The 'Great' War Cricket and

Elmswell

"The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time".Sir Edward GreyBritish Foreign Secretary

Outbreak of War

Play Up and Play the Game

Cricket continued after war was declared but the likes of W G Grace encouraged more cricketers to enlist:

"There are so many who are young and able, and still hanging back. I should like to see all first-class cricketers of suitable age set a good example…".

The Rush to Enlist

By January 2015 over a million enlisted - including many cricketers who had "exchanged flannels for khaki; they are playing in the most important game that has ever claimed their attention".

More Than a Game

The War Office was quick to realise young men would be keen to serve alongside top cricketers and sportsmen…

Cricket Had to Stop

"There is to be no cricket season… we cannot play cricket this year because it would not be cricket".(The Globe, January 2015)

"Cricketers… can help to bowl out the Germans, who started hitting hard before some of their opponents could take their places in the field. The Allies are hoping to ‘have a knock’ on the other side of the Rhine".

(Athletic News, December 1914)

'Golden Age' Cut ShortThe early 20th century - the 'Golden Age' of cricket - was infused with a nostalgic yearning. Cricket was played according to 'the spirit of the game' and replete with both dashing amateurs and skilled professionals - yet many of cricket's finest would never make their way out to the middle again…

Cricket at the Front

Unsuitable terrain and lack of cricket gear proved no obstacle.

In 1915 the South Staffs regiment played "with a cork ball, a pick helve, and an old periscope" - the latter being the wicket.

Thomas Manning, Northants, encouraged his men to play "under any and all circumstances" - they did - "with tops of hop poles as bats, bully beef tins as the wickets, and a ball of the tennis type".

Cricket at the Front

Amidst artillery fire at Vermelles a game used a bird cage containing a dead carrier pigeon as a wicket - "22 hardy northern men were able to give an unhurried but determined exhibition of the game’s finer points" - abandoned when bullets began landing dangerously close to the pitch!

Hastily-made graves in the ruins at Vermelles

Importance of Cricket

England bowler Fred Root wrote that military leaders valued cricket at the front "the game played its part in keeping our warriors fit and happy under conditions most impossible…".

At home, badges were sold to raise money for the wounded

…and charity cricket matches played - attracting royal and political spectators.

A bat sent to Sgt. J Piggott on the front line in France in 1917 - it was pierced by shrapnel before being used so Sgt Piggott sent it back for a replacement!!

(Now in the MCC Museum)

Cricket in the Trenches

A match played by the Australian Light Horse Brigade in full view of the Turks - before heavy shelling drove the soldiers to cover. It was part of an attempt to protect Allied troops in their withdrawal from the peninsula.

Gallipoli

Cricket at the Front

Siegfried Sassoon recalled a game at the time of the Battle of Arras using a stump, wooden ball and old brazier as the wicket.

1918 at La Marraine Camp - 12th Lancs. Fusiliers paused in defence of the enemy’s final offensive to stage a weekend tournament of limited-overs matches!

Officers demanded proper training in grenade handling. Cricket bowling action became standard for the No. 5 Mills grenade - the optimum range being 22-yards (length of a cricket pitch).

Cricket Skills Employed

Poem praising the valour shown by cricketers ('cricket balls' being grenades):The first to climb the parapet With 'cricket balls' in either hand; The first to vanish in the smoke Of God-forsaken No Man's Land…

Full sixty yards I've seen them throw With all that nicety of aim They learned on British cricket-fields. Ah, bombing is a Briton's game!

"The Cricketers of Flanders"

Cricket featured in Ruhleben Internment Camp (near Berlin) - detainees were men of the Allied Powers stuck or stranded in Germany at the outbreak of war plus captured North Sea trawlermen - the camp held between 4,000 and 5,500 prisoners.

Cricket - Aid to Morale

Cricket - Aid to Morale

Women's Auxiliary Army Corps and convalescent soldiers playing cricket in the camp at Étaples in France on 1 May 1918.

Cricket in the Trenches

Many in the trenches left behind photographs "typically showing a dozen or so men standing with a… grim cheerfulness, holding up cricket bats and balls… like a picture in a team annual…".

Death knew no status. Men who graced the game from Lord’s to the most rustic village track were being taken every day.

Tyne Cot Cemetery

In Ypres Salient the largest Commonwealth military cemetery in the world: 11,954 burials including 8,367 unnamed.

Tyne Cot Cemetery

"I have… asked myself whether there can be more potent advocates of peace upon Earth… than this massed multitude of silent witnesses to the desolation of war".

King George Vwhen visiting in 1922

The Cross of Sacrifice

In 1934 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (President of Turkey) wrote a moving tribute to mothers of Allied soldiers killed by the Turks at Gallipoli:

"your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well".

No Sides in Death

The Atatürk sentiments echo elsewhere. Neuville-Saint-Vaast hosts the largest German cemetery in France - 44,833 burials.

No Sides in DeathLangemark German Cemetery in Belgium, resting place of 44,061. Especially moving - the statue of four mourners watching solemnly over so many.

The cemetery outside Mons, dedicated to Anglo-German reconciliation, houses the dead of both nations.

St Symphorien Cemetery

Death and Life

Individual stories are typically poignant. England player Major Booth (his name, not rank) was killed in the Somme. A young Yorkshire cricketer, himself hit by shrapnel, nursed Booth through his final moments - but forced to abandon him in a rat-infested crater.

Booth’s body was not recovered for nine months… only being identified by the MCC cigarette case in his pocket.

Death and Life

Lionel Tennyson - mentioned in despatches twice and three times wounded - was left with only one good hand but went on to captain England.

