Christmas truce during 1914 World War I, a 100 years ago

This day Christmas, a 100 years ago, blew in some magic into the war-whipped land of Flanders Fields, between Belgium and northern France.

British and German soldiers faced each other in hostility. They were separated only by a no-man's land that was filled with slain soldiers. But then, a beautiful German Christmas carol lit up the air.

It was 1914, just when World War I had kicked off. Still, the carol blew a breeze of love into the fields, according to foxnews.com.

The night is captured perfectly in a day's journal by Pvt. Albert Moren, a British soldier:

"It was a beautiful moonlit night, frost on the ground, white almost everywhere: and at about 7 or 8 in the evening there was a lot of commotion in the German trenches and there were these lights -- I don't know what they were. And then they sang, "Silent Night" - "Stille Nacht." I shall never forget it, it was one of the highlights of my life. I thought, what a beautiful tune."

The trenches were filled with almost 100,000 slain soldiers. They had been at each other's throats, and were slaying each other all the time. But the carol brought a few of them out of their dying spots to exchange a brief second and shred of love. They put out their hands across the small divides, exchanged gifts and rejoiced in a bit of the Christmas spirit.

The amazing, miraculous days and two weeks of peace and compromise are captured in Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce by historian Stanley Weintraub. He has presented letters and diaries of the men who stopped WWI at the time, according to reason.com.

Not a single shot was fired then, according to an entry by Lt. Kurt Zehmisch of the 134th Saxony regiment. There was some peace, and some of the bodies that lay dead were pulled out and decently buried. It was the one moment of peace and love before the war swung back to its mad slaughter of four more years.

This remarkable Christmas Truce of 1914, in which about 100,000 British and German soldiers were involved, made people wonder if it ever happened. In 1983, one veteran called the truce a "latrine rumor," according to nytimes.com.

Frank and Maurice Wray of the London Rifle Brigade wrote that they had settled to watch the events, but a song stole over the fields. "Quite understandably a wave of nostalgia passed over us."

In the morning, a German declaration: "We good. We no shoot," stopped the war for a while, as the soldiers walked out of the war.

Reports say that at some 30 scattered points across long tracts of Belgium, as well as in the western front, from the North Sea to the Swiss border, there were scenes of peace and reconciliation. In the Western Front the soldiers exchanged gifts with everything from bully beef and barrels of beer to small mementos. Some even played soccer with each other.

The last soldier of the brief truce who survived till 2005, at 109 years, was Sgt. Alfred Anderson, from Scotland. The Times published many entries by the soldiers:

"... What a sight -- little groups of Germans and British extending almost the length of our front! Out of the darkness we could hear laughter and see lighted matches, a German lighting a Scotchman's cigarette and vice versa, exchanging cigarettes and souvenirs," Cpl. John Ferguson, a Scottish troop, wrote.

British Cpl. Eric Rowden of the Queen's Westminster Rifles wrote: "We laughed and joked together, having forgotten war altogether."