{"id":628,"date":"2005-11-24T12:15:35","date_gmt":"2005-11-24T17:15:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.net\/?p=628"},"modified":"2005-11-24T12:15:35","modified_gmt":"2005-11-24T17:15:35","slug":"on-alfred-anderson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=628","title":{"rendered":"On Alfred Anderson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/article\/0,,60-1882336,00.html\">Alfred Anderson<\/a>, the last surviving witness to the 1914 Christmas truce on the Western Front of World War I, passed away on Monday, the 21st.<\/p>\n<p>Nearly a year ago in <a href=\"http:\/\/observer.guardian.co.uk\/uk_news\/story\/0,6903,1376965,00.html\">The Observer<\/a> Anderson reflected on his World War I experiences:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>On 24 and 25 December, Anderson&#8217;s unit was billeted in a dilapidated farmhouse, away from the front line, so he did not participate in any football matches. &#8216;We didn&#8217;t have the energy, anyway,&#8217; he said. But he can still recall vividly what happened on Christmas Day 1914.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;I remember the silence, the eerie sound of silence,&#8217; he said. &#8216;Only the guards were on duty. We all went outside the farm buildings and just stood listening. And, of course, thinking of people back home. All I&#8217;d heard for two months in the trenches was the hissing, cracking and whining of bullets in flight, machinegun fire and distant German voices.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;But there was a dead silence that morning, right across the land as far as you could see. We shouted &#8220;Merry Christmas&#8221;, even though nobody felt merry. The silence ended early in the afternoon and the killing started again. It was a short peace in a terrible war.&#8217;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He was 109.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alfred Anderson, the last surviving witness to the 1914 Christmas truce on the Western Front of World War I, passed away on Monday, the 21st. Nearly a year ago in The Observer Anderson reflected on his World War I experiences: On 24 and 25 December, Anderson&#8217;s unit was billeted in a dilapidated farmhouse, away from<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=628\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;On Alfred Anderson&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[126],"tags":[1030,1031,193,14],"class_list":["post-628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","tag-alfred-anderson","tag-christmas-truce","tag-obituary","tag-world-war-i","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}