IT proved one of the biggest Christmas Day surprises for North-East soldier Geoff Billings.

For the Korean War veteran discovered that communist soldiers had crept through the darkness to hang cards and gifts on the barbed wire that protected the British trenches.

He recalled how his unit woke to find the unexpected delivery on December 25, 1952.

The cards and diaries were sent by the Chinese People's Volunteers and the Korean People's Army.

Mr Billings, who was serving as a private, said the gifts were found after the soldiers returned from a four-hour exercise.

The 72-year-old, of Harbour View, Bedale, North Yorkshire, said he and other members of the 1st Battalion, the Duke of Wellington's Regiment, were very surprised, especially as the communist soldiers had crept right past their position in no man's land.

"Somebody first spotted them hanging on the wire when it started to get light," he said.

"When it was fully light, a soldier went out through the minefield and brought them back.

"They would have had to come right past the positions were we had just been, but we never saw a thing."

However, looking back, Mr Billings does not believe the cards were altogether full of Christmas goodwill.

"The cards contained propaganda, so it wasn't as if they were being nice," he said.

Letters inside highlighted the number of lives lost and urged British soldiers to stop fighting alongside their US counterparts.

He took one card and posted it to his mother back home in England. It is believed that she saw the message's funny side.

Temperatures in the trenches reached -30 degrees that winter.

During nightly observation exercises in no man's land, Mr Billings recalled how he would place a copy of the Darlington and Stockton Times - the sister paper of The Northern Echo - down his trousers for insulation.

The newspaper had been sent out by his mother to keep him up-to-date on local news.

In May 1953, Mr Billings was captured and spent three months in a prisoner-of-war camp.

He was freed a month after the armistice agreement was signed and the Korean War came to an end.

Christmas cards were also sent to Allied troops by enemy forces during the first and second world wars.

In what became the most famous festive gesture ever to take place on the battlefield, German soldiers and the Royal Welsh Fusiliers sang carols before stepping into no man's land for a game of football in northern France in 1915.