The Christmas Match: Football in No Man's Land 1914

On Christmas Eve, 1914, after four months of intense, bloody fighting in Flanders between entrenched British and German soldiers, something miraculous happened. The guns fell silent as Christmas approached, and the soldiers on both sides started singing instead of shooting. Then, on Christmas Day, the two sides emerged from their trenches and met in No Man’s Land. Some chased rabbits. Others, more memorably, played soccer. It was a rare moment of peace—and even beauty—amid horrible carnage.

The Christmas Match tells that story through the eyes of two soldiers—Albert Schmidt, a Saxon, and Jimmy Coyle, a Scot—who were in units that played a Christmas Day match against each other. Pehr Thermaenius traces their stories through military archives, taking the pair from mobilization in August to the frozen mud of Flanders in December, showing the making of soldiers, the traumas of war, and the emergence—brief, but real—of hope within that Christmas Day sporting truce. A brilliantly realized account of an unforgettable moment in European history, The Christmas Match is history at its up-close, deeply human best.