After the Final Whistle

by Stephen Cooper

  British rugby’s first act of war on 5 August, within twelve hours of its declaration, came from Birkenhead Park: it was the first club to offer its ground and pavilion to the military. That morning the decision was steered through committee by former England captain Percy Kendall, who then promptly rejoined his former local Liverpool regiment in the afternoon. Another England cap at Birkenhead, RFU selector James ‘Bim’ Baxter, ‘went afloat in the RNVR and served afloat to the end.’ E.H.D. Sewell wrote: ‘For instant patriotism, Birkenhead Park RUFC stands out as the most brilliant example of record.’

  Across the Pennines, in Yorkshire’s Wharfedale, Jack King was haymaking on his farm at Ben Rhydding with fellow Headingley forward, Thomas Lumb, an agricultural student whose ‘boundless energy and high spirit’ at Leeds Grammar School had earned him the nickname ‘Busty’ (no, me neither). Out in the field, Tommy, an ‘enthusiastic Territorial in the Yorkshire Hussars of some years standing’,3 was handed his mobilisation papers: ‘Sorry, Jack’, said he, ‘but I’ll have to chuck now, pack up and make a bee line for headquarters – we are called up.’ His friend enquired about the procedure for joining the Hussars, ‘for I intend to come with you’. It was a Boy’s Own adventure.

  Jack left his home on Thursday 6 August, ‘without fuss or show or noise, and with a few instructions to his sisters as to the management of the farm’ (so far so Yorkshire), never dreaming that he would do anything but walk straight into the Yeomanry. But Jack King was rejected by King’s Regulations: he was an inch short of the 5ft 6in required for military service. He grew remarkably quickly and three days later became a trooper in His Majesty’s Army: it was 9 August, the same date he would die two years later at the Somme. His friend Corporal Busty Lumb died in May 1915 at Ypres, aged 22; his body could not be found, but his name can – on the Menin Gate Memorial. Major Lane-Fox of A Squadron wrote of him: ‘I had only recently promoted him to Corporal, and no promotion ever gave greater satisfaction throughout the Squadron, for there was no more rightly popular man.’

  Frank Mellish, still at South African College School in Cape Town, was summoned to the headmaster’s study. Although he could not recall committing any heinous crime, the 18-year-old took the precaution,

  to slip my atlas inside the seat of my pants and unwittingly adopting the gait of a stiff-legged cowboy, did as I was bid. In the tense, curt Scots manner of our Headmaster we were told that Germany had declared war on Britain and that automatically meant on South Africa as well. We, being members of the Union Defence Force, were to report immediately to the Drill Hall, collect our uniform and be sent wherever we were required.4

  Once Bank Holiday Monday was over, a total of 8,193 men enlisted between Tuesday 4 and Saturday 8 August. Many of the most eager were rugby players: one who signed his attestation papers on Wednesday at the Artists’ Rifles’ HQ was Rosslyn Park’s Eric Fairbairn, an Australian-born oarsman and Olympic medallist; another was clubmate, Robert Dale.5 Charles Alvarez Vaughan, a Middlesex and Barbarian winger of rare pace, working in Colombia on his family tobacco estates, received a cable requiring him to take up his post in the Reserve. On 17 August, poet Nowell Oxland took his army medical in Oxford, where he was studying. The number of volunteers climbed exponentially: by the third week of August, it was 49,000, by the fourth 63,000, and in the first week of September, it reached almost 175,000.

  In Scotland, on 10 August, the SFU donated £500 to the National Relief Fund, offered the Inverleith ground to the military, and asked club members ‘to do something for which the training in discipline and self-control given by our Game has fitted them’. By the time of its 8 October AGM, many attendees were in khaki. President Dr James Greenlees, a Lorettonian and four-time Cambridge Blue with seven Scots caps, sent apologies – he was with the RAMC in an army field hospital in France. Twenty-four clubs provided figures – out of 817 players, 638 had enlisted. In Ireland, the Irish Rugby Union Volunteer Corps was established before the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) had landed in France. England’s RFU, wrong-footed at holiday time by the threat posed to the forthcoming season by this national emergency and by players’ headlong rush to join up, did not immediately cancel fixtures but issued a circular to clubs on 13 August:

  The Rugby Union are glad to know that a large number of their players have already volunteered for service. They express a hope that all Rugby players will join some Force in their own town or county.

