Christmas in the Trenches

For our Christmas 2007 event we all met up on Cannock Chase to learn about what life was like for soldiers in the Great War who spent their first Christmas in the trenches in 1914. We met up with members of the Birmingham Pals Regiment and had an exclusive visit to a hutment that they are helping to restore next door to the Visitor Centre. This is not yet open to the public and we were the FIRST visitors to it! It will open in 2008 and be open for school visits shortly after that.

During the Great War there were two divisional training camps on the Chase – that means that could have up to 60,000 men training in warfare before being sent to the front line. We looked at what might have been sent to men on the front line as Christmas presents – these included OK sauce (for them to put on their bully beef), marmalade and jam, as well as socks, biscuits and chocolate. There were also some rather smelly kippers – and we also learned that people from the Black Country sent out Faggots and dried peas to soldiers at the front.

We also looked at some of the small finds from excavations that have taken place on the Chase and compared them with the kit that the Birmingham Pals were wearing. Kirsty also showed us pictures of the same finds that she and Martin have excavated on front line trenches on the Western Front. We really enjoyed it and our thanks go to Iain Wykes, Staffordshire CC for allowing us to visit the site before it’s open to the public, and Edwin and Jo from the Birmingham Pals Regiment for showing us their huge array of artefacts which included gas masks, soap, shaving kits and all sorts of things that the soldiers would have used.

We finished our session by having a game of footie just like they did up and down the Western Front during the Christmas Day Truce of 1914.

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