Christmas With The Enemy

This story was added to the People's War Site by a volunteer from BBC Newcastle. Constance Smith fully understands the site's terms and conditions and the story has been added to the site with her permission.

One Christmas Sunday they invited German POWs to our chapel. They were Lutherens and had been going into our Methodist services and had been made welcome by most, if not all, of chapel's members, so we invited them to the carol concert.

They sang "Silent Night" in the original Geman and some people with a smattering of German joined in.

For one hour the war was forgotten and we all celebrated Christmas together. We managed to give them a cup of tea and a biscuit too.

It wasn't popular in the village, what we had done, but they were somebody's sons, somebody's brothers, somebody's husbands. Our soldiers were just obeying orders just like they were just obeying orders.

Often their Enlgish was very good and you could talk to them. It was interesting to hear their views about the Nazi regime and many of them agreed that it was evil and should be crushed.

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