  Nine days later scrum half Gordon Bayly of Rosslyn Park and his pilot Vincent Waterfall, another ‘keen sportsman’, were the first British airmen to be shot down by enemy fire on 22 August, as they reconnoitred German columns moving on Mons. The unimaginable scale of the mechanised slaughter to come was measured by the death of 27,000 French soldiers on that single August day.

  Gloucester Football Club reservists like Boer War veteran and hooker Fred Goulding, ‘A’ team full back William Hancock and centre Bernard Roach had been immediately recalled to the Colours; Hancock and Roach were dead by Christmas. It was clear within days that a New Army was needed and Kitchener’s famous finger was pointed; on 28 August, at a recruitment drive at Gloucester’s Shire Hall, Major Collett called for twenty-five enlistees to join the territorial 5th Gloucestershires, to bring the battalion up to strength. Between 300 and 400 men rushed the platform, led by a rugby player:

  … a tremendous cheer went up when Sid Smart, the Gloucester footballer and English International took his place on the platform and similar demonstrations were accorded to the Captain of the Gloucester football team, [Lionel] Hamblin and his colleagues, Albert Cook and [William] Washbourn.6

  Most Gloucester FC players joined the 5th; faced with its players marching to war, the club had little choice. On 2 September, it issued a statement:

  … practically the whole of the playing members have enlisted but in any case the Committee would not have felt justified in fulfilling the fixtures even if the players were available owing to the rapid change of the situation in connection with the war.7

  Local newspaper The Citizen announced that its sporting edition would no longer be published; any games played would be considered unpatriotic and would not be reported in its pages. Yorkshire’s Committee met on 31 August for the first time since the declaration and passed a resolution that ‘all football in the county be suspended during the continuance of the war, and we strongly appeal to our players to join some unit for the defence of the country’.

  On Saturday 5 September, with most players and clubs already ahead of them, the RFU cancelled all matches for the 1914–15 season. In Glasgow that Saturday, instead of preparing for an afternoon match, the Honorary Secretary of the Academicals, John Macgill, was typing a flurry of urgent correspondence. In his haste, secretarial accuracy deserted him. He replied to Dr James Nicoll, who had offered funding in the current crisis:

  As I expected, the Meeting on Thursday decided to cancel all Football fixtures. The Meeting thereafter considered what could be done in the club to further recruiting. It was resolved to try to raise an Academical Company to form part of the battalion of commercial men which is being got up by the Chamber of Commerce. So far I have got about 35 names. With regard to your very kind offer to contribute to any expense which might be incurred in connection with the formation and equipment of an Acamedical [sic] Corps, of course with our present scheme we do not anticipate any outlays, but at some future stage there may be some scheme of training Acamedicals for which funds will be required.

  He wrote next to A.D. Lawson, his ‘oppo’ at Gala Football Club to cancel their forthcoming fixture. He then confirmed to one of those ‘35 names’, William Mercer Alexander, that:

  I have your wire and confirm in reply that I have entered your name in the Academical contingent being formed for services in Kitchener’s Army. The idea is that our contingent, the members of which will be kept together, forms a unit of the Battalion of Commercial men.8

  As Second Lieutenant Alexander, 17th Highland Light Infantry, William would lose
his life on the first day of the Somme; he rests in name only on the Thiepval Memorial.

