WASHINGTON — It was 1914 and World War I was underway. German fighters were 50 yards away from a British trench, normally cause to take up arms.
But this was Christmas Day. The scene was different.
“They came out and we went to meet them. We shook hands with them. We gave them, cigs jam and corn beef,” writes Frederick James Davies, a private in the 2nd Battalion Royal Welsh Fusiliers, The Daily Mail reports.
Excerpts of the Christmas Day letter Davies had written to his mother published by the Daily Mail give the first-hand story of the unlikely Christmas Day truce in No Man’s Land.
According to The Daily Mail’s account, Davies wrote that the soldiers had a “good chat with the Germans on Xmas day.”
“They also gave us cigars but they didn’t have much food. I think they are hard up for it,” Davies wrote. “They were fed up with war.”
He also described enjoying being able to come out the the trenches for a few days of rest.
The letters were recently donated to the Imperial War Museums by Davies’ granddaughter Jane Oliver, who discovered them after her mother died, The Daily Mail reports. Davies’ youngest daughter Audrey Trenchard, 86, told the newspaper that her father had never spoken about the experience.
“We were so thrilled that Jane had managed to find them and keep them,” Trenchard told The Daily Mail.
