The Walking Dead

Christmas Day, 1936

Well, most certainly different from last year. Dad's not carved the goose and Mum's not dished up the spuds, but we're doing what we can.

It's not much.

No misunderstandings. I am not complaining. My decision to come here, and the same goes for Ralph and Daniel, but it is different. We are allowed no celebration. The political officer — he's Russian — says that Christmas is a festival for Fascists and that it has no place in our lives. He's a hard man (hard enough last week to shoot a deserter, an Italian, who had been brought back to our company: made him kneel and shot him with a revolver in the back of the neck, then went for his lunch — that hard) and we would not want to anger him. But Ralph said we had to do something. He tore down some ivy off a tree and wove the leaves into a bit of a decoration, and that was our tree. Daniel — he is wonderful on the scrounge — found three apples, and we ended up giving them to each other, but Ralph's was rotten at the core.

We could not — because the political officer would have heard us — sing carols, but we told each other about our last Christmas at home. At Ralph's there were servants and he's promised that next Christmas, if we've won and we're home, Daniel and I will be invited. (I wouldn't accept, of course, because I'll want to be with Mum, Dad and Enid.) But talking passed the time and made us feel better.

The best thing about today was that we were not under fire. God, tomorrow (Boxing Day) we will be. The Fascists are Catholics and they've observed a ceasefire since last midnight. Our artillery has not. We've lobbed shells on to them, but they haven't replied. They will, with interest, and it'll be awful tomorrow. We've heard them, from their trenches, singing hymns, and I had a turn on sentry in the morning and through a periscope one of the Germans made I saw the priests walking in the open, with.full robes on, to their forward positions. They sang really well, which means it isn't the heathen Army of Africa opposite us right now.

Daniel — I said he was good on the scrounge — has hidden in our dug-out a half-bottle of wine. He took it a week ago from the political officer's bunker. We are going to drink it tonight, then bury the bottle. It's going to be our real Christmas treat, and the next treat — while we are drinking — will be to make a wish. We've talked about it, what we're going to wish.

I don't know whether the others will allow it, but I want to have two wishes for Christmas. First, I'm going to wish that never again will I have a big live rat run over my chest when I'm trying to sleep: they're so bold. Give them half a chance and they'll cuddle in your armpit for warmth. If they're on your face you can feel the claws on their fret, and they're fat because they live in no man's land and eat…(well, you know what they eat). Second. I'll wish we had proper uniforms. We have woolly caps, jerkins, breeches, long socks and boots that kill your feet, but that isn't sufficient to keep out the cold. (Last night, and half the week before, we all slept together, on the same palliasse, using all our blankets, and we were still cold.) Those are my wishes. Daniel says he's going to wish for a whole battalion of German girl volunteers to come into our section of the line and be alongside us. Ralph's wish is that we all come through this and stay alive and unhurt — Daniel and I aren't sure whether he's allowed that as a wish.

I've too many wishes. I'd like to know that Mum, Dad and Enid are well.

Also, I'd like to hear from the Poetry Group: did their party go as well as it did last year and did they remember me and did anyone, because of me, read some Sassoon or Owen or Rosenberg? Rosenberg's poem, 'On Receiving News of the War', was the one I recited this morning to Ralph and Daniel — it was read last April at the group — and I said it to them: 'Red fangs have torn His face./God's blood is shed./He mourns from his lone place/His children dead.' Daniel told me that if the political officer heard that he would label me a Fascist and it would be down on my knees with a cocked revolver for company. I think Ralph was near to tears. Without them, their brotherhood, I don't know that I could survive. But no retreat is possible.

To retreat is to desert. To desert is to die.

I have to stop now because Daniel is digging under the palliasse for the bottle. Hurrah!

I find many confusions confront me. I have come to help the Spanish people achieve freedom and democracy. Alongside me, in this struggle, are Poles and Italians, Germans and Russians. More British are coming and Americans will soon join us. There are no Spanish fighters near us. (Perhaps they are in other sectors, but they are not alongside the International Brigades.) The only Spaniards I see are those in the trenches beyond the wire and no man's land, with their priests, and they are trying to kill me. Too much confusion for me to understand.

Soon Christmas will be finished, and their shelling will start again. lam too tired to be afraid and Daniel's wine will ensure we sleep. I wish Christmas lasted for ever, for a whole year.