench warfare has become a military science.
05:28The reality on the ground is very different from the ideal.
05:33The weather certainly becomes a bigger enemy than the enemy
05:37because every day, you know,
05:39maybe there's an amount of danger from the enemy,
05:42but there's definitely going to be the enemy of cold and wet.
05:45By late fall, the trench lines are firmly established.
05:54The Germans can advance no further,
05:56but nor can the Allies drive them back.
06:00It's clear to everyone
06:01that no one will be home by Christmas.
06:07The war has already reached stalemate,
06:10and as morale drops, winter kicks in with a vengeance.
06:13Many of the regiments along the Western Front
06:21recorded more deaths in November, December, January of 1914
06:25to frostbite and to gangrene, things like that,
06:29to trench foot than they did to enemy fire.
06:34Trench foot is something that happens
06:35if your feet are permanently immersed in water
06:37and they never dried off.
06:39Things would just get gangrenous,
06:40and the toes would drop off,
06:41and they'd go black and all sorts of things like that.
06:44The adverse conditions and the stagnant campaign
06:47are sapping the will of their troops to fight,
06:50despite their best efforts to demonise the enemy.
06:55There was a definite explosion of propaganda
06:58during the First World War,
06:59like nothing that had ever been seen before,
07:01and this was something that happened on all sides of the war,
07:05in newspapers, in popular magazines,
07:07wartime propaganda,
07:08seeking to turn the Germans and the British
07:11against one another.
07:12And thus you had stories about the German soldiers
07:15bayoneting Belgian babies and raping women
07:18and having mass graves and what have you.
07:20The reason for that was that the men needed to be motivated,
07:22the nation needed to be motivated.
07:24You needed a kind of deep, moral hatred of the enemy
07:29in order to sustain the kind of war that it was.
07:31You couldn't just think of him as your opponent
07:33in a sporting match.
07:35You needed to want to kill him.
07:38But in the mud of the Western Front,
07:40the motivation to fight is fast subsiding.
07:43In a misguided attempt to boost morale,
07:48the Allies launch a huge offensive on December 19th.
08:01This offensive has the opposite effect.
08:05Both Allied and German troops are slaughtered
08:07in the largest numbers of the war so far.
08:09When I go to places where it was a battlefield,
08:15I can imagine young boys in the mud,
08:19bad weather.
08:22Sometimes I have the feeling
08:24that there are ghosts around here,
08:28that are still here somewhere.
08:31Christmas is six days away.
08:36They were promised that the war would be over by Christmas.
08:38This is really the crucial point
08:41in the beginning of the First World War.
08:44If it didn't end then,
08:46it would last for a very long time.
08:50Both sides make tremendous efforts
08:52to bring Christmas cheer to their demoralized troops.
08:57All 355,000 British soldiers at the Western Front
09:01are sent a Christmas present from Princess Mary.
09:04At home, the British public is encouraged
09:07to send the boys at the front
09:09all sorts of special cards, letters and presents.
09:13And it's the same for the Germans.
09:17There is an avalanche of warm winter clothing,
09:21food treats, tobacco, cigars and letters.
09:24Letters, letters.
09:25This makes some soldiers even more homesick.
09:30Headquarters is very aware that during this period
09:33the troops might let their guard down.
09:36Word is sent to the front warning of this danger.
09:40The sole object of war becomes obscured,
09:43and officers and men sink into military lethargy,
09:47from which it is difficult to arouse them
09:48when a moment for great sacrifices again arises.
09:57As night falls on Christmas Eve,
10:00the concerns of headquarters seem prophetic.
10:09Something strange is happening over at the German lines.
10:12Sounds of some sort are drifting across the dark no-man's land.
10:25Sounds no one has ever heard before in this war.
10:30It's the sound of singing.
10:35The Germans must be planning a trick.
10:37The Germans must be planning a trick.
10:42On Christmas Eve 1914,
10:49in the fifth month of World War I,
10:52Allied soldiers are surprised
10:54by what they are hearing over from the German trenches.
11:01They are astonished by what they see.
