A Christmas truce, like the one in 1914, had been seen in many other wars. At first the British troops thought the German Christmas trees were a trick and shot them down. The Germans put them back up and the British stopped firing.
There were many reports of football matches between the enemies. Some were organised and others were just friendly kick-abouts with a hundred men joining in.
Some truces went on until New Year’s Day but most ended after Boxing Day. In one part of the trenches the British politely told the Germans, ‘We will start shooting again at nine o’clock.’ The Germans called back, ‘Then we’ll come over to your trenches – we’ll be safer!’ Many of the men found it hard to start fighting again. When their officers gave the order to shoot, the soldiers replied, ‘We can’t – they are good fellows and we can’t.’
The officers replied, ‘If you don’t start firing then we will – and it won’t be at the Germans.’
The German troops had the same problem. For several days the British and Germans fired at one another without trying to hit. A soldier wrote, ‘We spent that day and the next wasting ammunition in trying to shoot the stars from the sky.’
The generals on both sides were furious when they heard about the Christmas truce. As the First World War grew more bitter, a Christmas truce like 1914 was never seen again.