Starting on Christmas Eve 1914, small pockets of German and British troops held impromptu cease-fires across the Western Front with reports of some on the Eastern Front as well.From history.com, descriptions of the Christmas Truce appear in numerous diaries and letters of the time. One British soldier, a rifleman named J. Reading, wrote a letter home to his wife describing his holiday experience in 1914: ìMy company happened to be in the firing line on Christmas Eve Ö during the early part of the morning the Germans started singing and shouting, all in good English.îìLater on in the day they came towards us. And our chaps went out to meet them Ö I shook hands with some of them, and they gave us cigarettes and cigars. We did not fire that day, and everything was so quiet it seemed like a dream.îOne British fighter named Ernie Williams later described in an interview his recollection of some makeshift soccer play on what turned out to be an icy pitch: “The ball appeared from somewhere, I don’t know where. Ö They made up some goals and one fellow ìwent in goalî and then it was just a general kick-about. I should think there were about a couple of hundred taking part.îGerman Lt. Kurt Zehmisch of the 134 Saxons Infantry, a schoolteacher who spoke both English and German, also described a pickup soccer game in his diary, which was discovered in an attic near Leipzig in 1999, written in an archaic German form of shorthand. ìEventually, the English brought a soccer ball from their trenches, and pretty soon a lively game ensued,î he wrote. ìHow marvelously wonderful, yet how strange it was. The English officers felt the same way about it. Thus Christmas, the celebration of Love, managed to bring mortal enemies together as friends for a time.îAccording to Smithsonian.com, in most places, up and down the line, it was accepted that the truce would be purely temporary. Men returned to their trenches at dusk, in some cases summoned back by flares, but for the most part determined to preserve the peace at least until midnight. There was more singing, and in at least one spot presents were exchanged. George Eade of the Rifles had become friends with a German artilleryman who spoke good English; and, as he left, this new acquaintance said to him: ìToday we have peace. Tomorrow, you fight for your country, I fight for mine. Good luck.îThe Christmas Truce was previously known to have only happened once; however, the discovery of a diary proves otherwise. From BBC.com, military historian Lt. Gen. Jonathon Riley said there had been other accounts referring to a second Christmas truce (in 1915) but the “emergence of the Keating diary has completed the jigsaw.î He said Private Robert Keating’s diary explained the ceasefire was initiated by German soldiers and followed by a contingent of British soldiers on the Western Front near Laventie, France.The Keating diary starts in 1914 and covers his deployment to France in December 1915 and finishes in July 1916, the night before one of the fiercest battles of the Somme.Keating explained how British soldiers shouted greetings to the German soldiers “over the way” on the morning of Christmas Day.Then, on Christmas evening, after a “good supply” of rum had been commandeered, Keating described how he was roused from his shelter to find Scots Guards and Royal Welsh clustered around a “burning brazier” on top of a parapet.Diary excerpt: ìThe Germans were sending up star lights and singing ó they stopped, so we cheered them and we began singing Land of Hope and Glory and Men of Harlech et cetera ó we stopped and they cheered us. Ö So we went on till the early hours of the morning and the only thing that brought us down was one of our machine guns being turned on us ó fortunately, no one was killed.î
