It features also a ball booted "over the top" by Captain Wilfred P Nevill in an attempt to inspire his men onwards on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

Postcard from 1914 expresses the nature of the British struggle in graphic, footballing terms ©Popperfoto/Getty Images

The Sainsbury's Christmas advert currently running on British television - jointly made with the Royal British Legion - is effectively a mini-film featuring the events which, according to reports and letters from participants on both sides of the lines, took part with such beguiling spontaneity as the first Christmas of the Great War approached.

In it, on the night before Christmas Day, British forces overhear Germans singing the hymn Silent Night (Stille Nacht) and respond by singing their own version. The following day one British soldier tentatively raises his hat above the parapet on a stick, then shows himself with hands up. The Germans stay their fire - and one of their number does the same thing.

The two young men march up to each other in No Man's Land before exchanging greetings. "My name is Jim." "My name is Otto." "Pleased to meet you Otto." Behind these two, theatrically, a great rank of fellow fraternisers walk. The soldiers chat, share "smokes", exchange mementos, play cards - and someone produces a football which leads to a spirited game in the dusty snow before the sound of continuing gunfire from further along the line persuades the sporting parties to resume their habitual places. When Otto returns to his dug-out, he discovers that Jim has placed a bar of chocolate he has recently received into his pocket.

It's a beautifully made and touching cameo, albeit a large touch more "chocolate box" than the real thing, by all accounts - which, while being various, are nevertheless unquestionable.



In a letter recently discovered by Staffordshire County Council's Archives Service, General Walter Congreve VC, writing to his wife on Christmas Day 1914, describes an instance of spontaneous truce - while pointing out that he didn't trust it enough to risk his own high rank by taking part personally.

Congreve, who led the Rifles Brigade, was positioned at British Headquarters near Neuve Chapelle in Northern France.

Describing how he had visited "the N Staffords in my old trenches at Rue du Bois", he writes:

"There I found an extraordinary state of affairs - this a.m. a German shouted out that they wanted a day's truce and would one come out if he did; so very cautiously one of our men lifted himself above the parapet and saw a German doing the same.

"Both got out then more and finally all day long in that particular place they have been walking about together all day giving each other cigars & singing songs. Officers as well as men were out and the German Colonel himself was talking to one of our Captains.

Members of the 5th London Rifle Brigade and German Saxon regimental troops gather during one of several informal truces during Christmas 1914 - this one took place near Ploegsteert Wood in Belgium ©Popperfoto/Getty Images

"My informant, one of the men, said he had had a fine day / of it and had "smoked a cigar with the best shot in the German army, then not more than 18. They say he's killed more of our men than any other 12 together but I know now where he shoots from and I hope we down him tomorrow".

"I hope devoutly they will - next door the two battalions opposite each other were shooting away all day and so I hear it was further north, first R.B. playing football with the Germans opposite them - next Regiments shooting each other.

"I was invited to go and see the Germans myself but refrained as I thought they might not be able to resist a General."

The Manchester Guardian carried a report on December 1914 with the headline "A Christmas Truce at the Front" - and subheads of "Enemies at football" and "German gets friendly haircut".

The article cites extracts from a letter by a British officer:

"At 11pm on December 24 there was an absolute peace, bar a little sniping and a few rounds from a machine gun, and then no more. 'The King' was sung, then you heard 'To-morrow is Christmas: if you don't fight, we won't'; and the answer came back 'All right!'

"One officer met a Bavarian, smoked a cigarette and had a talk with him about halfway between the lines. Then a few men fraternised in the same way, and really to-day peace has existed. Men have been talking together, and they had a football match with a bully beef tin, and one man went over and cut a German's hair!"

In a letter to his mother dated December 27, Lance Corporal Willie Loasby describes how informal contact was made between British and German forces shortly before Christmas, during which time he took a button from the coat of an enemy soldier, adding "I could only give him a few dirty old biscuits from my pocket..."

On Christmas Day Loasby - who was killed less than a fortnight later - went out again to meet "my friend the German" and he describes how a German officer came up to him:

"The officer says, after shaking hands and in Good English 'Are you all English in front there and no French'. I answered, 'All English, no French.' He replied, 'I thought so', then said 'Ten Frenchman don't make an Englishman'. I thought: 'Compliments'.

"He weighed me up and down, gave me six cigars, some chocolate, shook hands again and turned about, went back to his trench. The other chap gave me a knife as a souvenir.

"I said jokingly if he would play us a game of football. He said 'yes' then I got called in again and we were soon banging away at them again."

But The Guardian's Paris Correspondent told a different tale from the shared contempt of German and English for the country in which they fought as it quoted an injured French soldier who said French and German soldiers had also engaged in an unofficial truce, meeting halfway and talking, exchanging cigarettes and dancing together in rings.

"The French and German soldiers who had thus fraternised subsequently refused to fire on one another, and had to be removed from the trenches and replaced by other men," the soldier was quoted as saying.

Football continued to prove an apt metaphor, as well as activity, for Britain's armed forces during World War One, as this postcard from 1915 indicates ©Popperfoto/Getty Images

The Press Association quoted an account sent to them by a British subaltern: "Elsewhere along the line I hear our fellows played the Germans at football on Christmas Day. Our own pet enemies remarked that they would like a game, but as the ground in our part is all root crops and much cut up by ditches, and as, moreover, we had not got a football, we had to call it off."

