How one young soldier's song inspired the 1914 Christmas Truce
It is a story handed down through the generations - and even Christmas adverts - but here a letter from the trenches tells the true story of the Christmas Truce 100 years ago
By Christopher Middleton
7:00AM GMT 22 Dec 2014
Christmas Eve 1914, it’s icy cold, and the battlefields of northern France are, in the words of the soldiers, frozen as hard as iron.
In the British trenches, a young farmer’s son in the Queen’s Westminster regiment, by the name of Edgar Aplin starts up a song. He’s 26, he’s got a good, tenor voice, and after a few verses of Tommy Lad, he hears voices coming from the German trenches, where the 107th Saxon Regiment are dug in, a short distance away.
“Sing it again, Englander,” they call out, in English. “Sing Tommy Lad again.”
He duly does so, thereby setting in train one of the most remarkable episodes ever to take place in the history of armed conflict. It’s depicted, in somewhat idealised form, in the Sainsbury’s Christmas television advertisement currently on our screens.
However, thanks to the letters of Pte Aplin himself, unearthed by his relatives a century later, we have written, documentary evidence of what actually took place.
“We had been out of the trenches for four days’ rest, and returned on the 23rd of December, to relieve some regular troops,” writes the soldier, in a letter back home. “On Christmas Eve, the usual war methods went on all day, sniping etc, until the evening, when we started a few carols and the old home songs.
“Immediately, our pals over the way began to cheer, and eventually we got shouting across to the Germans. Those opposite our front can mostly speak English.
“Soon after dark, we suggested that if they would send one man halfway between the trenches (300 yards), we would do the same – and both agreed not to fire.
“So, advancing towards each other, each carrying a torch, when they met, they exchanged cigarettes and 'lit up’. The cheering on both sides was tremendous, and I shall never forget it. After a little while, several others went out, and a pal of mine met an officer who said that if we did not shoot for 48 hours, they wouldn’t. And they were as good as their word, too. On Christmas Day, we were nearly all out of the trenches. It was almost impossible to describe the day as it appeared to us here and I can tell you, we all enjoyed the peaceful time.”
The letter was discovered by Pte Aplin’s great-nephew Michael, 82, while going through his late father’s papers. It had actually been published in the local paper in the Devonshire town of Axminster, near the farm where Edgar and his three brothers – who all fought in the war, and all survived – had been brought up.
While the letter itself is a surprise, the contents do not come as a shock to Pte Aplin’s son Ian, now 89, who was born in 1925.
“My father did speak to me quite often about the Christmas Truce,” he recalls. “We were great friends, and often spoke about these things. As it turned out, he got wounded in the legs on March 6, 1915, and was brought back to Britain; when he had recovered from his wounds, he became a captain-adjutant, and was involved in the training of officers.”
Once the fighting was over, Pte Aplin started a milk round, pushing a cart around the streets of Tonbridge. Later, he set up a small chain of tea rooms.
“They were called Aplin’s Tudor Cafés, and they were in Canterbury, Sevenoaks and Tonbridge,” says Michael. “They were the sort of place you would take your Aunt Mary for a nice lunch.”
Over the years the family have regularly gone on battlefield tours, around Ypres and Cambrai, and are very proud to make the letters public, a century after they were written.
But despite the uplifting experience of the 1914 Christmas Truce, and the memory of soldiers in silk hats riding bicycles up and down in full view of enemy guns, Pte Aplin’s letters do not shy away from the reality of the conflict.
“I am afraid nobody at home can ever imagine what the real Tommy is enduring for them,” he writes.
“Some of our trenches are now knee deep in water, and the Tommies sleep very little, but they still smile and are ready for anything.
“Give my old pals at Axminster my kindest regards. Tell them I am still fit and well, and really must not complain.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-one/11302440/How-one-young-soldiers-song-inspired-the-1914-Christmas-Truce.html
My father Edgar John Aplin (1888-1971) was descended from the farming side of the Clayhidon family. He was educated at Cox’s Grammar School in Axminster, Devon, which is now the Axminster District General Hospital. At various times there have been at least fourteen family farms in Somerset, Devon and Dorset. The family were well known for St. Ivel Creameries founded at Yeovil by William Shorland Aplin in the 1860s. Colonel Henry Aplin, DSO was his grandson. The business was later sold to Unigate Ltd., after which several of the family entered the legal profession, one becoming a High Court Judge and another Deputy Chairman of the old Greater London Council. My father was wounded at 2nd Battle of Ypres in 1915. On returning to England he became Senior Training Officer at the Inns of Court Regiment training Officer Cadets before being appointed in 1916 as Captain and Adjutant of the 5th Bn. The East Surrey Regiment with whom he was later ‘mentioned in despatches’. After the war he bought Mill Farm at Mark Cross in Sussex where I was born, and later Magpie Shaw Farm at Speldhurst in Kent. He had a fine heard of pedigree Jersey cows, the first to be tuberculin tested in that part of Kent. My dear mother’s father was a wealthy breeder and national judge of Shire Horses in Ayrshire and later Hertfordshire. As children we enjoyed wonderful holidays on the continent before the war when my grandfather sometimes took as many as twenty of his large family on holiday together! My father had a passion for restoring old Tudor buildings, including an Elizabethan Barn in Tunbridge Wells, and an old three story 15th Sadler’s Shop in Tonbridge that he bought from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. He later restored a fine old Tudor house called “The Weavers” at Southborough that became the family home. He had many other interests, including a number of interests in Tunbridge Wells, Tonbridge and Sevenoaks, but his real passion was faithfully restoring old houses long before the days of Graded Buildings!
https://medium.com/@IanAplin/letter-to-yardley-court-preparatory-school-2499b3cf5408
LOL
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