CREATIVE SAMPLE 5: PAUL ENG MOD C

CREATIVE 20

A Christmas Story

1914, Flanders

I met you at the Christmas Truce.

We sat in opposing trenches. Do you remember the dead silence that starry night? All across
the white, frozen no man’s land. After two months of hissing bullets and shrieking shells. If I
wasn’t there, I wouldn’t have believed it.

“Lights!” A British sentry yelled at around midnight, “Flares along the entire German line!
Every man to the front!”

I scurried out from my dugout with the other tommies, labouring breaths frosting, muddy snow
squelching beneath my boots. I rested my Lee-Enfield rifle against the trench parapet.

Aim and pull. Aim and pull. Just like shooting waterfowls. That’s how they trained me. I’m
sorry, but to an eighteen-year old boy ardent for some desperate glory, your friends were all
leering rapists and vile murderers. The posters and radios told me the stories of the massacres
in Belgium. ‘Stop them over there, so they don’t come over here.’ was the slogan.

But on that night, you sang.

“Stille Nacht.”
“Heilige Nacht.”

The song floated across the night air, across no man’s land. Tommies looked at each other, the
only things that used to pass between us were bullets and shells.

“All is calm.”
“All is bright”,
we replied

A tommy next to me chuckled, “Those aren’t bloody flares, they’re Christmas lights.”

***

Although many tommies started fraternizing with Germans. I wasn’t planning to talk to you. I
was just burying the dead during the Christmas Truce, searching for limp bodies clutching

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bloodied rifles. You walked up to me and we stood facing each other across a shell-hole. I half-
thought to pull out the revolver in my pocket. I would have shot you. But the night was so
quiet.

“Was ist das Wort?”, you muttered, “Freund? Fiend? Ja; Friend?” you said, holding out a packet
of chocolate.

I was silent for a while. Friend. Freund. I have not heard that in a long time.

“Yes, friend.” I said, hands in my pockets.

You sat down on the edge of a shell-crater. You patted the spot next to you and you held out
the chocolate. I sighed and sat down next to you as well. English courtesy.

We talked as we ate the chocolate. You could barely speak English and getting the message
across was difficult, but I listened. We asked each other about how we were getting on in the
other trench. We both talked about, lice, fleas, and sleepless nights haunted by the long, naked
tails of corpse-rats.

You had a girlfriend in London. You loved (lieben) her pretty blue (blau) eyes (augen). You
used gestures for words like love and showed me a locket picture of her. You spoke of your
brothers. Three of them were in the 93rd Landwehr Division further down the front, fighting
the Lancastershire Guards. I told you I also have a brother in Lancastershire Guards. We both
hoped (hoffnung) that all of them were safe tonight.

I didn’t understand most of your words. But I understood your story.

In the distance, a sonorous symphony of voices rose. Brits and Germans, singing Silent Night.

“You .... believe in Jesus?” you said, making a cross with your fingers.

“Yes, in Jesus” I replied, making the cross as well, “The Prince of Peace. That’s a story we
both believe in.”

Do you remember how the Germans, in their field-grey tunics, and English, in their khaki
uniforms, had made a big bonfire? They ate each other’s chocolate, and, leaning against
comfortable chests and knees, were at ease. They were finishing Silent Night.

“Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh”

“Sleep in heavenly peace”

You didn’t know the words in English, but the tune is the same, no? That’s the beauty of stories.
The words could be different but the meaning is still the same. I smiled. You smiled.

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Friend.

Freund.

Word count: 643

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