The Christmas Truce

Letters from the front in 1914 reveal the day of peace at Christmas Reports of the truce first began to appear in the British press as they published Christmas letters home from soldiers at the front. All spoke of their amazement at the occurrence, and the joy of the day - in one of the letters a soldier says that he "wouldn't have missed it for the most gorgeous Christmas dinner in England." Sergeant H.A. Barrs wrote to his parents on Boxing Day that he had had 'a topping time and wouldn't have missed it for pounds.' Herbert Smart, who played football for Aston Villa, doesn't mention the football match that has become so mythologised over the past century, but does admit he 'didn't know what to think...Fancy a German shaking your flapper as though he was trying to smash your fingers and then a few days later trying to plug you.' (Read below the rest of his and Barrs' letters.) Over the next few days, more letters began to arrive, and the extent to which the truce had begun as soldier faced soldier became clear. In the letters printed in the article below, an officer admits "it was the strangest sight I have ever seen," while a private of the Stalybridge Territorials writes that "the officers couldn't make head nor tail of it."

Photograph: guardian.co.uk