11:06At first, everyone assumes it must be some German trick.
11:10And that was how it started on Christmas night,
11:14with the lights on the German trench
11:16and songs being sung back and forth.
11:18It was pretty much a German tradition,
11:21Christmas trees, St. Nicholas.
11:23It's something the Germans had always celebrated
11:25and something that we'd picked up in more recent times,
11:27so to them it meant a lot more.
11:31They had been drinking,
11:32which was something that the British did discourage
11:34from the front line,
11:35so maybe it was just that the Germans
11:36were in more of a festive mood than we were.
11:38Private Frank Sumpter is one of the first
11:43to recognise what they are singing.
11:45And then we heard the Germans singing
11:47Silent Night, Holy Night.
11:49Our boys said, let's join in.
11:51So we joined in with a song.
11:52Silent nights, holy nights,
11:59All is calm, all is bright,
12:06O the end comes so...
12:10At some places, there were actually instances
12:11where both sides of the Western Front,
12:15on both sides of No Man's Land,
12:17were singing the same hymn or carol,
12:18but in different languages at the same time.
12:22One description of this night's events
12:24comes from British Lieutenant Bruce Bairnsfather,
12:28a well-known artist of World War I.
12:32Well, my father was actually there that night.
12:35He heard some sounds going on the evening before,
12:39singing from the other side,
12:41singing Christmas carols,
12:43and made him wonder what was going on.
12:46He must have wondered what was going to happen the next day.
12:48After all, he knew it was going to be Christmas Day.
12:52Bruce Bairnsfather writes about waking up that Christmas morning.
12:56He probably did not think seriously
13:26that something like that would really happen.
13:28It was just a happy fantasy.
13:30But then the reality that did take place
13:34was just as amazing or more so.
13:39The British sentries don't know what to make
13:41of what's happening across the narrow No Man's Land.
13:44The British was like a hut.
14:46The Christmas tree was unknown in the rest of Europe.
14:50The Allied soldiers, they were amazed to see Christmas trees with lights on top, and
14:55they would wonder, what was it for?
14:57What is it about?
14:58The atmosphere must have been very special, and I think that added a lot to the fact that
15:04the truces did happen.
15:05Private Leslie Walkington was there.
15:09So then we began to pop our heads over the side and jump down quickly in case they shot,
15:18but they didn't shoot.
15:20And then we saw a German standing up waving his arms, and we didn't shoot.
15:26You don't know what's going to happen.
15:31You have been told you have to come here, and those people you're facing are your enemies,
15:37and you have to kill them.
15:39But really, all those young boys, they were not made to kill each other.
15:46They were afraid of each other.
15:48So, of course, that boy said, well, if he can do it, we can do it.
16:09So Sergeant Major said, get down.
16:11So the boy, no, no, shut up, Sergeant.
16:13It's Christmas time.
16:14So we all jumped up, and we all went forward.
16:44When they met on Christmas trees, first they were afraid of each other, and then they started
16:53to talk, and shaking hands, and once they did that, it just seemed to be friends.
17:01The British khaki and the German grey are soon gathering all mingled together.
17:07Would you believe it, by mutual consent, our battalion, and the Germans opposite, had a little armistice.
17:19It was really funny to see the hated antagonists standing in groups, laughing and talking and shaking hands.
17:29These men have no idea that this moment is going to resound through history.
17:46This museum in the Belgian town of Ypres is only five miles away from where British and German soldiers took part in the Christmas truce.
17:54I always was interested in the people who were in those trenches, and that's how I got involved with this museum in the end.
18:03The statues behind me, my idea was that the figure had to break through their own mind frame.
18:12They were told that these were enemies, and all of a sudden they decided they were equals in human beings rather than being soldiers in a war.
18:19This Christmas day scene is exactly what the British high command is worried about.
18:26Friendly intercourse with the enemy and unofficial armistice, however tempting and occasionally amusing they may be, are absolutely prohibited.
18:36We impress on all subordinates the absolute necessity of encouraging the offensive spirit of the troops by every means in their power.
