The Silent Christmas Read online

  ‘Great.’

  ‘Your aunt Dora got you these.’ David passed across a pair of socks that looked like Birkenstock sandals.

  ‘She always gives me socks.’

  ‘And I’m sure you’ll send her a card to say thank you, won’t you?’

  Chris smiled. ‘Of course, Dad. What did you get me?’

  ‘Two things, hope you like them.’

  Chris ripped open the boxes. Inside one was a retro arcade-game machine, already loaded with twenty old games.

  ‘Brilliant.’

  ‘It’ll help you pass the time. Open the other present.’

  Chris ripped the wrapping paper off. Inside was a personalised Manchester United history book.

  ‘It’s got all the teams and the players since 1888,’ said David

  ‘The nurses told me Sir Alex may be coming round later today. I’ll get him to sign it.’

  ‘And you should get him to sign this too.’ David brought out another present from behind his back.

  ‘The new kit with Pogba’s on the back! Thanks, Dad.’ He leant forward to give his father a hug.

  ‘I think I’ve got you the best present,’ said Martin. He produced an unwrapped box from the Tesco bag.

  On the cover it said Poo Head! The Poo-flinging Game!.

  ‘You put on this cap, I fling the poo and you have to catch it on your head.’

  Chris and Martin immediately began flinging plastic poo at each other.

  ‘Boys, enough. It’s Christmas, play nicely,’ said David ineffectively.

  ‘My Christmas present to you isn’t something you can hold, but it’s a story that happened one hundred years ago,’ said Jayne.

  Both boys stopped flinging the plastic poo.

  ‘In 1914, a brave man called Tom Wright went off to war, leaving behind his wife and three children: Hetty, John and baby Alice. He had been a piecer before the war, working in a big mill in Stalybridge.’

  ‘What’s a piecer?’

  ‘It’s a man who crawls under the cotton-spinning machines and pieces together the broken threads.’

  ‘Sounds dangerous,’ said Chris.

  ‘It was,’ replied Jayne. ‘Many people were injured by the fast-moving parts of the machine. Anyway, this man, Tom Wright, went off to war...’

  Jayne then told the story as she had managed to piece it together, bringing in all the different threads: the German button, the label, the old football and, above all, the relationship that had existed between two men who became friends despite the war.

  ‘So you see, we think this German soldier, Harald Kanz, returned these things to your dad’s great-grandfather after the war, probably when he visited Manchester in 1923.’

  Chris held the old football close to his chest. ‘So this football was used for a game in 1914?’

  ‘We can’t be absolutely certain, but all the evidence points that way.’

  ‘Why were these things hidden in the attic?’

  Jayne shrugged her shoulders. ‘We’ll never know. Perhaps the memories were too painful for Tom Wright. Or perhaps he just wanted to forget about that period of his life. You know, many of those old soldiers never spoke about the war. They never told anybody what they endured.’

  ‘It sounds sad,’ said Chris.

  ‘It is and it isn’t. We believe my great-grandfather took part in one of the most amazing events of the whole war. In December 1914, on Christmas Day, all across the front line, men from both sides put away their weapons for a few hours and just talked to each other,’ said David.

  ‘That’s why these things from that time. The button, the label and the ball are so valuable. They are a little piece of history, Chris.’

  Chris hugged the ball tighter to his chest.

  Jayne continued speaking. ‘Your family has to decide what to do with them now. There are three options. You could keep them, you could sell them, or—’

  ‘We could give them to the museum you visited. Then everybody could see them and read my ancestor’s story,’ said Chris.

  ‘Is that what you both want to do?’ asked David.

  The boys nodded their heads.

  ‘Then it’s decided. We donate them to the museum. Reg and Henry will be extremely happy, I think.

  Chris frowned. ‘But one thing I don’t understand. If Tom Wright fought in the war, he would have medals, right? What happened to them?’

  Jayne and David looked at each other. It was a question they should have asked. ‘We don’t know, Chris. I guess we’ll never know.’

  She stood up. ‘It’s time for me to go now.’

  ‘Before you do, Jayne, I have one more Christmas present for Chris. I spoke to the oncologist earlier. After the lumbar puncture, they tested your white blood cells and the leukaemia hasn’t spread to the central nervous system – and it’s chronic rather than acute. He seems to be positive that the chemo has a good chance of working.’

  ‘That’s great news, Chris. Your best Christmas present ever,’ said Jayne.

