A frontline soldier’s moving account of the fabled ‘Christmas truce’ of 1914

‘Somehow this scene became a peaceful one.’

The famed ‘Christmas truce’ of 1914 occurred some five months after the outbreak of the First World War when widespread, unofficial ceasefires arose on the Western Front on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Filmed at Freemasons’ Hall in London in 2016 as part of the events series Letters Live, in which performers read notable letters in front of a live audience, this video features a firsthand account of the truce as read by the Scottish actor Peter Capaldi. In a letter to his wife, the English Captain Reginald John ‘Jake’ Armes reports having lived through ‘one of the most extraordinary scenes imaginable’ as the forces under his command and the Germans in the trenches across from them agreed to halt fire for the holiday, performed songs for one another, exchanged gifts and even helped one another bury their dead. Heard today, Armes’s words, given a forceful verve here by Capaldi, are at once hopeful for their flickering of humanity amid the horrors of war, yet deeply poignant given the years of brutality still to come.