WW1 Christmas Truce remembered - 100 years on

It was 100 years ago this Christmas that an extraordinary thing happened on the front line at the town of Frelinghien, near the French-Belgian border.

Soldiers of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers had been facing German troops there, with the two front lines separated by a matter of metres. But on Christmas Day, the opposing groups of soldiers laid down their weapons and stopped shooting in an impromptu ceasefire.

The two officers went back to their respective trenches before returning with gifts. The Germans - who controlled a nearby brewery - brought a barrel of beer. Clifford Inglis Stockwell, the commander of the Welsh troops, gave a Christmas pudding.

On Saturday, Stockwell's grandson, Major Miles Stockwell, and Colonel Joachim Freiherr Von Sinner, the grandson of the German officer that day, met at Frelinghien to commemorate the occasion.

At a specially excavated trench on the old front line, soldiers from the Royal Welsh Fusiliers sang 'Silent Night', following a rendition of "Still Nacht" by their German counterparts.

In the afternoon there was a football match, with the Welsh side going down to a battling 3-0 defeat.

But Saturday's occasion was much more important than a football match. It was a reaffirmation of the better side of human nature. And a remembrance of a rare shaft of light in the darkness of a terrible war.