In the months after World War I erupted, young men in Europe were killing each other by the tens of thousands. Yet on a frozen Christmas Eve in

1914, the guns briefly fell silent. The Christmas truce has become the stuff of legend, and the

story of that poignant day has been told again and again in film in music on stage

For the 100th anniversary of the truce in 2014 the British supermarket chain Sainsbury's created this Christmas ad.

The ad begins on Christmas Eve on a snowy night in a dark, damp trench on the British side of the front.

Mail has just arrived.

Check is.

I'm Queen.

Nye.

Letters from home, pictures of sweethearts,

a thick chocolate bar in blue wrapping. And then from far away comes the sound of German

voices singing. The British join in. In. The British join in. All is calm is calm is an opera by

by Peter Rothstein based on the truce.

The German and British soldiers face each other as they sing

silent night before eventually turning to face the audience as one. That song Silent Night has become inextricably linked with the tellings of the truce over the years.

So has the striking visual of the first soldier to slowly venture

out into no man's land, as John McCutcheon describes here in his 1984 song, in the Trenches.

There's someone coming towards us, the frontline sentry cry.

All sights were fixed on one lone figure trudging from their side.

His truce flag like a Christmas star

showed on that lane so bright

as he bravely strode unarmed into the night. In the

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