  In Ireland, Harry Magrath, of Cork Constitution, younger brother of Irish cap Dickie, was elected captain for the 1914–15 season. When war was declared, it was agreed to play charity matches only: the last played was the Charity Cup final against University College Cork on 19 December, which Constitution won 5–3. Thus Harry had the pleasure of captaining his team to its last success before all rugby activity was suspended for the duration. Serjeant Magrath, 24th Royal Fusiliers, met his death at Beaumont-Hamel on the Somme in November 1916.

  Football, meanwhile, attracted nationwide derision and critical column inches in equal measure for its ‘unpatriotic’ stance. Professional clubs saw no good commercial reason to cancel players’ annual contracts for a war that would assuredly be over by Christmas, and kept the turnstiles clicking; the players just wanted to earn a crust – the first Lamborghini was not built until 1963 so what else was there? Not only players but spectators too were accused of shirking:

  Every club which employs a professional player is bribing a needed recruit to refrain from enlistment, and every spectator who pays his gate money is contributing so much towards a German victory.9

  Recruiters were frustrated in their September efforts outside football grounds where ‘the results were grievously disappointing’:

  There is apparently something about the professional football match spectator which makes a recruiting appeal a failure. At the Chelsea ground … not a man was induced to join. At other football grounds appeals were made, and with equal ill-success. This failure contrasts strongly with the wholesale volunteering which has distinguished the performers and the devotees of other forms of sport. Rugby Union clubs, cricket elevens, and rowing clubs throughout the kingdom have poured men into the ranks. The dismal story of Saturday’s recruiting is relieved by one man who volunteered at the Woolwich Arsenal ground.10

  You can almost hear them chanting, ‘One-Nil to the Arsenal’. When Saturday came, women with white feathers were the only ones who did a roaring trade, often mistakenly picking on soldiers in mufti simply hoping for some afternoon entertainment while in training, recuperating from wounds or (less likely) on leave.

  Bolts of fury were hurled at football from press and pulpit alike. On 30 August, the Reverend Youard, clearly a Christian of the muscular persuasion, addressed his flock at St Swithun’s. He considered the balls of the battlefield, how they roll not, neither do they spin, except in oval shape, and urged:

  … every able-bodied young man in East Grinstead to offer yourself without delay in the service of your country. The Welsh Rugby Union Committee has passed a resolution declaring it the duty of all football players to join immediately. Blackheath Rugby Football Club has cancelled all its matches for the same reason. That is the right spirit. I hope it will be imitated by our own clubs. Go straight to the recruiting officer and offer yourself. That is the plain duty of every able-bodied young man today.

  A letter from ‘A Soldier in France’ complained that ‘hundreds of thousands of able-bodied young roughs are watching hirelings play football while others are serving their country’. On 6 September, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in a recruiting speech, borrowed liberally from Ecclesiastes when he addressed footballers:

  There was a time for all things in the world. There was a time for games, there was a time for business, and there was a time for domestic life. There was a time for everything, but there is only time for one thing now, and that thing is war. If the cricketer had a straight eye let him look along the barrel of a rifle. If a footballer had strength of limb let them serve and march in the field of battle.

  They did not turn: a propaganda poster lamented ‘When will they ever come?’ Another man of God, the Bishop of Chelmsford, preaching a pointed sermon:

  … in an address on Duty, spoke of the magnificent response that had been made to the call to duty from the King. All must play their part. They must not let their brothers go to the front and themselves remain indifferent. He felt that the cry against professional football at the present time was right. He could not understand men who had any feeling, any respect for their country, men in the prime of life, taking large salaries at a time like this for kicking a ball about. It seemed to him something incongruous and unworthy.11

  You might very well think that, my Lord Bishop; I couldn’t possibly comment.

  Frederick Charrington, scion of the brewing family, accused West Ham United players of being effeminate and cowardly, getting paid to play while others fought. Celebrated all-round sportsman, C.B. Fry, Corinthian legend and FA Cup finalist with Southampton, called for football to be abolished: all professional contracts should be annulled and no one below forty should be allowed to attend matches.