W B Burns - one of few to achieve a hat-trick and century in the same game - killed in 1916. He was such a terrifying fast bowler that Hampshire's George Brown said "He'll kill someone one day!"

Death and LifeEngland spinner Colin Blythe - one of the finest bowlers of the time. When his brother fell at the Somme, Blythe volunteered for the front in his place - to be killed a year later at Passchendaele. A bat and cricket ball always lie next to his grave.

Death and Life

Percy Jeeves played just 50 matches - one seen by P G Wodehouse who immortalised his name. Taking over 100 first-class wickets in 1913 he was tipped for greatness - but another Somme victim - his body never recovered. "Even in the trenches, Jeeves was known for his impeccable grooming…".

Dashing England amateur Kenneth Hutchings, an Ashes centurion - blown apart in the trenches at Ginchy in 1916.

Death and Life

Most towns and villages were touched by grief. Fatalities included popular cricketers like Arthur Collins whose 628 not out in 1899 is still the highest individual score ever recorded - killed in 1914 at Ypres.

Great Leveller

Such cricketers "were the superstar sportsmen of their day but when they got to the trenches, their fame didn’t matter…".

Disabilities

Cricket also lost those injured. Two million British servicemen were disabled by the War. Thousands of survivors were physically and mentally impaired, like Frank Chester and Harry Lee.

DisabilitiesChester - the most talented teenager cricket had seen - at 17 the youngest to score a county century. He lost his right arm in Salonika and suffered terrible psychological problems but later became the finest umpire in the world.

Lee - given up for dead, lying for three days in No Man's Land. A miracle recovery left him with a pronounced limp - but he later scored double-centuries for Middlesex, once took eight wickets in an innings and won a Test cap.

Inconceivable Death Toll

888,246 British and Commonwealth servicemen were killed - most in the mud and horror of the fields in Flanders.

Men from all walks of life and of all ages.

Jasper Richardson - the oldest known British battle death - killed in 1918 just days from his 69th birthday.

John Condon 14 - believed the youngest Allied soldier killed but now known to have lied about his age. His grave still an important reminder of all those underage (some 250,000) who joined the army and lost their lives.

Young and Old

John Parr - known as the first British soldier to die - shot two days before fighting began at Mons. It is not known by whom or why…

First and Last

George Ellison died just 90 minutes before the Armistice came into effect in 1918. He was not alone - that day saw almost 11,000 casualties in the final hours and minutes of the War.

St Symphorien Cemetery

By sheer coincidence Parr (left) and Ellison (right) lie feet apart in the same cemetery. Their stories illustrate the horror faced by ordinary citizens who became heroes in the 'war to end all wars'.

Late in all Respects

10.58am on 11 November 1918 - a mere two minutes before the Armistice took effect - George Price became the final Commonwealth soldier to be killed in the War itself…

Why the Poppy?

The scarlet corn poppy grows abundantly on barren battlefields. Its significance as a memorial to the fallen realised by John McCrae in his poem "In Flanders Fields". The poppy came to represent the immeasurable sacrifice made by his comrades and a lasting memorial to all those who died.

"In Flanders fields the poppies blowBetween the crosses, row on row,That mark our place…

If ye break faith with us who dieWe shall not sleep, though poppies growIn Flanders fields."

"In Flanders Fields"

One Was Too Many…

37 million military and civilian casualties in the War - 16.5 million deaths and 20 million wounded and injured - one of the deadliest conflicts in human history.

They Played the Game

Cricket deaths paled against the total human toll yet decimated the game itself. "Village cricketers… county cricketers, cricketers from all corners of the Empire: they fell by the hundred of thousand in the filthy mud at Ypres, at Loos, at Arras, at the Somme…".

(David Frith, Author and Historian)

They Played the Game

In particular, some 4,000 cricketers and officials of all standards signed-up… and died.

12 Test players were killed - from just three countries with Test status at the time.

210 of 278 professionals answered the call of their country - 34 never came back.

290 first-class cricketers were killed.

Village Match: 100 Years On

3 August 1914: Lee CC v Manor House - rain stopped play. The captains vowed to finish the game at the earliest… but next day war was declared - both men perished in the trenches. In commemoration the clubs completed the match in August 2014.

"If the war had been lost, a whole traditional way of life would have been lost… village cricket may not have survived".

War and Elmswell

The Cricket Club existed in the 1890s; likewise 1910 but there is no record of it between 1914 and 1924. Did our village cricket escape the War? Did any of those pictured or listed on the card fight? Possibly… who knows?

War and Elmswell

Elmswell itself did not escape. Listed in Church: the 119 who went to war and returned - and the 29 killed.

A substantial contribution and toll from such a small population…

Death Knows No Sides

A diary entry shortly before her death reads: "One day… there will be an end to all wars… It will need much hard work... The important thing, until that happens, is to hold one’s banner high and to struggle... Without struggle there is no life".

The son of sculptor Käthe Kollwitz was killed after two days at the front - prompting her compelling tribute "The Grieving Parents" - her and her husband mourning on their knees.

Cricket and War

"Perhaps the final lesson of 1914-1918 is of man’s continued capacity both for homicidal destruction and higher functions like cricket, and that, thankfully, the game itself still tends to be regularly renewed even in the direst circumstances".

Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing

ONLY WHO IS LEFT

WAR DOES NOT DETERMINEWHO IS RIGHT…

When you go home, tell them of us and say

For their tomorrow, we gave our today

When you go home, tell them of us and say

For their tomorrow, we gave our today

Lest We

Forget