Age range: 9–14 Curriculum Links: Art and design, History Global citizenship skills and values: Empathy, communication, creativity
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Learning objectives: Study authentic art resources and create drawings about the events of the Christmas Truce and designs for a war memorial
Art and design: cartoons
Captain Bruce Bairnsfather’s accounts of the Christmas Truce are included in the source materials. He became a cartoonist during the First World War and was famous for his drawings from the trenches. The photograph of Bairnsfather in the sources was taken on Christmas Day 1914 during the truce, and the cartoons include his ‘Christmas card’. In an interview with Canadian television, Bairnsfather remembered playing football with the Germans. In 1958, he was asked why he started drawing. This was his reply: ‘Out of boredom, I should say. I suddenly thought, ‘Well, I’d better pass the time,’ you know. I had this complaint in my blood as it were, and I used to draw on the back of envelopes or odd bits of paper or cardboard boxes or anything about. Simply to amuse these chaps round about. And demand for these drawings slowly spread up and down. I never thought anything of it, except as a local entertainment. ‘Well, then one night a staff officer came along the front line trench, and he looked into a dugout and he saw one of these things stuck up there and he said, ‘Who did that stuff?’ and they said a chap down here called Bairnsfather, and he said ‘Oh,’ and he found me, and he said, ‘You know, you ought to send one of those things up to a paper’. I’d never dreamt of doing so, never thought of it. However, I thought that would be a good idea, so when we got out of the trenches – you know, we worked a week in and a week out, sort
of shuttle business – and when we were resting in this farm about five miles behind the line, I picked out the picture that I thought had the biggest punch about it at the time and copied it on to a respectable sheet of paper and sent it off to London.’ Discuss the cartoons with the class: L]ViXVci]ZniZaajhVWdjia^[Z^ci]ZigZcX]Zh4
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Extension activity Find out how other artists portrayed the events of the First World War. Which do you think are the most powerful and why? More cartoons by Bruce Bairnsfather are available online at http://schoolsonline.britishcouncil.org/ football-remembers.
L]ViYdi]ZncdiiZaajh4 =dlYdi]ZnbV`Zndj[ZZa46gZi]Zn[jccn! informative or sad? L]VibZhhV\ZYdndji]^c`7V^gch[Vi]Zg^hign^c\id get across in each cartoon? 8Vcndj^YZci^[nVcni]ZbZhi]Vigjci]gdj\] his cartoons? There is no Bairnsfather cartoon of the football games. Ask pupils to represent the football game, or another element of the Christmas Truce, such as sharing Christmas presents, in a similar style by using pencil or charcoal.
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Cartoon drawn by Bruce Bairnsfather. Reproduced with the kind permission of the Bairnsfather family
Source: 32
F Cartoons
Captain Bruce Bairnsfather, Bullets and Billets
A strange sight, truly!
Captain Bruce Bairnsfather was a British soldier who started drawing cartoons ‘to pass the time’ in the trenches. His comic sketches were widely published and became very popular. In this account – published in 1916 – he describes the truce but doesn’t mention football.
start this infernal European fracas, and in so doing had brought us all into
the same
friendly boxing match. The difference in type between our men and theirs
was very
the Huns collection as opposed to the sombre demeanour and stolid appearance of superior, The shortest effect I can give of the impression I had was that our men,
rous
ry dange
nch, ve of the tre
: the top Parapet ver ment to look o t or argu h g fi y is a no ier Fracas: rman sold e G r fo g nner lan asant ma Boche: s le p r o ly s d ing friend y: a frien erly, mak Genialit th ro b g in ising: be Fratern
after Two or three of the Boches seemed to be particularly interested in me, and
continued overleaf Reproduced with the kind permission of the Bairnsfather family.
Source: 32
F Cartoons
Captain Bruce Bairnsfather, Bullets and Billets (continued)
These devils, I could see, all wanted to be friendly; but none of them possess ed the
a large camera. I posed in a mixed group for several photographs, and have
ever
Slowly the meeting began to disperse; a sort of feeling that the authorities on both sides were not very enthusiastic about this fraternising seemed to creep across the was a bit of an amateur hairdresser in civil life, cutting the unnaturally long hair
This photo of Bruce Bairnsfather was taken on Christmas Day 1914.
Reproduced with the kind permission of the Bairnsfather family.
Source: 33
F Cartoons G Design a war memorial I Sports activities
Captain Bruce Bairnsfather, 1958 television interview In this interview, given 44 years after the Christmas Truce, Bruce Bairnsfather describes football being played with the Germans. I happened to be walking down the trench when I looked over the parapet, and I was amazed to see a whole crowd of Germans in the field in front, and looking a bit closer I saw a whole lot of our fellows were with them too.
This went on very nicely indeed until one of our chaps, a sort of Old Bill, had had a football sent out as a Christmas present, and blew this up and suggested a game of football with the Germans in No-Man’s land.
[…]
Well this was going very nicely and everything, when suddenly the authorities, the owners and organisers of the war at the back, they didn’t like this at all, and news came that we had to stop it at once. This fraternising must cease and so on, so we crawled back into the trenches again and that was the end of that.
I joined this outfit, and there we were, all chatting and talking as best one could – nobody could understand a thing – out in the middle of No-Man’s Land, with barbed wire and shell-holes and relics of previous encounters all lying about. It was mostly curiosity – they sort of walked round each other, looking at each other, observing the kind of differences in the uniform and that kind of thing.
Old Bill: a very popular r cartoon soldier characte r the sfa irn which Bruce Ba r. created during the wa
Reproduced with the kind permission of the Bairnsfather family.
A Christmas card drawn by Bruce Bairnsfather in December 1914.
Source: 54
F Cartoons The Communication Trench
My dug-out: a lay of the trenches
Reproduced with the kind permission of the Bairnsfather family. Cartoons drawn by Bruce Bairnsfather.
Source: 55
Keeping his hand
F Cartoons
My dream for years to com
e
in
Reproduced with the kind permission of the Bairnsfather family. Cartoons drawn by Bruce Bairnsfather.
