Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------------------------- from The New York Times Bertie Felstead, Soldier Who Joined a Timeout in War, Dies at 106 By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN Bertie Felstead, the last known surviving member of the British battalion in World War I that laid down its weapons to play soccer with the Germans in a spontaneous and long-remembered Christmas truce of 1915, died July 22 in Gloucester, England. He was 106. The truce lasted perhaps half an hour and it meant nothing in the grand schemes of the Western Front generals. But the gesture by Private Felstead's Royal Welch Fusiliers and the Bavarian infantrymen who faced them resonates in the British consciousness as a poignant interlude of civility during a time of unrelenting carnage. On Christmas Day 1914, there were many instances of British and German soldiers emerging from their trenches to fraternize. Commanders on both sides warned that this was never to happen again. But it did happen the next year, on Christmas Day, near the snowy village of Laventie, France, west of Lille. As Mr. Felstead recalled it two years ago, his mortar battalion was shivering in its trenches on Christmas Eve when it heard "All Through the Night" in the German lines 100 yards away. "It wasn't long before we were singing as well, `Good King Wenceslas,' I think it was," he remembered. "You couldn't hear each other sing like that without it affecting your feelings for the other side. "Christmas Day, there was shouting between the trenches, `Hello Tommy, Hello Fritz,' and that broke a lot more ice. A few of the Germans came out first and started walking over. A whole mass of us went out to meet them. Nothing was planned. "Some of them were smoking cigars and offered us cigarettes. We offered them some of ours and we chatted." The soldiers got by in English, German, French and sign language. "We weren't afraid," Mr. Felstead remembered. "We just sheltered each other. Nobody would shoot at us when we were all mixed up." An informal soccer match began in the no man's land between the trenches. "Somehow a ball was produced," Mr. Felstead recalled. "It wasn't a game as such � more of a kick- around and a free-for-all. I remember scrambling around in the snow. There could have been 50 on each side. No one was keeping score." And then, as Harold Diffey, a fellow British private, once recalled it: "After 30 minutes, a vociferous major appeared yelling: `You came out to fight the Huns, not to make friends with them.' So our lads reluctantly returned, followed by a salvo from our artillery." Albert Felstead was born in Hertfordshire, north of London, on Oct. 28, 1894. He was wounded in the Battle of the Somme in 1916, later saw combat at Salonika, then worked as a civilian storekeeper for the Royal Air Force after the war. He is survived by two daughters, five grandchildren, 11 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren. His wife, Alice, died in 1983. As a symbol of the World War I soldier and his yearning for peace, Mr. Felstead was included in a book by the photographer Carolyn Djanogly, "Centurions" (Andre Deutsch, 1999), portraying the people she considered to be the 100 most significant living Britons. Asked in his last years what he thought of his old enemy, Mr. Felstead remarked that "the Germans were all right." As he put it: "There wouldn't have been a war if it had been left to the public." ______________________ http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/30/obituaries/30FELS.html?ex=997884996&ei=1&en=535706f9c3678a33 Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company http://www.nytimes.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger http://phonecard.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------------------------- This Discussion List is the follow-up for the old stopnato @listbot.com that has been shut down ==^================================================================ EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9spWA Or send an email To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This email was sent to: [email protected] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
