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Truce: The Day the Soldiers Stopped Fighting by Jim Murphy – Retro Review by David Walthour and Cindy Minnich
Ninety-nine years ago, and five months into what would become known as the First World War, a remarkable series of events occurred along the trenches on Christmas Eve and into Christmas day. In many places along the 475 miles of the front, soldiers began making unofficial truces with the enemy.
In Truce Jim Murphy has drawn a fine thumbnail sketch of the beginning of The Great War and how it quickly resolved into defensive lines of trench warfare in the face of modern weapons. Murphy’s meticulous attention to detail in his research is apparent as he weaves together vivid firsthand accounts and photographs of the terrible conditions in which soldiers on both sides found themselves, and of the futile attacks launched through the “No Man’s Land” between the trenches.
Conditions and losses were so terrible on the front that on November 23, 1914, Winston Churchill wrote in a letter to his wife: “What would happen, I wonder, if the Armies suddenly and simultaneously went on strike and said some other method must be found of settling the dispute?”
This background leads up to the events on Christmas Eve in those trenches where soldiers on both sides, sometimes only yards apart could hear their opposite numbers singing carols. The dawn of Christmas Day brought with it many individual incidents of fraternization along the hundreds of miles of the Western Front. What would become known as The Christmas Truce was unlike any wartime truce before or since.
The inevitability of the war was not evident that day because those who were charged to fight simply agreed not to do so.
While the truce stretched on for days and weeks and even months in isolated pockets of the front, Churchill’s question was sadly never answered. Four years of brutal warfare followed the Christmas Truce, without further interruption.
This book offers both a powerful and complicated view of history – and the potential for the reader to view their present in a different light. Instead of simply accepting the situations at hand at face value, these soldiers chose to decide their own fates on that day, far different ones than they had experienced thus far in the conflict. Why then should we readers assume that whatever negative situations we have experienced thus far need to continue to be our reality? We, like the soldiers, can choose to rise above the fray.
David Walthour is a retired German Reformed Pastor and an avid, omnivorous reader.
Cindy Minnich is lucky enough to live the charmed life of a high school English teacher, mom to one future librarian, wife to a fellow reader, and daughter to David Walthour. She can be found on Twitter as @cbethm, on web at http://www.chartingbythestars.com, and in real life on her princess chair enjoying a book and a cup of coffee.
Nerdy Book Club 
Singer and musician John McCutcheon wrote a moving song called Christmas in the Trenches. Worth trying to find. I heard him in concert over 20 years ago and this haunting song has stayed with me.
Janet, thank you for mentioning this. I found it on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJi41RWaTCs – and I’m glad I looked it up.
You are most welcome, Cindy.
I found it, too, earlier but could not upload from my phone (not great a tech stuff…) anyhow in this version he talks about John Bucholtz who was in WWI and meeting him in West Virginia. On one recording he talks about a group of men who came to his concerts and loved the song and then one time told him that they were there in WWI. It might be the iTunes version. John is amazing.
Merry Holidays however you celebrate and Peace on Earth. Please.
I’ve heard of this book and I have meant to get it. Thanks for your interesting review.
I have read sections of this book at various times over the years (I’m never in a place where I feel I can buy it at the time and then later forget the title and author). I always enjoy learning from it. I’m excited that it’s being recommended.
I wanted to quibble with your comment, “While the truce stretched on for days and weeks and even months in isolated pockets of the front, Churchill’s question was sadly never answered.” My reading of the end of the book was much different. I understood it that the soldiers tried very hard to maintain their truce but were very much pushed back into fighting by higher ups. One of my take aways from the book was how much more soldiers had tried to maintain their truce than I had ever known, but how hard the people in charge worked to force them back into fighting.