In commemoration of these pick-up sporting tourneys, British soldiers last week took on on a team from the German armed forces at Aldershot Town FC in a self-styled Game of Truce, with guests including the head of the British Army, Sir General Nick Carter, Football Association chairman Greg Dyke, and fabled Manchester United and England star Bobby Charlton.

Players from the British and German armed forces line up before last week's Game of Truce, commemorating the centenary of impromptu games between soldiers from the two nations during informal ceasefires around Christmas ©AFP/Getty Images

An annual challenge between the two sides was established two years ago as part of the run-up to the centenary anniversary - proceeds for the game were donated to the British Legion and its German equivalent.

"It came up in discussions we had with the Imperial War Museum," said Brigadier Mitch Mitchell, the officer in charge of army football, before a match won 1-0 by the host team. "Football brings people together. It is a perfect example of what can be achieved."

The truth of Mitchell's words on the subject of football - and by extension, sport - having the capacity to bring people together is borne out by the examples of recruiting posters collected as part of the "Greater Game" exhibition at the National Football Museum:

"Be a sportsman and lend a hand to the lads at the front. They want your help!"

"Rugby Union footballers are Doing Their Duty. Over 90 per cent have enlisted. British Athletes! Will you follow this Glorious Example?"

"Play the Game. Sharpen up 'Spurs come forward now to help reach the goal of victory Shoot! Shoot! Shoot! And stop this 'Foul Play' - Join the Football Battalion of the Die-Hards"

Recruiting posters for British soldiers during the First World War played heavily on a sense of "sporting" camaraderie that was sometimes angled deliberately to appeal to the loyalty of followers for their team ©Getty Images

"Do you want to be a Chelsea Die-Hard? If so join the 17th Batt Middlesex Regt. And follow the lead given by your Favourite Football Players"

"Men of Millwall. Hundreds of Football enthusiasts are joining the Army daily. Don't be left behind. Let the Enemy hear the 'Lion's Roar'. Join and be in at The Final and give them a Kick Off The Earth."

"13th service Battn Essex Regt (West Ham) Join the 'Hammers' and Hammer the Huns".

Also among the items on show in the free exhibition is a previously unseen diary kept by Lt Charles B Brockbank of the 6th Battalion, Cheshire Regiment, in which he mentions a football match taking place on Christmas Day 1914 with a small rubber ball.

The exhibition also explores the continuation of football at home, and the controversy of the 1914-1915 season, as well as the rise of the women's game during the war years.

The Greater Game looks at how the war is commemorated in football now, and includes photography from current conflicts across the world, highlighting the work of the Mines Advisory Group and photographer Sean Sutton.

Ten new artworks by artist Malik Thomas reflect the stories of ten key people featured in the exhibition, from pioneering black footballer and soldier Walter Tull, to Sunderland conscientious objector Norman Gaudie.

There is also lost film footage from the front and of wartime football.

To accompany the exhibition, the National Football Museum is supporting the online project to compile the comprehensive database of the contribution made by football and footballers during the First World War.

Manchester's National Football Museum has just opened an exhibition entitled The Greater Game - Football and The First World War ©Getty Images

Stories and records of very player who served in the War, as well as records of wartime football and stories from the wider game can be accessed at www.footballandthefirstworldwar.com.

The site is appealing for "citizen historians" to come forward with stories and artefacts relating to football during the war years.

The museum's director, Kevin Moore, said: "The love of football and the spirit of the game continues and we hope that everyone will come to learn more about this fascinating period of footballing history."

The laced and sectioned brown leather football believed to have been used by Captain Nevill on that atrocious day in 1916, July 1, is a particularly poignant display item.

Nevill was the very epitome of the Victorian public schoolboy ethos of "play up, play up and play the game". As Head Boy at Dover College, he distinguished himself as a scholar and a sportsman, representing the College at rugby, hockey, running and cricket before going up to Jesus College, Cambridge in 1914.

The Varsity career was all to swiftly swapped for one in the Army, and on the eve of the Battle of the Somme the gallant Nevill was with the East Surrey Regiment, whose 8th Battalion was given the task of leaving the trenches at Carnoy to attack German positions 300 yards away.

Nevill, commander of B Company, had bought two footballs while on leave in England so that he and his fellow officers could kick them across No Man's Land during the charge, thus providing what was intended to be an inspiringly familiar accompaniment to the action.

Under heavy and continuous fire, B Company managed to gain their objective - but Nevill did not live to see it. He was killed just in front of the German barbed wire, two weeks short of his 22nd birthday.

"Touchstone" of The Daily Mail penned the following verse in tribute:

"On through the hail of slaughter,

Where gallant comrades fall,

Where blood is poured like water,

They drive the trickling ball.

The fear of death before them,

Is but an empty name;

True to the land that bore them,

The SURREYS played the game."

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, covered the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics as chief feature writer for insidethegames.biz, having covered the previous five summer Games, and four winter Games, for The Independent. He has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, The Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. His latest book Foul Play - the Dark Arts of Cheating in Sport (Bloomsbury £12.99) is available at the insidethegames.biz shop. To follow him on Twitter click here.