History Forum / General / General Topics / November 2005

http://www.courant.com/hc-anderson1122.artnov22,0,7192740.story

`Christmas Truce' Soldier Dies

WWI Vet Heard Guns Fall Silent

Associated Press

November 22 2005

LONDON -- Alfred Anderson, the last surviving soldier to have heard the
guns fall silent along the Western Front during the spontaneous
"Christmas Truce" of World War I, died Monday at age 109.

More than 80 years after the war, Anderson recalled the "eerie sound of
silence" as shooting stopped and soldiers clambered from trenches to
greet one another Dec. 25, 1914.

His parish priest, the Rev. Neil Gardner, said Anderson died in his
sleep early Monday at a nursing home in Newtyle, Scotland. His death
leaves fewer than 10 veterans of World War I alive in Britain.

Born June 25, 1896, Anderson was an 18-year-old soldier in the Black
Watch regiment when British and German troops cautiously emerged from
the trenches that Christmas Day in 1914. The enemies swapped cigarettes
and tunic buttons, sang carols and even played soccer amid the mud,
barbed wire and shell-holes of no man's land.

The informal truce spread along much of the 500-mile Western Front, in
some cases lasting for days - alarming army commanders who feared
fraternization would sap the troops' will to fight. The next year
brought the start of vast battles of attrition that claimed 10 million
lives, and the Christmas truce was never repeated.

"I remember the silence, the eerie sound of silence," Anderson told The
Observer newspaper last year.

"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," said Anderson, who was billeted in a French farmhouse behind
the front lines.

"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. It was a short peace in a terrible war."

Anderson fought in France until 1916, when he was wounded by shrapnel
from a shell.

In 1998, he was awarded France's Legion of Honor for his war service.