During the Christmas of 1914 soldiers along the Western Front stopped fighting to sing carols and – famously – even to play football together.

‘On Christmas Day after service in the trenches, we went halfway and we shook hands, and had a fine crack with them. Quite a number of them speak English. I got ones autograph and he got mine, and I exchanged a button with another, and exchanged cigs and got cigars galore. Altogether we spent a very pleasant two hours with them, and found them a nice lot of fellows’, reported a young soldier.

Another soldier wrote in a letter home: ‘Just before dinner I had the pleasure of shaking hands with several Germans: a party of them came half way over to us so several of us went out to them. I exchanged one of my balaclavas for a hat. I've also got a button off one of their tunics. We also exchanged smokes etc. and had a decent chat. They say they won't fire tomorrow if we don't so I suppose we shall get a bit of a holiday - perhaps. After exchanging autographs and them wishing us a Happy New Year we departed and came back and had our dinner. We can hardly believe that we've been firing at them for the last week or two - it all seems so strange.’

‘The men met in no man's land,’ wrote another, ‘exchanged gifts of tobacco and rum and chocolate, even photographs of family. Some of them played soccer, and they buried each other's dead. And then they returned to their trenches, and the war resumed for another four years.’

The Christmas truce of 1914 continues to inspire as a symbol of humanity and peace during one of the most violent and destructive wars of modern times.

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