Christmas in the Trenches

At the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 1918, the guns fell silent...

For many serving in the trenches during the First World War, Christmas was spent in the trenches as well. On Christmas Day 1914 a legendary football match is supposed to have taken place in the middle of No-Man's-Land between the Allies and the Germans, but no one knows what the final score was as no one bothered to keep count.

The legend became immortalised in the video for Paul McCartney's Pipes Of Peace.



In truth, some said the Germans won 3-2, but whatever the facts of the matter, the truce gradually came to an end in the same way it had begun - by mutual consent. It never happened again.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.