[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

Another interesting story from Christmas 1914 (and one which Sainsbury's are unlikely to ever hijack) is what happened to the Royal Scots and Gordon Highlanders at Wytschaete when the Prince of Wales visited the front line. Field-Marshal French decided he needed to "put on a show" for the prince, so he ordered a frontal assault on a heavily-fortified farm. They bombarded the German positions with shrapnel - which was utterly useless against entrenched soldiers - and gave the troops mattresses to throw over the barbed wire. The troops then had to advance over a ploughed field, which had turned to thick mud with the winter rain, under fire from three sides while the field-marshal and the prince watched through binoculars from a hill behind the line.

Billy Congreve was a young staff major from Burton who witnessed the Gordons' advance, and he wrote that some almost reached the German trenches, where they were killed. One or two even got into the trenches where they were killed or captured. A few lay in little depressions in the mud till darkness and then crawled back. Those who got there could send no communication to the supports etc in the rear. Several men tried to get back but were all shot. They lost 7 out of 9 officers and 250 men. Next day, I read in the paper 'British troops hurl back Germans at Wytschaete'. A beautiful epitaph for those poor Gordons who were little better than murdered.

To back up Dave Bowler's point about how those alive during Christmas 1914 fared later in the war, Billy Congreve was determined after the attack at Wytschaete never to sit back while ordinary troops gave their lives, always personally leading his men to the front and accompanying the medical officer to help retrieve wounded soldiers. In the middle of doing this at Longueval on the 20th of July 1916, at 10.55am, he was shot in the throat and killed.