18:44These men in no man's land are as much at risk from their own officers as they are from the enemy.
18:57Both sides are well aware that consorting with the enemy is only one step away from treason, a crime punishable by court-martial and execution.
19:05It's Christmas day, 1914, five months into World War I, and something unbelievable is happening.
19:25Soldiers from both sides are shaking hands and making friends.
19:29Headquarters is furious about this, and has ordered the officers at the front to take names.
19:39While some men in the trenches aren't happy with this turn of events, many officers, in fact, are taking part.
19:46Of course, there were instances along the Western Front of truces happening with the tacit approval of officers.
19:53Whether they came out and said so or not, it was something that they allowed to happen.
19:57And I think that you can also make an argument that it may have been in the strategic interests of officers to allow their men this break, this respite, to allow them a couple of days to feel human again.
20:11Either way, there are still some bitter realities to deal with.
20:14No man's land was littered with human remains.
20:29And this was something which, to some extent, the men in the trenches had been able to ignore.
20:35Unless you went over the top, you didn't necessarily have to look at these bodies, these bodies of people you knew, people you'd lived side by side with in the trenches.
20:43So when people actually did tentatively make their way out on Christmas morning, what they found was a massive grave.
20:52And so, at first, there was this grim task of going out and retrieving bodies and finding a place to bury them and laying them to rest.
21:01British Corporal Robert Renton described this scene.
21:04There were two dead Frenchmen between our lines, and the Germans helped us dig the grave.
21:10One of the officers held a service over one of the graves.
21:12It was a sight worth seeing and not easily forgotten.
21:15Both German and British paying respects to the French dead.
21:17The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want their blood and thy star, and they come.
21:28Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
21:32And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
21:51Amen.
21:52Christmastruise 1914, I'm glad I came.
22:14Christmastruise Gigho nhérus
22:15Christmastruise 1914, I'm glad I came.
22:16It's a place a lot of people ought to come to.
22:19This was where really it was ground zero.
22:29Yes, I don't suppose it's changed a great deal since then.
22:32I've got a book with a map in it of the area around here where the action took place that my father described way back in 1919.
22:42It shows two or three roads and the area of the British lines and the German lines, a fairly short distance apart, though I can't tell exactly how far.
22:53When I was still a child, my father sometimes used to tell me and my father about the Christmas truce held between British and German soldiers at Christmas 1914.
23:13It was a very pleasant conversation, and how wondrous it was that these men, who must stand against each other as enemies, could make peace for once at Christmas.
23:32Meeting each other at such close quarters makes for a problem that high command is only too aware of.
23:38Every other war proves undoubtedly that troops and trenches in close proximity to the enemy slide very easily, if permitted, into a live-and-let-live theory of life.
23:52By Christmas 1914, every soldier knew that the enemy was sharing the same misery as they were, so they had this common experience.
24:03My father and your father spoke together at Christmas 1914, and the day you and I meet, so many years later, here's where the truth took place.
24:31The fraternization between British and German soldiers.
24:35The fraternization between British and German soldiers.
24:36I can speak a little German, but not German.
24:40I was only English.
24:45Yeah.
24:46My father described seeing a German soldier cutting the hair of a British soldier.
24:53They traded cigarettes for cigars and chocolates for other food.
25:00Yeah.
25:02Lieutenant Bruce Bain's father's drawing of that day tells a story that he often told his daughter of how he snipped off a German's buttons as souvenirs.
25:12Another British soldier who was there, Leslie Walkington, writes home that day.
25:19My dear father, mother and girls, just a line to let you know that I have had quite a merry Christmas to talk about peace and goodwill.
25:32I never saw a friendlier sight.
25:36One of their officers took a photo of a group of intermingled troops.
25:42People from both sides met in no man's land, and we spent the day there, and we swapped cigarettes.
25:52It was really rather like a crowd at a football match, you know.
25:59We exchanged odd little bits of food.
26:03Just like a lot of boys from neighboring schools.
26:10They were not nearly so strong-looking as Englishmen are.
