Message to mother by British officer reproduced by Royal Mail describes shaking hands with enemy and plan of another truce ‘to see how photos come out’

It was penned 100 years ago in the freezing trenches of the western front; a letter from a British army officer to his mother describing in vivid detail the extraordinary Christmas truce as soldiers from both sides laid down their weapons.

Second Lt Alfred Dougan Chater, of the 2nd Gordon Highlanders, writes of the moment when the men met in no-man’s land, exchanging souvenirs and cigars as impromptu truces were held along parts of the front between Christmas and New Year, with joint burial parties for the dead.

The letter has been reproduced by the Royal Mail, with permission from the Chater family, to mark the anniversary of the historic truce and the role played by the postal service during the first world war.

Dated Christmas Day and signed “Dougan”, the letter reads: “Dearest Mother, I am writing this in the trenches in my ‘dug out’ – with a wood fire going and plenty of straw it is rather cosy, although it is freezing hard and real Christmas weather.

“I think I have seen today one of the most extraordinary sights that anyone has ever seen. About 10 o’clock this morning I was peeping over the parapet when I saw a German, waving his arms, and presently two of them got out of their trench and came towards ours.

“We were just going to fire on them when we saw they had no rifles, so one of our men went to meet them and in about two minutes the ground between the two lines of trenches was swarming with men and officers of both sides, shaking hands and wishing each other a happy Christmas.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alfred Dougan Chater’s letter describes the moment soldiers on both sides left the trenches and met at no-man’s land, where they exchanged souvenirs and cigars. Photograph: Royal Mail/Simon Chater/PA

“This continued for about half an hour when most of the men were ordered back to the trenches. For the rest of the day nobody has fired a shot and the men have been wandering about at will on the top of the parapet and carrying straw and firewood about in the open – we have also had joint burial parties with a service for some dead, some German and some ours, who were lying out between the lines.”

He writes of shaking hands himself with several of the German officers and subsequently describes another “parley with the Germans in the middle” where cigarettes and autographs were exchanged and “some more people took photos”.

“I don’t know how long it will go on for – I believe it was supposed to stop yesterday, but we can hear no firing going on along the front today except a little distant shelling. We are, at any rate, having another truce on New Year’s Day, as the Germans want to see how the photos come out!”

The letter paints a picture of seasonal goodwill amid “a war in which there is so much bitterness and ill feeling”.

“The Germans in this part of the line are sportsmen if they are nothing else,” he continues.

The truce did not hold. Chater, later made a captain, would be badly wounded in March 1915 at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle. He survived to marry his sweetheart Joy in 1916, and died in Henley, Oxfordshire, in 1974.

Chater’s grandson, Simon Chater, told the Guardian: “His letters were very eloquent and marvellous testimony.” He said he was invalided out in 1915 after suffering very serious injuries to his jaw.

“He didn’t really talk about the war at all. A lot of them didn’t.” He added his grandfather went on to lead a “very happy and fulfilled life”, having four children and working in the family’s paper firm.

The letters only came to light after his grandfather’s death, he said.

The letter is being reproduced to accompany a commemorative set of stamps issued by the Royal Mail, which is also creating an online database of about 250 war memorials is has in its care.

At the beginning of the war, the General Post Office was involved in distributing recruitment forms throughout the country urging enlistment. It released 75,000 of its staff to support the war and had its own regiment, the Post Office Rifles, which comprised 12,000 employees. Trench warfare meant British positions at the front remained fairly static and this enabled a comprehensive network of lorries and carts to develop for written communications and parcels between units at the front.

In 1917 more than 19,000 mailbags crossed the Channel each day with 500,000 bags conveyed in the runup to Christmas. Outbound letters to soldiers peaked at more than 12m a week early in the first quarter of 1918. Outbound parcels soared to just over 1m a week by the spring of 1917.