This episode will go out over the Christmas period, a time when my mind drifts away to Flanders

and those fields along the British sector of the Western Front, which experienced the Christmas truce in 1914.

Back in the 80s and 90s, I interviewed men who were there, who took part in that Christmas truce.

And my uncle Dan, with the Essex Regiment, he too was one of those that went out into no man's land and experienced peace that day,

just a few weeks before he was wounded for the first time.

For me, that event will never be about football or any of the fanciful ideas

that Hollywood and dramas have often forced upon us, but the simple

idea of ordinary men from two different but similar cultures staring at each other on a shared

day that meant something to them both. For a moment in December 1914 there was peace in no man's land, but the war was still in its infancy, an honour perhaps still meant something then, and ahead were long years in which warfare would truly emerge into the industrial age of both production and death,

death on an industrial scale, which might have removed all honour,

and itself a microcosm of the history of the century that would follow.

But for me, the shadows of men in no man's land,

swapping food and drink, cat badges and buttons, and curious

looks at each other, warriors together connected in a way that few back home that Christmas

would understand. This was their shared piece on that day more than a century ago.

So now to this week's questions.

Question number one comes from Thomas on Discord.

I've heard that very few officers were shot at dawn during the Great War.

How come?

Well, we've done an episode on those soldiers who were tried by Field General Court

Marshal and subsequently executed. 306 for military crimes, about another 40 for civilian

crimes. And I'll put a link in the show notes if you want to get an overall view of the

...