  Chris nodded. ‘It is, but this comes a close second,’ he said, hugging the football to his chest once more.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Monday, December 25, 2017 – Christmas Day

  Macclesfield General Hospital, Cheshire

  After leaving Christies, Jayne drove down the A523 to Macclesfield. The roads were empty. On Christmas morning, most families were spending time together, swapping presents, eating chocolate and nuts, preparing turkey or simply enjoying the special joy that is Christmas morning.

  Jayne was driving along the empty road, reliving memories of Robert and their life together.

  The time they had gone to Blackpool and she had so wanted to ride the Big Dipper but her mother had said no, until Robert stepped forward to accompany her even though he was scared of heights. As she had hollered and whooped, he’d spent the whole ride with his eyes closed and his hand tightly gripping hers.

  Or the time she had come home from school with her uniform ripped and torn after a fight with a boy who had tried to bully her. Robert had taken her out to buy a new uniform before her mother saw the damage to the old one.

  Or the time when they had sat and listened to Candle in the Wind over and over again on the day of Princess Diana’s funeral, both of them with tears in their eyes while her mother looked on in bemusement.

  She realised she had shared so many wonderful times with Robert. A man who was more of a parent to her than her mother had ever been.

  She parked the car and hurried up to his ward. Vera was waiting beside his bed, her book open and her knitting in the bag by her side.

  Robert was still sleeping in his bed, but the oxygen mask was no longer covering his mouth.

  ‘How is he?’ she whispered.

  ‘Fine. I think he’s improving. The doctor said he didn’t need oxygen any more. And look, colour has returned to his cheeks and his hand isn’t so clammy.’

  Jayne heaved a sigh of relief. If Vera thought he was getting better, it was a good sign.

  ‘How are you?’ she whispered again.

  ‘Not bad, a little tired but I can manage.’

  ‘Why are you two whispering?’ The voice was weak and crackly. ‘I can hear everything, you know.’

  Jayne and her stepmother looked at each other. It was Vera who spoke first.

  ‘How long have you been awake?’

  ‘Quite a while. Time for me to get up.’ He tried to lift his shoulders from the bed.

  Vera was up in a flash, pressing his body gently back down on to the bed. ‘You stay right where you are, Robert Cartwright,’ she ordered. ‘You’re not going anywhere.’

  His eyes were open now and Jayne was stunned by the brightness of the blue irises.

  ‘You gave us a scare, Robert.’

  ‘I know. Sorry, lass. What day is it?’

  ‘Christmas Day.’

  ‘I could murder a turkey leg.’

  ‘I’ll see what the hospital has to eat. You must be starving.’ Vera rushed o
ut to the nurses’ station.

  ‘I’ve been so worried, Robert.’

  ‘I can imagine, lass.’

  ‘Vera has been brilliant, staying here with you.’

  ‘She’s one in a million, lass. I’m so lucky to have found her.’

  Jayne glanced towards the door.

  ‘I hope you realise why I’ve been nagging you so much to look into your own past, Jayne. I’m not going to be here much longer.’

  ‘Shhh, Dad, don’t talk like that.’

  But she knew what he said was true. He wasn’t going to be around much longer. But whether it was two days or ten years, she vowed to enjoy every second or every minute with him.

  ‘You know he was my best friend.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your real father. He wasn’t a happy man and he wore his heart on his sleeve...’

  ‘Shhh, Dad,’ Jayne interrupted. ‘Save your strength, we’ll talk about it later.’

  ‘No, we’ll talk about it now,’ Robert said forcefully. ’You see, I think he’s still alive.’

  THE END

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  The events of December 1914, later called the ‘Christmas Truce’, have been well documented. In this novel I have attempted to bring a more personal exploration of the experience and its aftermath.

  My own interest in the time began with a visit to the National Football Museum in 2015, which commemorated the period and displayed a football and a diary from Lt Charles Brockbank of the 6th Battalion, the Cheshire Regiment.

  I spent a long time researching the Christmas Truce. There are some excellent histories available from David Boyle’s Peace on Earth, John Hendrix’s Shooting Stars, Malcolm Brown and Shirley Seaton’s Christmas Truce, Stanley Weintraub’s Silent Night and many others.

  In addition, I looked at the newspapers of the time. The story seemed to break quickly in a letter sent to the London Evening News. This was quickly followed up by The Times, the Daily Mirror, the Daily Sketch and other newspapers. Even local journals got involved; letters from soldiers were published in the Nottingham Evening Post, the Gloucester Journal, the Aberdeen Journal and, in Cheshire, by the Macclesfield Times, describing the Christmas Truce. These letters were sent to loved ones and forwarded on to the newspapers.

