The Christmas Truce (= Waffenstillstand) has become one of the most famous and mythologised events of the First World War. But what was the real story behind the truce? Why did it happen and did British and German soldiers really play football in no-man's land?
It is hard to believe after all the atrocities that we know about WWI, but late on Christmas Eve 1914, men of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) heard German troops in the trenches opposite them singing carols and patriotic songs and saw lanterns and small fir trees along their trenches. Messages began to be shouted between the trenches.
The following day, British and German soldiers met in no man's land and exchanged gifts, took photographs and some played impromptu games of football. They also buried casualties and repaired trenches and dugouts. Many a soldier must have hoped that this Christmas might be the first step towards peace. But after Boxing Day, meetings in no man's land dwindled out.
Obviously, the truce was not observed everywhere along the Western Front. Elsewhere the fighting continued and casualties did occur even on Christmas Day. Some officers were unhappy at the truce and worried that it would undermine fighting spirit.
For this reason, the High Commands on both sides tried to prevent any truces on a similar scale happening again. Despite this, there were some isolated incidents of soldiers holding brief truces later in the war, and not only at Christmas. AlI in what was known as the 'Live and Let Live' system, in quiet sectors of the front line, brief pauses in the hostilities were sometimes tacitly agreed, allowing both sides to repair their trenches or gather their dead.
This story was portrayed in Paul McCartney's video "Pipes of Peace" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwyFTRGiIUU