World War I had only been going for a few months when something amazing happened on Christmas Eve 1914. Along parts of the Western Front in Belgium and France, German soldiers in their trenches lit small candles and started singing Christmas carols. British soldiers across no man’s land heard them, cheered, and sang back.
Then, in scattered spots along the line, soldiers from both sides climbed out of their trenches and met in the middle. They shook hands, swapped buttons and chocolate, shared cigarettes and photos of their families, and even kicked footballs around. In some places they helped each other bury the dead lying between the trenches.
The truce wasn’t ordered by any general - it was something the regular soldiers decided to do themselves. Officers were horrified and ordered them all back to fighting. In later years of the war, commanders made sure it never happened again. But for one brief Christmas, in the middle of a brutal war, the fighting just stopped.
