“All Together Now” – Christmas Truce 1914

Posted on 3 February 2015 by Marguerite Rami

 

“All Together Now” a memorial by sculptor Andy Edwards erected in 2014 to commemorate a  handshake between an English and German soldier ahead of the Christmas truce on the Western Front in 1914. The  Christmas truce is used to describe a series of unofficial cessations of hostilities that occurred along the Western Front during Christmas 1914. Heavy fighting had been taking place for several months before German and allied soldiers stepped out of their trenches, shook hands and agreed an unofficial truce so that they could bury thier dead. The soldiers then began  to talk with one another, exchange gifts, sing Christmas carols and to play football. A Captain John Lew described the football match in a letter sent to his wife. Captain Lew is quoted as saying the truce was “nothing other than extraordinary”. Men who were now fraternising had been trying to kill each other the day before.

The sculpture is in temporary residence at Liverpool Cathedral, and before that was displayed at the bombed out church of St Lukes In Liverpool.