Forums Forums Local News Christmas truce football statue unveiled

A sculpture commemorating the World War One Christmas truce has been unveiled in Liverpool.

Two fibreglass figures, about to shake hands, capture the moment British and German soldiers stopped fighting and played football on Christmas Day 1914.

Named All Together Now, the statue, designed by Andy Edwards, is on display at Liverpool's bombed-out church.

St Luke's Church, which faces down Bold Street, is itself a monument to the 1941 Blitz on Liverpool.

The building was almost destroyed by an incendiary bomb in May 1941 and has remained as a burnt-out shell ever since.

Tom Calderbank, who led the project behind the statue's creation, said Edwards had "captured that moment of humanity amidst all the horror and the carnage".

The sculpture will be on display at the church for a week before being transported to Flanders in Belgium where it will be displayed.

St Luke's Church was built in 1831 by John Foster and John Foster Jr and continues to stand as a memorial to those killed in the war.

The walls and gates of the church are Grade II listed.

Along parts of the Western Front, some men emerged from their trenches into No Man's Land on 25 December 1914.

Where truces did happen, enemy soldiers met, spent Christmas together and even exchanged gifts.

Although first-hand testimonies suggest there was no single organised football match between German and British sides, small-scale kickabouts were held between soldiers.

There was no official truce, however, and along other parts of the frontline bloody battles continued to take place over the Christmas period.

Source : Click me

if this website had a 'like' option i would have clicked it.

would be nice to see it permanently out of concrete and not just fiberglass.

Even better if it was made out of bronze, as is usually the case with such things. Trouble being no doubt, it would nicked for scrap overnight!

Ridiculous. This is based on a myth. There are records of British soldiers playing football but none of any games with the Germans.

It's a shame they didn't finish the game shake hands turn around and go home instead of killing each other for another four years...God Bless Them.

"Ridiculous" is a bold statement. The ideology of it happening is what really matters, fact is beside the point. Much in the same way every town, city and village has a church dedicated to some bloke named Jesus Christ, there's no proof he was the son of god or that he even existed, but the idea of an afterlife is enough for some people to get them through, this is the same, when s#it is hitting the fan, there's always that light at the end of the tunnel, we want to believe that no matter what is happening, there's people there to take your mind off things, even just for a brief period.

whether there was ever an england v germany football match is beside the point, the majority of us actually probably don't care, it's the touching thought that IF it did happen, then there's more to life than shooting people you don't know who have been dragged into this through no fault of their own and ultimately we're all the same...