I love this story, because it shows how much potential we as humans have for compassion, even in these kinds of circumstances.  I love it too because of the cognitive dissonance that it creates.  The whole first world war is, once you start getting into it, confusing.  The more you research, the harder it is to see this particular war as anything other than stupid, stupid, stupid.  Maybe there is an alternate universe where the soldiers just refused to fight on December 26th, and the war ended right then and there, in 1914, and WW2 never happened..