The Christmas Truce of 1914

As World War I raged around them, soldiers facing off along one stretch of the fighting decided to hit pause

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It was Dec. 24, 1914. The first shots fired during World War I had occurred five months earlier. Now, soldiers from Great Britain and France found themselves facing their German counterparts in a treeless expanse along the French-Belgian border. Life in the trenches was wet and cold. Death from artillery fire, sniper attack or a full-scale assault was a constant threat. Then something remarkable happened.

Peace broke out.

From Thursday, Dec. 24, to Saturday, Dec. 26, 100,000 troops from both sides laid down their guns to celebrate Christmas. Noncommissioned soldiers and officers alike left their mud-filled trenches and met in between, in an area called No Man's Land. There, they sang carols, exchanged gifts and conducted the solemn act of burying their dead. At one point, it's been reported, 100 soldiers from both sides played a game of soccer.

“The Christmas truce was unique, and nothing like it happened again to that scale,” says Anthony Richards of England's Imperial War Museums. “Immediately after the truce, the high command of both sides stepped in to make sure that fraternization and ceasefires like this would not happen in the same way.”

And they didn't. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace estimated that 9.7 million soldiers from dozens of nations died in World War I.

But for a brief period, humanity held sway. One witness to this remarkable event was a British captain named Reginald John “Jake” Armes. In a letter to his wife, he described how it unfolded.

24/12/14

I have just been through one of the most extraordinary scenes imaginable. Tonight is Xmas Eve and I came up into the trenches this evening for my tour of duty in them. Firing was going on all the time and the enemy's machine guns were at it hard, firing at us. Then about seven the firing stopped.