World War One and the Christmas Truce

About this recording

The children in P6R at Noss Primary School have been finding out about World War One and they would like to share some of what they have learned.

“It was a brutal long war,” explains Harry Miller.

In this recording, the children talk about making poppy crosses for Remembrance Day,

“We made paper crosses, and we made little balls of tissue paper, and we stuck it on the little crosses and I used purple and red to represent the animals and humans that died in the war,” says Kayla Lawrie.

Orla Manson explains why we wear poppies and observe a minute’s silence on Remembrance Day.

“It’s always important because we think about all the people who fought for our lives.”

Orla Manson, Aiden McBreen, Megan Mackenzie, Joshua Mackenzie and Daisy Mackenzie read the remembrance poems they wrote.

Daisy talks about how the poems were constructed and she says, “I’ve made mine about a soldier who passed away, and another soldier is giving him his point of view.”

The children also learned about the Christmas truce in 1914 when the British and German troops entered into a spontaneous ceasefire.

They wrote letters from a man called Jim to his wife Rose telling her how on Christmas Eve 1914, the troops began to sing ‘Silent Night’.

Ryan Little talks about British troops exchanging gifts with the enemy, burying the fallen men, and how “we even had a big game of football.”

For the school Christmas concert, the children of P6R sang “Stop the Cavalry” written by Jona Lewie and released in 1980.

A short extract from the class performance ends this Wick Voices recording.