26:15The First World War still had the remnants of an old warfare that we can't even really identify anymore.
26:20When there were clear rules of war, there was a code of conduct.
26:23The British thought of it very much in sporting terms.
26:28That this person on the other side of the trench wasn't your enemy, it was your opponent.
26:32And there were certain codes, certain behaviors, certain standards that you had to uphold and that you would uphold.
26:44British soldier George Jameson also remembers this day.
26:47There was no doubt about it, they were absolutely astounded at once.
26:50They said, they've got a football out there, they're kicking it around, they're having a marvellous time.
26:59It must have been wonderful for those guys to go over that no man's land, which was not yet pockmarked and not the moon crater landscape that we all know from later in the war.
27:12Whilst peace has broken out in many places this Christmas day in 1914, war as usual continues to rage in many other areas of the Western Front.
27:25The British army lost a lot of soldiers that day with a lot of men killed in action, whether it was shell fire or rifle fire.
27:34Some men had gone over to fraternize with the Germans and been taken prisoner and disappeared.
27:39Some NCOs had been over to meet the Germans and on their way back a German sniper shot them.
27:46Some areas the divisional commander had said, you know, there will be no fraternization.
27:50And good regular soldiers that they were had stuck to that and didn't participate.
27:54And if the Germans popped up, they would shoot at them.
28:07Even in the trenches emptied out by people playing football, some remember there is a war on.
28:13The game presents an opportunity to wander over to the enemy trenches and take a look at how they are laid out and where the gun emplacements are.
28:28This isn't always successful, but it is certainly worth a try.
28:42The other football game, which was a proper football game, between a Saxon regiment and Scottish blokes witnessed by Semish, refereed by, I think, the German officer.
28:59And I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but the Germans won.
29:03As German Lieutenant Johannes Niemann writes,
29:12We Germans really roared when the Scots revealed there were no drawers under their kilts.
29:18And we hooted and whistled every time we caught an impotent glimpse of a posterior belonging to one of yesterday's enemies.
29:28This Christmas Day has been wonderful, even miraculous.
29:31Men on both sides go to sleep that night, wondering if they will wake up the next morning to renewed fighting, or a continued effort to defy the war.
29:43It's December 26th, 1914. The morning after. Christmas Day has now passed, but the truce lingers on.
29:57The biggest problem with a truce of this kind was that if the guys got used to the idea of not fighting, how on earth are you going to make them go back and start doing it again?
30:15It's a very real danger. If it spreads, there's a huge amount of men there who, once they've got a taste for the fact, well, actually, you know, we don't really need to fight after all.
30:28General Sir Horace Smith Dorian sends out a blunt edict.
30:33On Christmas Day, a friendly gathering has taken place of Germans and British on the neutral ground between the two lines.
30:40Many officers have taken part in it. I am calling for particulars as to names of officers in units which took part in this gathering with a view to disciplinary action.
30:53The fear of punishment is enough to get most of the soldiers back to fighting. But some are still reluctant to go back to war.
31:02They are making a choice between orders from above and their own newfound feelings of fellowship with their opponents.
31:10A lot of the soldiers by then were volunteers, not just professional soldiers.
31:17So they had a whole shared experience that they felt that they shared with the enemy.
31:24And they would have more in common with the enemy, private, than they would with their own commands.
31:31It was one thing when the British and Germans were facing each other on either side of no man's land,
31:37and thinking, oh, the guy on the other side isn't that bad. He's dealing with the same rain I am.
31:40He's dealing with his trench collapsing just like I am. His rations can't be very good. He must have trouble finding a place to sleep at night.
31:47It's another thing altogether when you meet him in no man's land and you discover that he used to work as a waiter at a restaurant that perhaps you've eaten at.
31:55Or, as in one case, he was your barber back in London. It becomes much more difficult to demonize these men.
32:00As Private Frank Sumter of Southgate Road in Islington remembers.
32:05We shook hands in between, and I had the experience of talking to one German.
32:10This father said to me, you know, Southgate Road in Islington? I said, yes.
32:15My uncle had a shoe repairing shop next door. He said, that's funny.
