The last veteran of the Christmas truce during the First World War died in his sleep yesterday, aged 109.

Alfred Anderson, who was born in 1896, was 18 on December 25, 1914, when British and German troops climbed out of their trenches and crossed no-man's land to shake hands, sing carols and share cigarettes.

The soldiers famously played football together, kicking around empty bully-beef cans and using steel helmets as goal posts. The unauthorised truce spread across much of the 500-mile Western Front, where more than a million soldiers were encamped.

Recalling the truce last year, Mr Anderson said: "All I'd heard for two months in the trenches was the hissing, cracking and whining of bullets in flight, machinegun fire and distant German voices.

"But there was a dead silence that morning, right across the land as far as you could see. We shouted 'Merry Christmas', even though nobody felt merry.

"The silence ended early in the afternoon and the killing started again. It was a short peace in a terrible war."

A holder of the Légion d'Honneur, France's highest honour, Mr Anderson received his 19th telegram from the Queen in June this year, but was too frail to take part in the recent Remembrance Day ceremonies.

Speaking two weeks ago from his nursing home in Newtyle, Angus, the former sergeant with the Black Watch, who was also Scotland's oldest man, described himself as "the last man standing".

He said he found the two-minute silence on November 11 "remarkably poignant" because of the "terrible constant noise in the trenches".

"It's special to think that Britain is united in silence remembering a time that I will never forget," said Mr Anderson. "The country stops for a few minutes each year and remembers those who fought and died but there's not a day goes by that I don't think of those I left behind. Young men I went to school with, played football with and trained for war with. All dead, all gone."

The Rev Neil Gardner, of Alyth Parish Church, said that Mr Anderson was a "very gracious and unassuming man" who remained lucid until the end.

"He was the last surviving veteran anywhere to have served in the First World War in 1914 and lived a truly remarkable life," he said.

"Alfred was quite philosophical about his wartime experiences. He took everything in his stride.

"He had a great sense of humour but also a terrific sense of wisdom which came from his great age."

Neil Griffiths, of the Royal British Legion of Scotland, said Mr Anderson was a fine old soldier and a "brilliant example of old world courtliness".

He said: "He was gentle and very humorous, with a quick wit. He used to say until recently that his ambition was to die shot in bed by a jealous lover.

"But I think also there was a great sadness in his heart that he had outlived his generation.

"He was one of those who represented the finest aspects of the Scottish character and his departure is a sad moment for this country."

Mr Anderson's unit, the 5th Battalion of the Black Watch, was one of the first to be sent to France in October 1914 when the First World War broke out. He was billeted in a dilapidated farmhouse away from the front line at the time of the truce.

He had reached the rank of sergeant when he was invalided out of action in 1916 by a shell explosion that left him with serious shrapnel wounds. He later helped to set up Home Guard units during the Second World War.

After the war Mr Anderson married Susan Iddison, a nanny from Ripon, North Yorks, and moved to Scotland where he took over his father's building and joinery business in Newtyle.

They celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary before she died, aged 83, in 1979.

Fiercely proud of his Army service, his Black Watch cap hung over the door of the family home in Alyth, Perthshire, where he lived until September this year.

Two years ago he was visited by the Prince of Wales after it emerged that he had served as batman to Capt Fergus Bowes-Lyon, brother of the late Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.

Mr Anderson is survived by four children, 10 grandchildren, 18 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren.

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