The cut of my uniform and the outline of my cap would have been easily visible from the other side, marking me out as an officer. I walked forward a few paces to our line of barbed wire and stopped. After weeks and months of trench warfare, I can’t begin to describe the sense of freedom that being above ground gave me. I felt lightheaded. I took out my cigarette case and lit a Craven “A.” It was a casual gesture—the kind you made on a London street all the time—but out there it felt… well, nonchalant, flamboyant, extravagant even. It was a momentary return to an earlier life that we had suppressed. Apart from anything else, the smell of burning tobacco helped kill off the stench of decaying bodies that the intense cold couldn’t quite obliterate.
The other officer climbed out of his trench and splashed toward me. He was good-looking, slim, blond, with a straight nose, a well-defined jaw, and he wore a white silk scarf around his neck. Compared with me he was positively dashing.
As he moved forward, I turned and motioned to my men. In a line, they too clambered out of the trench. The German line soldiers did the same.
I had stopped when I had reached the barbed wire but my German opposite number didn’t. Many gaps had been blown in the wire, but he found one where a tree had fallen across it, and he stepped into the very heart of no-man’s-land. I followed his example.
We had almost come face-to-face, nearly within hand-shaking distance, when a commotion broke out to my left and slightly behind me. I turned quickly, noticing fear on his face, a fear that I felt too. What had happened to interfere with our careful choreography—was it going to be turned into chaos, or even mayhem?
What had happened was that two rabbits in no-man’s-land, disturbed by the unexpected presence of so many humans, had suddenly broken cover and bolted. This was too much for the men on both sides. Rabbits—fresh meat—were difficult and dangerous to capture under normal circumstances, but today was not normal circumstances. Today the rabbits did not have the war shielding them. Men on both sides gave chase, shouting and cheering, slip-sliding in the mud, diving this way and that.
The rabbits, of course, were no respecters of barbed wire, still less of no-man’s-land, and in no time the men were scattered right across the landscape, so splattered with mud that it was difficult to tell who was who. More to the point, both sides were now collaborating in corralling the rabbits, cunningly shepherding them into an unusually large shell crater. Two loud cheers went up as first one, then the other rabbit was captured and held proudly, imperiously aloft by the ears, wriggling and squealing. True to the spirit of the chase, the Germans took one of the rabbits and we claimed the other. I have often wondered what would have happened had only one rabbit appeared.
After that joint success, however, there was no stopping the men. They formed small knots all over the ravaged terrain, shaking hands, swapping tobacco, buttons from their uniforms (strongly forbidden, at least in theory), and showing one another photographs from home.
I turned back to the German officer. We grinned at each other and shook hands. I told him who I was, speaking in German. “Lieutenant Henry Montgomery, Forty-seventh Gloucester Rifles.” He replied, to my surprise, in perfect English: “Oberleutnant Wilhelm Wetzlar, Thirty-second Saxon Infantry. Happy Christmas, Henry. I have a present for you.” Whereupon he took from the breast pocket of his gray tunic three juicy cigars, each fat as a thumb and about six inches long.
“I can’t accept them,” I said. (Throughout, I spoke German and he spoke English.) “I have nothing for you, except this.” And I shamefacedly produced the box with the plum pudding in it. I felt we British were losing this war of gifts.
“I accept with pleasure,” he said, reaching forward. “Tonight, Christmas night, I shall feast on rabbit and Christmas pudding.” He laughed. “It will be a dinner I shall never forget.”
What could I do in the face of such charm? I took the cigars, smelled them, rolled one next to my ear, before placing them in the breast pocket of my tunic, making myself the silent vow that I would smoke them on special occasions.
“Your English is very good,” I said as I buttoned my pocket.