German and British troops fraternizing in No Man’s Land, Christmas 1914. (Source.)
When hostilities resumed along the Western front, a lot of the time they did so unwillingly. There were numerous cases of soldiers warning the opposite side with whom they had fraternized, or plain insubordination. The sergeant of the 107th Saxon corps recalled to a female acquaintance a near mutiny in his regiment when the orders to resume shooting arrived:
“The difficulty began on the 26th, when the order to fire was given, for the men struck. Herr Lange says that in the accumulated years [of his service] he had never heard such language as the officers indulged in, while they stormed up and down, and got, as the only result, the answer, ‘We can’t - they are good fellows, and we can’t.’ Finally the officers turned on the men with, ‘Fire, or we do - and not at the enemy!’ Not a shot had come from the other side, but at last they fired, and an answering fire came back, but not a man fell. ‘We spent that day and the next,’ said Herr Lange, ‘wasting ammunition in trying to shoot the stars out of the sky.’”
"He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that." JS Mill
German and British troops fraternizing in No Man’s Land, Christmas 1914. (Source.)
When hostilities resumed along the Western front, a lot of the time they did so unwillingly. There were numerous cases of soldiers warning the opposite side with whom they had fraternized, or plain insubordination. The sergeant of the 107th Saxon corps recalled to a female acquaintance a near mutiny in his regiment when the orders to resume shooting arrived:
“The difficulty began on the 26th, when the order to fire was given, for the men struck. Herr Lange says that in the accumulated years [of his service] he had never heard such language as the officers indulged in, while they stormed up and down, and got, as the only result, the answer, ‘We can’t - they are good fellows, and we can’t.’ Finally the officers turned on the men with, ‘Fire, or we do - and not at the enemy!’ Not a shot had come from the other side, but at last they fired, and an answering fire came back, but not a man fell. ‘We spent that day and the next,’ said Herr Lange, ‘wasting ammunition in trying to shoot the stars out of the sky.’”