Hi All. Christmas is indeed a magical time. There are times when those who are sent to kill one another can put aside the grisly task they have been given. It would be a wondrous thing if this could last forever. But for someone who has had a taste of the killing I know this can never be. That however does not mean I can’t wish for it, or pray for it. Merry Christmas to all…Don in creepy town
At Christmas, 1914, there occurred several informal truces at various points along the trench-lines of Northern France and Belgium. It may well be that there were other places where truces took place, but our precise knowledge of events is limited by the amount of direct, eyewitness testimony which has so far been discovered. Nevertheless, there are enough trustworthy reports (and even a few photographs) to convince us that something extraordinary happened that first Christmas of the war, and that it was not entirely an isolated happening.
The image of opposing soldiers, shaking hands with each other on one day and then deliberately trying to kill each other the next, is a powerful one, and one which is part and parcel of remembrance of the Great War. It was, perhaps, a last example of open-handed chivalry before the squalor and horror of the next three years changed the old world for ever.

• The Christmas Truce