The Christmas Truce of 1914

In December 1914, the First World War was less than five months old. It had already killed hundreds of thousands of men. In Belgium, around the town of Ypres, British and German soldiers lived in cold, muddy trenches. In some places, they were close enough to hear each other's voices. The ground between the two lines was called no man's land, and anyone who stepped into it was likely to be shot.

On Christmas Eve, something strange happened. In some places, German soldiers put candles and small Christmas trees along the tops of their trenches and began to sing carols. One British soldier later remembered hearing a German voice singing the carol we now know as "Silent Night." The British answered with carols of their own. Soon the two sides were shouting Christmas greetings across the dark.

Then, slowly and carefully, men climbed out of their trenches and walked towards the enemy. Nobody had ordered them to do it. They shook hands and exchanged food, tobacco and buttons from their uniforms as souvenirs. They also used the quiet hours to bury the soldiers who had died in no man's land. In some places, they held services together. Historians believe that about 100,000 men took part in this unofficial truce, in different places along the front.

The most famous story is the football match. Some soldiers wrote home about games in no man's land, but the accounts are very different. Some historians think a few real matches were played. Others think most were just friendly kickabouts with anything that could work as a ball, even an empty tin. Today, near the Belgian village of Ploegsteert, a memorial remembers the football of that Christmas.

The generals were furious. Officers were told to stop any friendly contact with the enemy, and a German order warned that getting close to the enemy would be punished as treason. In December 1915, Allied commanders worked hard to stop it from happening again. They ordered raids and heavy shelling, and only a few small truces took place. The war went on for almost four more years. So what would it take, today, for enemies to put down their weapons, even for a single day?