New Republic: The Myth of the Christmas Truce Soccer Match

Other December 26, 2015 0
New Republic: The Myth of the Christmas Truce Soccer Match

By Terri Blom Crocker

“As everyone knows, the main feature of the First World War’s Christmas truce was an impromptu football match (soccer to Americans), which is featured in all the memorials to the 1914 armistice. The Christmas truce statue at St. Luke’s Church in Liverpool shows a German and British soldier shaking hands over a football. The United European Football Association Christmas truce memorial in Ploegsteert Wood consists of a football on a marble plinth. The truce memorial in Mesen has a football over a base inscribed with the quote “A lull in the hate.” The latest sculpture devoted to the famous cease-fire was dedicated by Prince William at the National Memorial Arboretum on 12 December 2014, and shows the clasped hands of a British and German soldier inside the framework of a football.

So we all get it: the British and German troops who participated in the Christmas truce played football….”

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