32:19He said, there's a barber shop on the other side where I used to work.
32:21So, you know, it's too ironic when you think about it that he must have shaved my uncle at times, and yet my bullet might have found him, and his bullet might find me.
32:38This new feeling of fellowship has some remarkable examples, like the back-and-forth trading of a German helmet.
32:44In the exchange at Christmas, somebody got a picklehaube helmet as a souvenir.
32:51Now, the German who had given the picklehaube in exchange for, no doubt, a lot of tickler's jam, says, I'm going to have a big parade tomorrow.
33:02I need my helmet.
33:04And so, the trust is this big that this guy brings back the helmet.
33:09And then he said, after the parade is over, you're going to get your helmet back.
33:17The next day, the picklehaube is duly returned.
33:20It is an example of just how much trust has built up between the troops on the ground.
33:24And so there was a wave of letters talking about the humanity of the Germans that went back to London,
33:31and presumably back to Germany.
33:33These letters are all describing things that sound very strange to the people back at home.
33:39This isn't at all what they have been taught to think about the enemy.
33:43So as the Christmas truce gets reported in the press, the story seizes the public's imagination.
33:51Meanwhile, the officers at the front line are trying to restore discipline.
33:55It doesn't always work, as British Private Archibald Stanley remembers.
34:01One of these snubs of people that's just got his commission.
34:05You know.
34:07Katie Carroll, his name was.
34:10Stand to!
34:12And he come up and he said, he's got to cease.
34:15Shake it!
34:16The officer wants to fire on unarmed men.
34:20All right, he said, give them a volley.
34:23We didn't take any notice.
34:25Didn't fire at them. We never fired at the Germans.
34:28It just doesn't seem like fair play.
34:31Although we were at war, I thought they were a bit wicked, you know, taking advantage like that.
34:37How amazingly difficult it must have been for these people to pick up shooting again,
34:41and with any kind of vigor, try and kill people in the opposite trench that they just celebrated Christmas with two days before.
34:50Tremendous pressure begins to be exerted to get the war back on track.
34:56Orders and threats from the high commands begin to rain down on the men at the front lines.
35:04Commanders at the front have to get their men back into the fight by any means possible.
35:09The godfather of my wife was sent out in one of the listening posts.
35:13The whole front is silent, and the Germans opposite start singing.
35:18When all of a sudden, Urbain Crevé, my wife's godfather, remembers the very strict order given to him by his officer, saying you have to report everything.
35:32So he picks up the field telephone and dutifully reports back that the Germans are singing songs opposite.
35:44And then he says, I still hold the horn of the telephone in my hands when the shelling starts.
35:52Within minutes, the complete place is shot to pieces.
35:56No doubt many Germans have died there.
35:59And he hears from the screaming, a lot of them have been wounded.
36:02And all he hears is the wounded.
36:05Private Archibald Stanley remembers how his officer put an end to their armistice.
36:10Well, if you're knocking around, this fella come up the next day, he said, you've still got the armistice.
36:15The officer knows exactly how to end the armistice.
36:18Picked up as well, but he shot one of those Germans dead.
36:27That was it. That finished it. That war started again.
36:30Never finished in 1918, did it?
36:35The mechanics of war are thus, that it's very hard as an individual, as a group of individuals, to stop it.
36:43It doesn't take long until the Christmas truce is just a memory.
36:50And the worst is yet to come.
37:01By the middle of January 1915, the holiday fraternizing between opposing armies, known as the Christmas truce, has ended almost everywhere.
37:09The year that follows does not provide the decisive breakthrough that the warring nations expect.
37:16Trench lines stay virtually where they started.
37:19It is a year of terrible losses, millions dying, and poison gas is used for the first time in war.
37:26By the time Christmas comes round again, men on every side of the front are desperate and demoralized.
37:33The commands on both sides are very aware that conditions are right for the men to want to lay down their arms again at Christmas.
37:42Britain's new commander-in-chief, Sir Douglas Haig, gives new orders.