  But the truce wasn’t an organised event. Most of the commanding officers – certainly on the British side – hated fraternisation with the enemy. The commander of the British Second Corps, General Sir Horace Lockwood Smith-Dorrien, believed this proximity posed ‘the greatest danger’ to the morale of soldiers and told Divisional Commanders to explicitly prohibit any ‘friendly intercourse with the enemy’. In a memo issued on December 5, 1914, he warned that ‘troops in trenches in close proximity to the enemy slide very easily, if permitted to do so, into a “live and let live” theory of life’.

  There had been attempts to organise a formal truce, notably by Pope Benedict XV, but these were firmly rebuffed by the governments of both sides.

  But nonetheless, a truce happened between the opposing forces on Christmas Day 1914. Why?

  From reading the reports of the time, it seems to have been a spontaneous eruption of good will. It must be remembered that in many cases, the front lines were often less than two hundred yards apart and, in one case, the gap between the two trenches was less than fifty yards. Both sides were used to shouting across to each other, usually insults or slanders on the other’s manhood. In addition, the dreadful attrition of the later years, with its mass slaughter at Verdun, the Somme and Passchendaele not yet having taken place. The soldiers facing each other were often professionals, or at least had spent some time in the reserves.

  The truce didn’t happen everywhere. Indeed, both sides suffered casualties on Christmas Day in certain parts of the front. And it does seem to have been confined to the British and German troops. There are few reports of fraternisation between the French and the Germans.

  The events basically happened as I have described in the book. The troops sang carols to each other on Christmas Eve. They met and congregated in no-man’s-land on Christmas Day, swapping food items and bits of kit, burying their dead and then returning to their respective lines as the sun went down.

  For the next few days, little fighting or firing took place. Indeed, the ‘live and let live’ policy seemed to have been instituted by the company commanders of both sides.

  However, such a peace did not continue. By New Year, most troops had been rostered out of the front line, with fresh troops introduced. By New Year, the High Command had regained control, issuing dire threats to the men and their officers, preventing any further fraternisation.

  There has been one note of controversy in the historical accounts: Did the football games actually take place?

  The popular myth is of an organised game with rules, referees and sides. However, the truth as described in letters and diaries of the period seems to be much less formal. The men simply found a ball, laid hats and coats down as goals, and then proceeded to play informally, with often a hundred men on each side. The sort of kick-around in the park we all played as youngsters.

  The 6th Battalion of the Cheshire Regiment did indeed play a game of football with the 35th Landsturm Regiment, as described by Lt Brockbank in his war diary. However, he did not record any score and it was played with a small rubber ball rather than any of the Mitres donated to the troops by the Daily Mirror. I have dramatised the events slightly in the interests of the novel.

  Although the war was to last three more Christmases, the events of 1914 were never repeated on any large scale. The Christmas Truce was a one-off event, a coming together of men to reach the hand of friendship across no-man’s-land.

  As ever with the Jayne Sinclair Genealogical Mystery series, I have kept as closely as possible to the actual events. I have used the 6th Battalion of the Cheshire Regiment as my lead soldiers. The men of this battalion were all reservists, many of whom were mill workers in the cotton towns surrounding Manchester: Glossop, Stalybridge, Hyde and Stockport.

  The experience of the early days of war was as I have described, but I have brought in some details from other areas of the front lines to add detail. The work by John Hartley, The Sixth Battalion in the Great War, was extremely useful for the movements and biographies of the men involved. I am also indebted to the volunteers of the Cheshire Military Museum in Chester for their wonderful information. The museum – and the city – are well worth a visit for all those interested in English history from Roman times.

  In all, over 8000 men from the Cheshire Regiment died in World War One – a loss that can still be seen in the numerous war memorials across the mill towns of the area.

  One last set of records I consulted were the official War Diaries of the Battalion in the National Archives. These are daily records of the activities, casualties and movement of the men under their commanding officer.

  Funnily enough, there is no mention of the fraternisation on Christmas Day in those records. As always, the first casualty of any war is truth.

  I’ll leave the last word on the Christmas Truce to Arthur Anderson, the last surviving soldier who took part, speaking in 2003 when he was 108 years old:

  I remember the silence, the eerie sound of silence. Only the guards were on duty. We all went outside the farm buildings and stood listening. And, of course, thinking of people back home. All I’d heard for two months in the trenches was the hissing, cracking and whining of bullets in flight, machine-gun fire and distant German voices. But there was a dead silence that morning, right across the land as far as you could see. We shouted ‘Merry Christmas’, even though nobody felt merry. The silence ended early in the afternoon and the killing started again.

  In a time of war, he found peace.

  If you enjoyed reading this Jayne Sinclair genealogical mystery, please consider leaving a short review on Amazon. It will help other readers know how much you enjoyed the book.

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