WW1 -Christmas Day 1915 and Football Match

On Christmas Day 1915, soldiers from both sides of the trenches met up in ‘No-Man’s-Land’ for a game of football. Nothing official was kept of this brief meeting between the enemies.

Bertie Felstead, the last known survivor of that football match, died at the age of 106 in July 2001. He was a member of the Royal Welch Fusiliers.

Bertie Felstead remembered the following:

On Xmas Eve, he was stationed in northern France with his colleagues near the village of Laventie when he heard the Germans in a trench 100 meters away singing "Silent Night". In reply, the Royal Welch Fusiliers sang "Good King Wenceslas".

On Xmas Day, after some shouting between both trenches, he and his colleagues got out of their icy trench and greeted the Germans. Bertie Felstead recalled that the Germans probably were already out of their trench before the British left theirs. He claimed that nothing was planned and that what happened was entirely spontaneous.

A football was produced from somewhere – though he could no re-call from where. "It was not a game as such – more of a kick-around and a free-for-all. There could have been 50 on each side for all I know. I played because I really liked football. I don’t know how long it lasted, probably half-an-hour, and no-one was keeping score."

The truce ended when a British major ordered the British soldiers back to their trench with a reminder that "they were there to kill the Hun not to make friends with him."

The mood of Christmas friendliness was shortly broken by the firing of British artillery. Bertie Felstead described the Germans as "all right".