Five months – a million deaths – into the Great War, the warring armies had settled into the deadly stalemate of trench combat. Bodies littered the No Man’s Land between the opposing trenches; any attempt to retrieve a fallen comrade was likely to be fatal. Modern weaponry, machine guns, artillery, chlorine and mustard gas all made for carnage as never before. The troops hunkered down in the muck and filth; even raising a head above the trough would present an inviting target for a sniper’s bullet from the facing trench.
On the cold and dank Christmas Eve, 1914, Allied troops heard Christmas carols wafting over from the German trenches. The British soldiers answered with songs of their own. In some areas, the trenches were as close as a hundred feet to one another. In places, German soldiers put up decorated trees on their parapets.
