Last allied witness of WWI Christmas truce dies.

“All I’d heard for two months in the trenches was the hissing, cracking and whining of bullets in flight, machinegun fire and distant German voices. But there was a dead silence that morning across the land as far as you could see.

“We shouted ‘Merry Christmas’ even though nobody felt merry. The silence ended early in the afternoon and the killing started again.”

Troops in the trenches swapped cigarettes, uniform buttons and addresses and even played football in one of the most extraordinary episodes of the war.