Daddy's Home for Christmas - A Sad Supernatural Tale from the Trenches

- DADDY'S HOME FOR CHRISTMAS -

A Sad Supernatural Tale from the Trenches

A Christmas ghost story from Tom Slemen

The World War
A lone soldier surveys a field of the dead in World War One

The First World War was, without a doubt, one of the greatest upheavals in the history of the human race, involving 70 million combatants nine million of whom lost their lives. When this so-called "Great War" first broke out in August 1914, millions of patriotic conscripts in Britain went rather light-heartedly to the trenches over in France, believing that they would be making a victorious return home by Christmas of that year. In fact, the war dragged on for four long years, and during that eternity of horror, the soldiers were subjected to gas attacks, hand to hand combat and bayonet charges, constant barrages of high-explosive shells which obliterated all traces of a man, snipers, typhus fever, rats, body lice, water-logged trenches, and shell shock syndrome. Because of the strategic stalemate between the warring nations, the front-line soldiers of both sides spent most of their time confined to the trenches, cooped up with dismembered bodies and hideously disfigured comrades.

In the first year of the war, at Christmas Eve, German and British soldiers alike pined to be at home with their families, loved ones and friends. At midnight, snow began to fall, and a strange hush descended on the cratered battlefields of France. Suddenly, the sounds of a distant choir drifted across no-man's land. It came from the German front lines, less than 150 yards away, and it was a beautiful but saddening sound. They were singing Silent Night. Most of the soldiers caught up in the insanity of the conflict suddenly realised that the unknown men they were fighting were not the ruthless, heartless soldiers the propagandists had painted them to be.

The men on the other side of no-man's land wanted to go home too. About an hour later, something very strange occurred on that freezing Christmas morn. Some of the Germans emerged from their trenches and walked unarmed to the middle of the neutral battlefield. One of them carried a leather football, and he kicked it towards the startled British troops, who were surveying the courageous German soldiers with binoculars and periscopes. Three unarmed British "Tommies" responded to the daring challenge. They arose from a trench further down the line and went to meet their adversaries. One of the men was a Liverpool-born man named George Wilkinson of the 1st Cheshire Regiment. Wilkinson shook hands with one of the German men, who offered him a cigarette. Wilkinson and his friends exchanged sweets and some cocoa for tobacco and tins of pressed beef, then sportingly kicked the football around. Soon, more troops from both fronts came over to no-man's land. Some laughed and shook hands, but others openly wept and comforted one another with a reassuring hug or a pat on the back, even though they couldn't speak the same language.

The soldiers produced cherished photographs of their loved ones; of wives and babies, sons and daughters, mothers and fathers who were spending Christmas back home without them. How they all wanted to just pack up and go back to the life they knew. But the short cessation of hostilities didn't last long. Within the hour, the military commanders in Britain and Germany learned of the 'unpatriotic' meetings in no-man's land, and they wired an immediate order: the meetings between the opposing armies was to be terminated straight away, or heads would roll. And so, the soldiers from both sides of the war shook hands and headed back to their trenches. George Wilkinson thought about the strange encounter with his foes as he patrolled the trenches for the remainder of that morning. After his sentry duty, he laid down on the duckboards of his dugout and pulled a thick coat over himself. A knapsack over his tin hat was a makeshift pillow. As he started to fall asleep, Wilkinson's thoughts were with his family in Warrington. He could see his familiar little terraced home in the snow-covered street. Meanwhile, back in England, something very strange took place which has never been explained to this day.

George Wilkinson's wife, Maggie, left her home and rushed across the street to her sister Joan's house. Joan was a reclusive widow, and Maggie had invited her over for the Christmas dinner, but typically, she hadn't turned up. Maggie went over to find out why, and while she was out of the house, her children, 6-year-old Jimmy and 5-year-old Lucy, were playing with their toys in the parlour.

Jimmy was sitting on the hearthside rug in front of the coal fire, winding up his clockwork train, when he suddenly noticed a figure out the corner of his eye. The boy turned and dropped the tin locomotive. 'Daddy!' he gasped, 'Daddy's home for Christmas!'

Lucy saw him too and her little round face lit up with joy. She and Jimmy charged at their father and he stooped down to pick them up. George Wilkinson had never been happier and he doubted his senses. He just couldn't believe he was home at last. He hugged and squeezed his kids, then asked where their mother was.

'She's over at Aunty Joan's, Daddy.' Jimmy told him.

'Come on; let's go and meet her.' George Wilkinson took hold of his children's hands and they led him to the front door. They walked out the house and across the snow-covered street. There was Maggie, standing on the other side of the road with her sister Joan. The two women were gazing at the returned soldier in utter disbelief.

'Maggie!' George shouted, and suddenly, he wasn't there. Just his two children crossed the road. One minute they had been holding their father's hands, their faces beaming with contentment. Now the children were as baffled as Maggie and Joan, and they seemed ready to cry as they looked around, trying to discover what had become of their father. Then Maggie noticed that only the trails of Jimmy and Lucy's footprints were visible in the snow.

A week after his solid-looking apparition had been seen by his children, wife and sister-in-law, George Wilkinson was killed by a German shell. It left no trace of him and two other soldiers. In 1919, a soldier named Davey Harris, who had been a friend of George Wilkinson, bumped into Maggie in Liverpool one day. Harris expressed his sorrow at the tragic loss of Maggie's husband in the trenches, and he told the widow a strange story. He said that a week before his death, George had told him about a strange dream he'd had. George said that in the dream, which had seemed unusually lucid, he had visited his home in Warrington and actually picked up his children and hugged them. George said he'd also seen his wife in the dream with her sister, but as he went to meet her, the bitter cold woke him up.

Maggie then told Davey about the apparition of her husband which had vanished as it came across the road towards her and her sister on that Christmas day in 1914.

Until her death in 1964, Maggie Wilkinson held a personal vigil for her deceased husband every December, just in case he was able to make it home for Christmas.