37:48The brigadier wishes to give you the strictest orders that any man attempting to communicate, either by signal, or by word of mouth, or by any other means with the enemy, is to be seriously punished.
37:59The German troops are issued an even clearer order.
38:04Any attempt at fraternization with the enemy, such as occurred last year at Christmas, will be considered as high treason.
38:11General headquarters have issued instructions that fire will be opened on every man who leaves the trench and moves in the direction of the enemy without orders.
38:18Ultimately, you know, Christmas Day is just like any other day. And in subsequent years of the war, the fighting just carried on. There was, you know, a few places in 1915 where both sides did stop and half-heartedly try and recreate it.
38:33But there was never any specific attempt to do that.
38:35As the war now progresses, even soccer takes on a different significance.
38:43One year later, a Captain Neville is to become famous posthumously for trying to use a soccer ball to motivate his troops to go over the top to certain death.
38:55It is the end of an era.
38:56The beginning of the war, it looked somewhat like wars that had preceded it.
39:01Officers came in on horseback. Men were on foot.
39:06But bear in mind, there hadn't been a major war in Europe for the better part of a century when Europe went to war in 1914.
39:13So you have a war that, with a few new weapons in 1914, looked like old wars.
39:17They had machine guns and shells and things like that. But the real technological advances of the war didn't come until later.
39:23The tank, chemical weapons, strafing from airplanes. By the end of the war, it was unrecognizable.
39:32It was modern war, to some extent, as we know it today.
39:40Today, all around the Belgian town of Ypres, it is easy to see the scars of the battles of World War I.
39:46Going around the countryside, you'd find shrapnel bullets, pieces of rusty metal that belonged to the war.
39:56You go out on your bike and you try and discover it yourself.
40:00And it starts always with the cemeteries, because there are so many around.
40:04So you try to understand them.
40:06And so then you realise that it was probably the last war that didn't pay any attention whatsoever to the loss of human life.
40:16I see always the same reaction. They look very sad, because of course the people I take to places like that are people who think back at relatives and how much they had to suffer.
40:34And why was it not possible to keep that peace after Christmas?
40:55The First World War is like four years of hell.
41:00And there's just one day during these four years, there's a sparkle of hope and of humanity.
41:07And that's what the Christmas Truce is.
41:10Some people say that the 20th century started in 1914, not 1900.
41:15What's interesting about the Christmas Truce is you seem to be right there on a fault line.
41:18And that's the sense you get when you read the writings of these men who, looking back in Christmas 1915, Christmas 1916, think, how could that have happened?
41:28What did we have then that we don't have now?
41:31I think in a very individual way it makes you think, what should I have done?
41:37What would I have done in similar circumstances?
41:42Which hopefully then leads to the next question, what will I do when they ask me to decide about war and peace next time?
41:53Lest we forget, in the Belgian town of Ypres, World War I is remembered every single night of every year.
42:03I will be remembered by Mrs. Barbara Little John, daughter of Bruce Baird's father.
42:09Captain Baird's father who took part in the famous Truce at Brook Street in December 1914.
42:17She will be accompanied by Rudolf Zemich, the son of Kurt Zemich, whose father also participated at this Truce at Brook Street.
42:30It must be amazing for the descendants of Germans and British who squared off across No Man's Land to come back now, at the beginning of the 21st century, stand on that same scarred battlefield and think about that distance that their ancestors overcame.
42:55In some ways, they're standing there across the wasteland of the 20th century, across everything that the First World War wrought.
43:04Because as we know, the Western Front was just the beginning of it.
43:11And now we can look back and things are mended and we can come together and shake hands again.
43:16But No Man's Land is still there.
43:18But No Man's Land is still there.
43:46No Man's Land, not only in the 19th century,
43:52No Man is still there.
43:54No Man is still there.
44:00No Man is still there.
44:01No Man is still there.
44:07No Man is still there.
44:11so tender and high
44:14Heavenly Virgin
44:19Mother and Child
44:22Sleeping heavenly peace
44:29Sleeping heavenly peace
44:41Sleeping heavenly peace
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