Yorkshire Post

January 1, 1915: Writing to friends in north Wales, a gentleman who is serving at the front in the City of London Territorials states:- "It was a memorable christmas Day in our trenches as we had a truce with the enemy from Christmas Eve till Boxing Day morning, not a shot being fired. The truce came about in this way. The Germans started singing and lighting candles about 7.30 on Christmas Eve, and one of them challenged any one of us to go across for a bottle of wine. One of our fellows accepted the challenge; that started the ball rolling. We then went half way to shake hands and exchange greetings with them. There were 10 dead Germans in a ditch in front of the trenches and we helped to bury these. I could have had a helmet but I did not fancy taking one off a corpse. These men were trapped one night while trying to get to our outpost trench some time ago. The Germans seemed to be very nice chaps and said they were awfully sick of the war. We were out of the trenches all Christmas Day collecting souvenirs.

January 6th, 1915: Christmas in the trenches: A subaltern's account of Anglo-German courtesies.
The Press Association has received from a subaltern at the front a letter in which he states:- Christmas has come and gone - certainly the most extraordinary celeration of it any of us will ever experience. We were due back in the trenches on Christmas Eve and the battalion's official Christmas Day was consequently held on Wednesday the 23rd, A truce had been arranged for the few hour of daylight for the burial of the dead on both sides who had been lying out in the open since the fierce fighting of a week earlier. When I got out I found a large crowd of officers and me, English and German, grouped around the bodies, which had already been gathered together, and laid out in rows. I went along these dreadful ranks and scanned the faces, fearing at every step to recognise one I knew. It was a ghastly sight. They lay stiffly in contorted attitudes, dirty with frozen mud and powdered with rime. The digging parties were already busy on the two big common graves, but the ground was hard and the work slow and laborious. In the intervals of superintending it, we chatted with the Germans, most of whom were quite affable. When they spoke of a bottle of champagne we raised out wistful eyes in hopeless longing. They expressed astonishment and said how pleased they would have been, had they only known, to have sent to Lille for some. A tiny, spruce little lieutenant spoken of to his manifest chagrin as "Der Kleine" by his comrades, attached himself to me and sent his Bursche back for a bottle of cognac and we solemnly drank "Gesundheiten". Meanwhile time drew on and it was obvious that the buryng would not be half finished with the expiration of the armistice agreed upeon so we decided to renew it the following morning. At the set hour everyone returned to the trenches, and when the last man was in, my little lieutenant and I solemnly shook hands, saluted, and marched back ourselves. They left us alone that night to enjoy a peaceful Christmas. I forgot to say that the previous night - Christmas Eve - their trenches were a blaze of Christmas trees, and our sentries were regaled for hours with the traditional Christmas songs of the Fatherland. Their officers even expressed annoyance the next day that some of these trees had been fired on, insisting that they were part almost of the sacred rite. On Boxing Day, at the agreed hour, on a pre-arranged signal being given, we turned out again. The output of officers of higher rank on their side was more marked, and the proceedings were more formal in consequence. But while the gruesome business of burying went forward there was still a certain interchangeof pleasantries. The German soldiers seemed a good-tempered, amiable lot, mostly peasants from the look of them. They distrubuted cigars and cigarettes freely among our digging party, who were much impressed by the cigars. Meanwhile, the officers were amusing themselves by taking photographs of mixed groups. The Germans brought us copies to send to the English illustrated papers, as they received them regularly. The digging completed, the shallow graves were filled in and the German officers remained to pay their tribute of respect while our chaplain read a short service. It was one of the most impressive things I have ever witnessed. Friend and foe stood side by side, bare headed, watching the tall, grave figure of the padre outlined against the frosty landscape as he blessed the poor broken bodies at his feet. Then, with more formal salutes, we turned and made our way back to our respecdtive ruts.

January 12, 1915: German and British Officers dine together
Writing home, Fred Langton, a well-known Leeds racing motor cyclist who is at the front as a despatch rider says:- The following incidents will give you an idea of how some of our Tommies spent Christmas Day. The Scots Guards and the Germans opposite, by mutual consent, mixed freely with each other. They exchanged addresses, and promised to write to each other - a typical habit of Tommy's. Two of the German officers took dinner with our two officers, and before they left arranged to play a football match on New Year Day. Six of the Worcesters had lunch in the German lines, and the same number of Germans had lunch in ours. Before parting, it was arranged that before firing recommenced on either side three volleys should be fired in the air. A week from now these men on both sides will be doing almost unspeakable things in order to kill each other.

• Yorkshire Post January 2 1915 page 9 reports accounts of Christmas truce as appeared in Daily Telegraph: "Christmas morning we got up on the parapet..."
• Also quoted the Times, December 27, and the Daily News.
• Yorkshire Post, January 4 1915 page 7 quotes letters which were in the Daily Telegraph and The Times

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