A photo from the book “The Other Trench: The WW1 Diary & Photos of a German Officer”

By spring 1917, my great-great-grandfather Lt. Alexander Pfeifer was a battle-hardened company commander, having fought on both the Western and Eastern Fronts. At this point, he was stationed high in the Carpathian Mountains (modern-day Ukraine/Romania), where the Germans were decisively pushing back the collapsing Russian army.

But something unusual happened. In his diary, he describes how Russian soldiers began appearing above their trenches—waving. What followed was a brief period of fraternisation between the two sides that lasted for a couple weeks. Alexander took several photos during this time, including this one of the Russian troops captured from his trench.