That Silent Night

Christmas had brought a beautiful, temporary peace to the trenches ...

IT'LL be over by Christmas," I'd heard Uncle Ernie tell Mum and Nelly when I went off at the end of the summer.

We believed him, though it didn't stop Mum crying.

Four months later I was still shivering in a trench on the Western Front, my socks sopping wet, the mud of No Man's Land under a layer of frozen snow.

"Hugh, a Christmas present for you," Albie said, and along the row it came, passed from man to man.

Tommy and Jonty had had parcels already - little Christmas trees made from pipe cleaners, sent by their sisters.

I expected Nelly had made me a one - she went to the same school.

To my surprise, Mum and Nelly had sent me a gift that spoke of how well they knew me, though they couldn't have begun to imagine my life now.

"It's a football!" Norman cried.

It was. It was a football.

“Give us a light, Hughie,” Jonty said. My matches are damp, like everything else around here.”

It was Christmas Eve.

I'd been thinking about home and all the other Christmas Eves I’d taken for granted.

Mum would be in the scullery in her apron, her sleeves rolled up, stuffing the bird, peeling the spuds, crossing the sprouts.

Nelly would be poking the fire, trying to make it burn down quickly so that Father Christmas could get safely through the chimney with his sack.

| pictured myself gazing out the window, watching the snow fall on the road, wondering if I’d get the bicycle hoped for.

| wouldn’t care if got nothing at all now, if only could return home in one piece.

“Want a bit of chocolate?” Jonty asked, pulling a bar from his coat pocket.

“If you have it to spare,” replied.

He snapped off a chunk and handed it to me.

“Think that lot have heard of Christmas?” Jonty asked, nodding in the direction of the Germans.