Amid the horrors of World War I, there occurred a unique truce when, for a few hours, enemies behaved like brothers.

Christmas Eve in 1914 was all quiet on France's Western Front, from the English Channel to the Swiss Alps. Trenches came within fifty miles of Paris. The war was only five months old, and approximately eight hundred thousand men had been wounded or killed. Every soldier wondered whether Christmas Day would bring another round of fighting and killing, but something happened:

British soldiers raised Merry Christmas signs, and soon carols were heard from German and British trenches alike.

Christmas dawned with unarmed soldiers leaving their trenches as officers of both sides tried unsuccessfully to stop their troops from meeting the enemy in the middle of no-man's-land for songs and conversation. Exchanging small gifts—mostly sweets and cigars—they passed Christmas Day peacefully along miles of the front. At one spot, the British played soccer with the Germans, who won three to two.

In some places, the spontaneous truce contained the next day, neither side willing to fire the first shot. Finally the war resumed when fresh troops arrived, and the high command of both armies ordered that further "informal understandings" with the enemy would be punishable as treason.