He was a lively old Scot, and when he died late last year at the age of 109, Alfred Anderson was the oldest man in Scotland and was also the last surviving member of the British Expeditionary Force.

This was the first element of the British Army that went to fight in World War I back in 1914. The German Kaiser called them that “contemptible little army” and, typical of many fighting men, they adopted their enemy’s taunts and took on the nickname of the “Old Contemptibles.” They were bright, they were young, and in what became known as trench warfare, they fought in the grinding combat of the western front.

But Anderson had one more distinction. He was also probably the last man who remembers the Christmas Truce of 1914.

This was an amazing event, almost without precedent, when the spirit of Christmas brought the war to a stop. It was not a negotiated truce or cease-fire. It was, for the most part, a spontaneous event.

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In 1914 the war was only a few months old, but already the stagnation that would characterize the history of the conflict had set in. The enemies looked at each other across a devastated and cratered moonscape they called “no mans land.” “No Man’s Land,” if it wasn’t hell, with its craters, dead bodies and booby traps, sure looked liked it and sometimes was only 70-yards wide.

It was in this environment that the legend of the Christmas Truce was born.

Now, I say legend, because when you get down to it, official accounts of any kind of truce are sparse. But individual accounts, from British and German soldiers, confirm that there was definitely a spontaneous halt in the fighting. And Alfred Anderson said he remembered it clearly. It wasn’t by any means an organized truce, and it was by no means officially condoned, but when Christmas Eve approached, — and this was sporadic along a line that ran over a hundred miles from Belgium into France — lights started appearing from the German side.

At first, this was taken as an indication of an impending attack, but after awhile, it was clear that the lights were candles on Christmas Trees propped up in the trenches. At that time, while the Christmas tree had first been introduced to Britain by Queen Victoria’s German-born husband Prince Albert, it was still more of a German tradition than an English one.

For the most part, the truces along the front were negotiated without the knowledge of the senior commanders. Junior officers would meet with their counterparts agree to a fixed starting time for the truce and an ending time.

The men met in the middle, even visiting each others trenches, exchanged items of food and clothing and, as soldiers a long way from home are likely to do, showed each other pictures of their girlfriends, wives and families. They also sang Christmas carols. The most popular was the one that easily translated between English and German, “Silent Night.”

There is one persistent part of the tale, probably true, that there were spontaneous football matches, soccer we would call it here in the states. But, if the accounts are taken as correct, the games were lively and the German soldiers appear to have gotten the better of their British enemies during the contest.

As for the long term, when Christmas Day passed, the war, with the firm direction of the senior commands, none too happy at these sudden outbreaks of peace, resumed in earnest.

Both governments discouraged coverage of the truce and the military histories hardly mention it. The only real history that exists are the oral histories, like those of Alfred Anderson, and a few faded photographs.

But it’s more than enough to keep this rather endearing legend alive, the recollection of when the Spirit of Christmas stopped a war.

Examiner contributor David Kerr lives in Alexandria.