Christmas at the front was about making do. Here, for instance, British soldiers have gathered in a shell hole around a makeshift table. Some are sitting on the ground, others on what appears to be rolled-up sheets of wire.
As they enjoy their sparse meal at Beaumont-Hamel on 25 December 1916, the men seem indifferent to a fellow soldier’s grave just inches away. By this stage in the war, such as sight was commonplace. So too was the destruction that can be glimpsed on the horizon: the fields of northern France that had transformed into a man-made desert of rotting corpses, mangled equipment, and the occasional scorched tree stump.
The macabre image is from a new book, Wartime Christmas, published by London’s Imperial War Museum. Written by Anthony Richards, it explores how the festive season was celebrated during the two world wars. In both conflicts, improvisation was the watchword. Soldiers had to make the most of often squalid conditions, with many spending Christmas either on the front line or in a prisoner-of-war camp. At home, meagre rations were of little consolation for missing fathers, husbands, and sons.
