THERE has been much in the press concerning the truce of Christmas 1914, about which the top brass were so indignant.

Fraternisation was not unknown during the Second World War either, at least with civilians, and was equally the subject of official disapproval.

My late uncle joined the London Irish before the war. Although it would be hard to imagine a less military-minded person, he could see war coming and was determined to do his bit.

He served throughout the North African and Italian campaigns. He taught himself Italian and was more than ready to fraternise with all manner of Italian civilians as humanity demanded (even before Italy officially changed sides).

The end of the war in May 1945 found him in Carinthia in southern Austria. Within days of the Axis surrender, he was billeted in a local guesthouse, sharing a room with a captured German soldier “taken on” by his battalion as an interpreter.

In a letter to his parents, he described his former enemy as “quite the gentleman and very nice, everyone likes him”.

In another letter he describes how on an official visit to a local hospital he encountered Erwin, a young teenager prematurely discharged and with no means of getting home.

Erwin had been seriously injured by an anti-personnel mine. The greater part of his body was in plaster, which was supposed to remain for 12 weeks.

In defiance of orders, my uncle found him a spare battledress top, propped him up with pillows in the passenger seat of his vehicle and drove him home past any checkpoints he encountered.

Tony Lawton, Skelton, York.