  In December, William Joynson Hicks12 established the 17th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment, which quickly became known as the ‘Football Battalion’. Within weeks he had a full complement of 600 men; few were footballers, most being fans who wanted to slope arms with their idols. Mr E. Cunliffe Owen wrote to the Daily Telegraph from the Hotel Cecil, under the heading ‘The Footballers’ Chance’:

  Sir – Without entering into the controversy as to whether football should cease or not, may I point out that there is an honourable alternative for the man who ought to serve his country and yet must play and talk football – namely, to join the 2nd Sportsman’s Battalion Royal Fusiliers, the battalion which is now recruiting at this hotel. The corps already contains well-known footballers, and friends joining at the same time, who have interests in common, can be kept together, live in the same hut, and so on. They need not altogether sacrifice their love of sport while training for the great international now being played in northern France.

  But as late as March 1915, only 122 of 1,800 registered professional footballers were reported to have joined the Colours. The public voted with their feet and gates fell by more than half; the Football Association finally bowed to popular pressure and suspended the game on 23 April, the suitably patriotic St George’s Day.

  Amateur rugby by contrast rushed to war: 90 per cent of players were in uniform by the end of 1914. Mr Edward Roper of Liverpool FC proudly told the Daily Post on 1 September that ‘between 50 & 60 of the club’s players had joined and there was not a player left’. By December, recruiting posters hailed the ‘Rugby Union Footballers Doing Their Duty’ as a ‘Glorious Example to British Athletes’. The Times thundered: ‘Every player who represented England in Rugby International matches last year has joined the Colours.’ Indeed they had, and twenty-six England men would die over the next four years, with a twenty-seventh a week after the Armistice. Leonard Tosswill, of Bart’s and Middlesex, ever-present in England’s 1903 side, an RAMC medic and later eye-surgeon, declared that a man ‘who had learned to “play the game” on football grounds might be trusted to do no less in the greater game of war [and] answered the call of his country as he would to the whistle without questions’.13

  The approbation of rugby’s patriotic leadership by War Office propagandists and opinion formers in the national press was even extended to the enemy. Or at least to one representative of the otherwise ‘vile Hun’ who showed himself to be ‘a jolly good sport’ of the right sort. The German cruiser SMS Emden had sunk 74,000 tons of shipping in the Far East; one night HMS Yarmouth, escorting a merchantman out of Singapore, reportedly received an unexpected signal:

  ‘Captain von Müller of the Emden and the ward-room mess send their compliments, and would be obliged if the Yarmouth would let them have the result of the inter-regimental Rugby Football match.’ The result of the match, which had taken place that afternoon, was duly given together with the intimation that it would not be long before British Sportsmen in the East had the pleasure of the Captain’s company at all field and track events.14

  When Emden was finally sunk by HMAS Sydney, her captain was mourned: ‘It is almost in our heart to regret that the Emden has been captured and destroyed; we certainly ho
pe that Commodore Karl von Muller, her commander, has not been killed, for, as the phrase goes, he has shown himself an officer and a gentleman.’15

  There never was a Rugby Battalion, as there was a Footballers’ or Sportsman’s (17th and 23rd Middlesex). The reason was simple: all the rugby players had already joined up and were dispersed among the Regular and Territorial regiments. Nonetheless representations were made, and on 9 September, RFU Secretary C.J.B. Marriott issued another letter:

  RUGBY FOOTBALL UNION AND LORD KITCHENER’S ARMY

  On reference to the authorities, the Rugby Football Union find it is not feasible to form a separate battalion of Rugby men. They have received, however, answers from various Commanding Officers saying that they will gladly accept for their Regiments a company about (120) of Rugby men, who could be enlisted together.

  A very large number of our players have already responded to the previous letter of my Committee and joined some Corps, but it is probable there may be some others ready to enlist. I will therefore enter names sent in to me, and as soon as I have enrolled sufficient to form a company, will send them on to a Commanding Officer for enlistment as a Football Company in Lord Kitchener’s Army.