A cry of: waiter! And the fighting stopped

Can you believe: at Christmas, 1914. British and German troops climbed out of the trenches[战壕] to play soccerwholesale Inflatable Games in no man's land. Then the war resumed...

A new book by a German historian[历史学家] last night cast fresh light on one of the most extraordinary episodes[插曲] of the first world war and revealed[披露] that the celebrated 1914 Christmas truce[休战] took place only because many of the Germans stationed on the front had worked in England.

According to previously unseen letters and diaries sent home by Germans from the trenches, many of the passes[传球] went wildly astray[走偏] and shot off the icy pitch. The soldiers used sticks of wood, theirgiant Inflatable Tunnel caps and steel helmets[钢盔] as goalposts[门柱]. The games lasted about an hour. The sleep-deprived[缺乏睡眠的] players then collapsed[体力不支], exhausted[精疲力竭].