When war broke out in 1914, thousands of men rushed to join up - little thinking that they would still be at war, with no end in sight, at Christmas time.

However, that first Christmas in the trenches also bore witness to the humanity of the soldiers at war when, disregarding any official orders from their superiors, an unofficial armistice was declared, and enemies began to fraternise.

Reports of the truce first began to appear in the British press as they published Christmas letters home from soldiers at the front. All spoke of their amazement at the occurrence, and the joy of the day - in one of the letters extracted above, a soldier says that he ‘wouldn’t have missed it for the most gorgeous Christmas dinner in England.’

Sergeant HA Barrs wrote to his parents on Boxing Day that he had had ‘a topping time and wouldn’t have missed it for pounds.’ Herbert Smart, who played football for Aston Villa, doesn’t mention the football match that has become so mythologised over the past century, but does admit he ‘didn’t know what to think... fancy a German shaking your flapper as though he was trying to smash your fingers and then a few days later trying to plug you.’

Over the next few days more letters began to arrive, and the extent to which the truce had begun as soldier faced soldier became clear. In the letters printed in the article below, an officer admits ‘it was the strangest sight I have ever seen,’ while a private of the Stalybridge Territorials writes that ‘the officers couldn’t make head nor tail of it.’

In many of the letters, the writers expressed a wish that the day of peace could lead to a ‘more decisive peace,’ a wish also echoed by German soldiers, as the letter below, published in the German journal Vorwärts, illustrates.

It is perhaps not that surprising that in 1914, despite already harsh conditions, soldiers could still express a sense of optimism that ‘scrapping will soon be over.’ Yet it was also in Christmas 1914 that the Germans made their first attempt at an air raid, a sign of the new technology that would be used throughout the war to terrible effect, and help prolong the fighting for over three more years.

In 1915, the second Christmas at the front, a Manchester Guardian editorial looked back at the ‘reported strange and pathetic episodes of temporary friendship’ of a year earlier, noting sadly that ‘this Christmas, not only have the various authorities frowned on such attempts... but, as far as one can tell, there has been little inclination towards them among the soldiers themselves.’