A timeout for peace in a war zone

ON Dec. 24, 1914, not all was quiet on the Western Front during World War I. Gun and cannon fire erupted on that cold, snowy night along battle lines that stretched from northern Belgium to Switzerland.

But several other sounds could be heard on Christmas Eve -- including the singing of “Silent Night,” the cheers from impromptu soccer games, the cacophony of revelry and even the hushed tones of Latin Mass during midnight services. That’s because, in various areas along the front, numerous soldiers from the French, British-Scottish and German sides spontaneously laid down their arms in truce and celebrated Christmas.

The little-known tale of goodwill among men is the subject of the French film “Joyeux Noel” (“Merry Christmas”), which opens Friday. Nominated for a Golden Globe and a contender for the best foreign-language film Oscar, “Joyeux Noel” features Diane Kruger (“Troy”), Gary Lewis, Daniel Bruhl, Ian Richardson, Michel Serrault and Benno Furmann.

Writer-director Christian Carion, 43, grew up on a farm in northern France quite close to the former front and recalls finding shells and other remnants of the fighting near his house.

“The memory of the First World War is very important in my youth,” he says. Though his grandfather had been too young to enlist, he would regale Carion with stories of the war.

And Carion’s interest in the war continued into adulthood.

“I read a lot of books, and then 14 years ago I discovered in one of these books the story of the Christmas truce,” he says. “I was really touched and moved by the idea that the soldiers themselves decided to wreck the idea of the war by playing soccer, exchanging tobacco, chocolates and showing pictures of their family. I wanted to know more about this.”

So he visited military archives in London, Paris and Berlin, poring over letters the soldiers had written about that night. “I saw the pictures taken by the soldiers themselves and the report of the headquarters at that time.”

The truce broke out that night because it was the first year of the war and the soldiers had become nostalgic for home. “They were thinking about the Christmas before the war, when they were at home with their wives and children,” Carion explains. “They were in the spirit of the time before the war.”

Christmas, he says, was especially important to the Germans. “They love to sing [Christmas carols], and they sing very loud.” And on that Christmas Eve along the front, German soldiers began singing “Silent Night.”

“Everybody knows that song, so the French, the Scottish and the English listened to the Germans’ singing. I love the idea that because of a man singing it breaks the war for a couple of hours and in some cases a couple of days.”

In some areas it snowed that night; in other sections it was crystal clear. “Where it snows, the soldiers said it was like a fantasy, a fairy tale, because of the snow ... and the snow hides the corpses,” Carion says.

Just as in the movie, though, those involved in the truce were taken to task for breaking ranks and fraternizing with the enemy.

In his research, Carion discovered that the French and Germany armies intercepted the letters written by the soldiers to their families about the event. But the story leaked out in Britain because the army didn’t have enough manpower to read and censor letters sent from the front.

“So the letters arrived to the families in England,” he says. “Some of the families gave the letters to journalists. The British papers of the time were much freer than in France, so they published the letters and some of the pictures taken by the soldiers themselves. That is why we know about it.”

Even 90-some years after the truce, Carion discovered that what happened on that Christmas Eve still rankles the French army. Hoping to film “Joyeux Noel” at a military area in that country, he said his request was denied because the army felt the film glorified a rebellious action. So he ended up in Romania.

“I was depressed because 90 years after the event, the French army didn’t change so much,” Carion says. “But the film has been a big success in France, so everybody in France now knows it happened.”

Carion ended up not including one episode from that time, which he said vividly illustrates the futility of war -- the execution by the French army of a cat accused of being a German spy.

In “Joyeux Noel,” the tabby is seen traveling between the German and French lines to forage for food. But in real life, the cat showed up in the French trenches one day with a paper from the Germans around his neck. “The French took the paper and on it was written ‘From which regiment are you from?’ ”

The soldiers gave the message to their captain, who demanded to know where it came from.

“They said it is a cat. So they caught the cat and judged the cat in martial court, and they decided to kill the cat because he was a spy.”

Carion shot the scene but left it on the cutting room floor. “I said to myself, ‘No one would believe it was true,’ ” he says. “I didn’t want to take any risks about the credibility of the movie for an audience. You can’t say, ‘Everything is true, even the cat!’ ”