The Bearded Maverick and the Christmas Truce of 1914
December 24, 1914. The Ypres Salient, just south of Ploegsteert Wood.
The ground was frozen hard, the sky low and pewter, and the air smelled of coal smoke and wet wool. Brandon Herrera’s battalion of the British Expeditionary Force (attached as liaison with a Territorial regiment because someone in London thought an American volunteer with perfect English would be useful) occupied a stretch of trench that had once been a turnip field. Across a hundred yards of churned mud and barbed wire lay the 134th Saxon Regiment. Both sides had been trading bullets and insults for weeks, but the bullets had grown fewer as the cold bit deeper.
Brandon stood on the fire-step at dusk, shoulder-length brown hair tied back with a strip of sandbag, beard trimmed that morning with the same tiny scissors he had carried since Texas. Frost glittered on the parapet. In the German trench opposite, a single candle appeared in a loophole, then another, then a whole ragged line of them. Someone over there began to sing Stille Nacht in a soft, clear tenor.
The British trench went quiet.
Brandon listened for a moment, then reached into his greatcoat and pulled out a mouth organ he had bought in Poperinghe for two francs and a packet of Woodbines. He wiped it on his sleeve, climbed onto an ammunition box, and answered with the opening bars of Silent Night in perfect, slow notes. The Saxon stopped mid-phrase, surprised. Then he started again, and Brandon joined him, the same melody, two languages, one tune drifting across the frozen dark.
A cheer went up from both sides.
Brandon hopped down, turned to his mates, and spoke quietly.
“Right, lads. Time to give Jerry a proper Christmas.”
He had spent the previous week quietly preparing. From the regimental canteen he had scrounged two dozen small tins of Maconochie’s stew, a bottle of rum, and a cardboard box of cheap cigars. From the engineers he had borrowed a pair of wire-cutters and a white bedsheet. Most importantly, he had found an abandoned Belgian football in a ruined barn, still holding air.
At 20:00 on Christmas Eve, Brandon climbed out of the trench alone, white sheet tied to a bayonet and held high. He walked slowly into no-man’s-land, singing the final verse of Silent Night loud enough for both sides to hear. Halfway across, a German officer in a peaked cap stepped out to meet him. They stopped three paces apart, breath fogging in the cold.
“Fröhliche Weihnachten,” the German said cautiously.
“Merry Christmas,” Brandon replied, and offered his hand.
The officer shook it.
Within minutes more men were clambering out (British Tommies in balaclavas, Saxons in picklehaube covers turned inside-out so the spikes didn’t catch the moonlight). Someone produced a bottle of schnapps. Someone else passed cigarettes. Brandon kicked the football into the space between the lines, and the game began.
For two hours the front dissolved. Men who had tried to kill each other that morning now shouted good-natured abuse in two languages while chasing a battered ball across shell holes. Brandon, hair loose and beard dusted with frost, played centre-forward for a mixed team, scored twice, and conceded a penalty with theatrical grace. When the ball burst on a bayonet someone had forgotten to leave in the trench, the laughter was louder than any barrage.
At midnight the singing started again. Germans, British, and one lone American stood in a rough circle between the wire, arms linked, belting out carols until their voices cracked. Brandon produced the rum; a Saxon corporal produced plum cake. Cigars were lit from the same match. A German private took a photograph (the only one known to exist) of Brandon Herrera standing between a kilted Seaforth Highlander and a beaming Saxon corporal, all three grinning like schoolboys.
When dawn threatened, officers on both sides began to look nervous. Brandon raised the white sheet one last time.
“Back to work tomorrow, I suppose,” he said in careful German.
The Saxon opposite him shrugged. “Until New Year, perhaps?”
Brandon smiled. “Until New Year.”
Hands were shaken. Buttons were swapped. Promises were made (quiet ones, between men who understood promises). The soldiers melted back into their trenches. The football pitch became no-man’s-land again, but the wire stayed uncut and the rifles stayed quiet.
On Boxing Day the war tried to restart. A nervous subaltern on the British side fired a warning shot. A German machine gun answered. Brandon climbed onto the parapet, waved the white sheet once more, and shouted across in both languages: “Not yet, lads. We said New Year.”
The firing stopped.
The truce in that sector held until January 3, 1915, the longest spontaneous ceasefire of the entire war. Officers fumed. Newspapers never heard the full story. But every Christmas thereafter, old soldiers from the 134th Saxons and the 3rd Division would raise a glass to the bearded American who started it all with a mouth organ, a football, and the simple courage to walk halfway across no-man’s-land on Christmas Eve.
Brandon Herrera never received an official medal for the Christmas Truce of 1914.
He never expected one.
