Christmas truce soccer matches during World War One - ESPN FC - 0 views
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This is what Zehmisch Senior recorded for Christmas Day, 1914: "A couple of Britons brought a ball along from their trenches, and a lively game began. How fantastically wonderful and strange. The English officers experienced it like that too -- that thanks to soccer and Christmas, the feast of love, deadly enemies briefly came together as friends."
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"We all grew up with the story of soldiers from both sides putting down their arms on Christmas Day," says Prince William, president of the English Football Association.
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The troops had gone to war in August 1914 expecting to be home by Christmas. That didn't happen. Many, in fact, would never come home. By Christmas 1914, stunning modern killing machines had left about 750,000 people dead.
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In some spots the trenches were barely 50 meters apart. You could see enemy soldiers shaving in the morning.