When the fighting paused for Christmas during the First World War
Veteran James Patterson recalled 1916 event on Front Page Challenge in 1982
They might have been at war, but it wasn't going to stop them from sharing a bit of Christmas cheer.
In December 1982, the panel of CBC-TV's Front Page Challenge heard an eyewitness's story about an event that happened 66 years earlier, in 1916: a brief truce between Canadian and German soldiers on the front lines in the First World War.
"There was that time when they came out of the trenches and went over and embraced each other," said journalist Gordon Sinclair. "At Christmas time."
After a little help from host Fred Davis, he'd identified the headline the panel was after: Enemy soldiers exchange Christmas gifts.
Gift in hand
First World War veteran James Patterson, 89, was invited to tell viewers of Front Page Challenge his story.
"Is there any way of knowing on which side this spontaneous act originated?" asked Sinclair after Patterson's identity and connection to the story was revealed. "Did the Germans think it up, or did the Canadians think it up?"
"The Germans appeared first of all, and we had two fellows that went out to see them," said Patterson, who was then a 23-year-old infantryman with the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. "In the right hand they had a bottle of wine. In the left hand, a white cloth."
A soldier's account of a Christmas truce two years earlier, in 1914, was read by CBC Radio's Al Maitland on As It Happens in 1977.
Not talked about back then
According to a 2016 report in the Toronto Star, tales of subsequent truces were "highly censored" during the war. Historian Thomas Weber had uncovered many stories of Christmas truces on the front lines by reading soldiers' letters home.
But if Patterson had ever been discouraged from telling his story of a truce, there was no sign of that in 1982.
"They talked for a minute or so," he went on, describing what he had seen in 1916.
There had been a pause in fighting at Christmas in 1915, too. Weber uncovered a letter by Capt. Stephen Hobdey — which the Star quoted in its story — describing events in Ypres that year.
"The men of one of our battalions walked halfway across no man's land and were met by two Germans with whom they shook hands, and exchanged buttons and addresses," it read.
A return to hostilities
Just as quickly as the fighting had ended, Patterson recalled an abrupt return to hostilities in 1916.
"All of a sudden, a voice came from our side and a voice came from the German side ordering these fellows back to the trenches," he said. "They shook hands and departed quickly."
"After that, all hell broke loose."
