Major Marmaduke Walkington’s medals, from his participation in the 1914 Christmas Truce, sold for £2,100 at auction, three times their estimated value, honoring wartime goodwill
James Podesta
21:10, 22 Dec 2024Updated 21:10, 22 Dec 2024
The medals of a soldier who took part in the famous Christmas Truce in the First World War have sold for £2,100.
Major Marmaduke Walkington was among the British troops who left their trenches and walked across No Man’s Land to meet their German counterparts on Christmas Day 1914. Maj Walkington recalled in his autobiography, Twice in a Lifetime: “Timidly they approached each other – unarmed, of course – until finally a German and an Englishman met and shook hands to the sound of a happy little burst of cheering.”
They exchanged drinks of rum and cognac, cigarettes, chocolates and even sausages, he wrote. One German soldier was a “very pleasant sort of lad” who spoke English as he had American family. Because of newspaper propaganda, the German believed his country had invaded England and was marching on London.
Maj Walkington replied that he expected to beat Germany by Easter, which made him roar with laughter. The German then introduced Maj Walkington to his battalion sniper who showed him the Iron Cross he received from the Kaiser. He wrote: “The sniper seemed very proud of it. I tried to beg it, but he gave me a button on his tunic instead!”
He said several soldiers swapped addresses and promised to write to each other after the war. Maj Walkington was serving with 16th Battalion, London Regiment (Queen’s Westminster Rifles), at Chapelle D’Armentieres on the Western Front when the truce occurred. Their German counterparts were from the Saxon 107th Regiment.
There are also reports that a football game was played between British and German soldiers in No Man’s Land. Later in the war, Maj Walkington was part of the 24th Company, Machine Gun Corps, at the bloody Battle of the Somme in July 1916, then wounded by shellfire at Passchendaele in 1917.
Miraculously, the piece of shell which lodged in his thigh missed his main artery. After a period of recovery, he was back in action in the summer of 1918 at the Second Battle of the Somme. He became a farm agent between the wars but rejoined the Army at the start of the Second World War.
Maj Walkington was appointed second in command of the 6th Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment. They were part of the Dunkirk rearguard before being evacuated at St Nazaire and the Ministry of Agriculture asked him to return to farming as they were lacking officials.
Maj Walkington, the youngest of six children, was born in Alvingham, Lincs, in 1897. He died aged 91 in 1988 at Chudleigh, Devon. A UK collector bought his medals for a hammer price of £2,100, three times the £800 estimate, at London-based Spink & Son.
The auctioneer’s Marcus Budgen said: “His medals are a memorial to the goodwill which cut through the carnage of the Great War.”