The lamps are going out all over Europe we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime Sir Edward Grey British 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 ID: 533988
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Slide1
The 'Great' War Cricket and ElmswellSlide2
"The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our
life-time".Sir Edward GreyBritish Foreign SecretaryOutbreak of WarSlide3
Play Up and Play the GameCricket 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…". Slide4
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".Slide5
More Than a Game
The War Office was quick to realise young
men would be keen to serve alongside top cricketers and sportsmen… Slide6
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
)Slide7
'
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… Slide8
Cricket at the FrontUnsuitable 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
".Slide9
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 VermellesSlide10
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. Slide11
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 TrenchesSlide12
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.
GallipoliSlide13
Cricket at the FrontSiegfried 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!Slide14
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 EmployedSlide15
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"Slide16
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 MoraleSlide17
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.Slide18
Cricket in the TrenchesMany 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.Slide19
Tyne Cot Cemetery
In Ypres Salient the largest Commonwealth military cemetery in the world: 11,954 burials including 8,367 unnamed.Slide20
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 V
when visiting in 1922
The Cross of SacrificeSlide21
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 DeathSlide22
The
Atatürk sentiments echo elsewhere. Neuville-Saint-Vaast hosts the largest German cemetery in France - 44,833 burials.No Sides in Death
Langemark
German
Cemetery in Belgium, resting place of 44,061. Especially moving - the statue
of four mourners
watching solemnly
over so
many.Slide23
The cemetery outside Mons, dedicated to Anglo-German reconciliation, houses the dead of both nations.
St Symphorien CemeterySlide24
Death and LifeIndividual 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. Slide25
Death and LifeLionel 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
!" Slide26
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. Slide27
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.Slide28
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. Slide29
Great LevellerSuch cricketers "
were the superstar sportsmen of their day but when they got to the trenches, their fame didn’t matter…". Slide30
DisabilitiesCricket 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. Slide31
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
.Slide32
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.Slide33
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 OldSlide34
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
. Slide35
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'.Slide36
Late in all Respects10.58am 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…Slide37
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. Slide38
"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"Slide39
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.Slide40
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)Slide41
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.Slide42
Village Match: 100 Years On3 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
". Slide43
War and ElmswellThe 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?Slide44
War and ElmswellElmswell 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…Slide45
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.Slide46
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 MissingSlide47
ONLY WHO IS LEFT
WAR DOES NOT DETERMINEWHO IS RIGHT…Slide48
When you go home, tell them of us and say
For their tomorrow, we
gave our todaySlide49
When you go home, tell them of us and say
For their tomorrow, we
gave our todaySlide50
Lest We Forget