Historical Story

Artist Statement

Our Historical Story takes place during the 1914 Christmas Truce, when the fighting briefly stopped between the English and German soldiers and they celebrated the holiday together.

The main protagonist is Private Frederick Heath. He was an actual English soldier in the trenches during World War I, but he was not a famous person. Not much is known of him other than his name, rank, and that he was a writer of some sort. His letter depicting his experience of the truce was one of our sources. We decided to use this letter as a frame for our story and flash-back to the truce. During the flashback, the English and German soldiers play a friendly game of poker while getting to know more about each other. The story ends with each side having gained a new respect for the other, even as they resume shooting. While staying true to the 6-page limit, we feel that there is a good balance between the descriptions of the action, the character dialog, and the other action.

The story and setting are historically accurate, as far we we know and researched. The soldiers actually traded many things with each other, including buttons, photos, letters, patches, etc… We only had the space to include pudding and a photo at the end of the story. We don’t have any specific research that soldiers played poker during the truce, but setting the story with poker (presumably something they all knew) as the background made it a less-threatening environment in which they could interact and enjoy themselves, a foil to the backdrop of war.

The change in Private Heath within the story is subtle, but it’s there. In one sense, when the story begins, Heath has already undergone the change, as is later revealed in his letter home to his parents. In his real letter home, he wonders if they could have stopped the war had they been given enough pudding to share. He goes from fighting the Germans, to wondering if they could have been friends under different circumstances. We decided to juxtapose those sympathetic thoughts with the orders from his senior officer to charge that the enemy, who just hours before, were their friends.

Another depiction of this event is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s 2003 Christmas Concert, “Silent Night, Holy Night.” Narrated by Walter Cronkite, it tells of the truce with words and music. The finale of the segment is an all-male rendition of “Silent Night.” At the beginning, two men are singing a capella: one in English and the other in German. It’s a beautiful blending of two languages that symbolizes the blending of cultures, and we wanted that communion to come through in our story. We also wanted to communicate the bittersweet irony of a moment of peace surrounded on both sides by war, the way that Persepolis juxtaposes childish innocence with adult fears and politics. As Private Heath and others have reflected, the Christmas Truce had the idealistic potential to become a true peace, but the reality was war and the magic of Christmas ultimately came to an end.  

Historical Sources:

Brown, Malcolm and Shirley Seaton. Christmas Truce. London: Pan Books, 2001. Print.
The Christmas Truce: Operation Plum Puddings. www.christmastruce.co.uk. Web. 9 Apr. 2012.

Group Members:

Steven Bills

Sarah Foley