THE
FOOTBALLER OF LOOSTHE
FOOTBALLER OF LOOS
The
1914 Christmas Truce has become the most enduring episode of that curiously
companionable combination of sport and war. Regularly recounted or referred to
in television programmes, books, feature films and even a pop music video, it
was Christmas Eve, the singing of carols and a game of football played in
No-Man’s Land. Then there is Billy Nevill, the British army captain on the
Somme in 1916, who, on the first day of that shattering massacre, led his
company towards the enemy lines dribbling a football. Yet, the first Tommy on
the Western Front to kick a football in anger remains firmly on the bench. To
all intents and purposes, the story of the Footballer of Loos died with former
London Irish Rifleman, Frank Edwards, in January 1964 when Bert Coward, himself
a former rifleman, told the News of The World: ‘It’s a pile of piffle
and nonsense that Edwards rallied the men through his football.’
As the
assistant curator of the London Irish Regimental Museum and Secretary of the
London Irish Rifles he knew for sure that there was not a living man who could
say they knew of the actual man who kicked off the ball. A colleague pointed to
the football bearing the inscription etched in chalk ‘Loos 1915’, believed
to be the actual ball kicked into No Man’s Land and which remains today a
prized possession of the London Irish. Both men confirmed that nobody was given
the credit for kicking off the football, and former rifleman Walter Dalby
agreed. From his home in Harlington, Middlesex, he spoke up in Edwards’
defence, declaring that he was in no doubt that Frank was the first solider to
kick the ball. ‘There’s no question about it,’ he retaliated, ‘because I
was the second man to kick it. I was 17 at the time. We all had footballs, but a
Lieutenant Dale put a bullet through mine, saying it would distract us. He
didn’t get Frankie’s however. Frankie pulled out the football just as we
were going over the top. He took the first kick, and sent it to me.’
Walter
or ‘Jimmy’ Dalby appears in the definitive, but unpublished, history of the
1/18th Battalion London Regiment (London Irish Rifles) assembled by
former Second Lieutenant S F Major over the course of some 40 years. Derived
from first-hand accounts and recollections of comrades ‘as were available at
the time,’ work on the history began in the 1930s as a supplement to the
History of the 47th (London) Division published in 1922. The
demanding task involved much cross checking amongst comrades for correctness and
approval and was only completed and sent to the London Irish Regimental Museum
in 1973, nine years after Frank Edwards had died.
S F
Major first told the story of ‘Loos and the early morning football match
there’ to readers of the London Evening News in a full-length feature
article celebrating the 20th anniversary of the battle in 1935. Like
Edwards and the rest of the battalion, Major
took part in the weeks of intense training behind the lines, rehearsing the
smashing of German defences in a vast area marked out for practice with tape and
coloured flags. The final rehearsal went well, but ‘bore no resemblance to the
horror of the reality.’ It was about 11.15 pm on the night of 24 September
1915 when the whole battalion moved off to the trenches.
The London Irish moved up under cover of the noisy darkness from Les Brebis
where they had been quartered during training.
All were equipped with the weird, goggle-eyed gas masks of grey flannel to pull
over their heads like hoods as protection
against the new weapon, poisonous gas. The biggest artillery barrage in the war
so far begun almost a fortnight earlier had reached staggering
proportions. At 5.50 a.m. the following morning, experts agreed that there was
sufficient wind to send the latest diabolical weapon rolling across No Man’s
Land towards the enemy trenches. A slight westerly wind, with a suggestion of
south in it, was blowing and the division confirmed the release of poisonous gas
for the first time. Soon clouds of smoke and gas were slowly rolling across
towards the Germans.
At
06.00 the officers gave final instructions. The men looked to their rifles,
bayonets, and gas masks. By 06.15 the wind changed again slightly. Gas and smoke
came drifting back, causing the crude gas helmets to be immediately pulled on
and tucked into collars. Many men slow in adjusting their masks fell choking to
the floor of the trench. S F Major then recalled a sight that astonished him.
‘Rifleman Frank Edwards was calmly using valuable breath to blow up a football
as though the matter in hand were going to be a cup-tie! Edwards had conceived
the great idea of dribbling the ball into the enemy’s lines. He had cherished
the notion for some time. It was discussed freely and frowned upon definitely by
authority, so much so that his platoon officer was said to have ordered the ball
to be deflated’. As S F Major recounted to readers of the London Evening
News in 1935, so Edwards confirmed in a BBC interview that same year how
that officer, Mr Dale, ‘got to hear about the ball on the night before the
attack, and I had to let it down. Not that he was ‘windy’; he was the
bravest of all and the youngest, being only 18, I believe. He thought it would
be exposing ourselves to more risk and he knew what we had coming to us in the
morning.’ Edwards then went on to inform listeners how he got the ball out of
his haversack and blew it up with his breath. ‘We managed to get it laced up
just before the artillery started the bombardment. It was like hell let loose,
especially when ‘Jerry’ replied with high explosives, and it was impossible
to hear even shouted orders’. Whatever might happen to the battle, the sight
of British soldiers coolly passing the ball from one to another would, Edwards
thought; give the enemy their biggest shock of the war. ‘Just imagine, as I
did, a party of London Irishmen, with our war cry of ‘Hurroo’ charging
across No Man’s Land passing the ball forward to finish up the mad rush by
leaping into their trench with the rifle and bayonet’.
The
idea continued to fascinate Edwards and he had made up his mind to go through
with it, whatever the consequences. So when the order came to go over the top he
lobbed the ball ahead, as a goalkeeper might fling it back up the field. Some of
his friends, fellow football enthusiasts, spread out like a line of forwards and
went after it - Micky Mileham, Bill
Taylor and Jimmy Dalby were three whose names are linked to the record of this
exploit. A hefty kick came off the
boot of rifleman Mileham who then passed it to Dalby and on to Bill Taylor, all
the while shells bursting among them and shrapnel screaming overhead. The ball
continued in play before the line of charging eerie hooded shapes disappeared
through the drifting, poisonous fog. Where it eventually finished up, Second
Lieutenant Major did not see, but believed it was up by the German wire. For
some of the London Irish who kicked and passed the ball it was the last game
they ever played. Edwards himself failed to reach the enemy lines, going down
wounded, with Micky Mileham stopping to fix the tourniquet that saved his
pal’s life. Mileham listened to Edwards’ recount the ‘thrilling narrative
of the historic act.’ A few weeks later and the two men were reunited after 20
years. Although Mileham had been a teetotaller all those years, one newspaper
reported the two men drinking ‘a hearty toast to each other in a glass of beer
as they relived those tense moments and the renewal of their war-time
friendship’. Also listening from his home in Nottingham had been Captain Dale,
who was given Edwards’ address through the BBC.
More than 61,000 casualties were sustained at the Battle of Loos, over 50,000 of them in the main fighting area between Loos and Givenchy, and the remainder in the subsidiary attacks. Of these, 7,766 men died. Casualties were particularly high among Scots units. Many New Army units, rushed into a battle area for the first time only a matter of days after landing in France, were devastated. A significant proportion of the remaining pre-war regular troops were lost, and more than 2,000 officers were killed or wounded. This irreplaceable asset in experienced men and leaders was a most serious loss to the rapidly diminishing ‘old’ British army So while The Footballer of Loos has become one of the forgotten voices of the First World War, it is as well to keep it in perspective. Suffice to say that in sport there are winners and losers. In some sports there can be a tie. Battles can be won and lost, but in war there are never any winners.
The Football.
©Ed Harris 2007
