The London Irish “Loos Football,” so named for its role Sept. 25, 1915, opening day of the Battle of Loos, when the London Irish Rifles, 18th Battalion, London Regiment took a football and kicked it ahead of them as they attacked the German lines to the west of the mining town of Loos (photo by Michael St Maur Sheil)
Exhibit documents how soccer bolstered the troops during World War I
The horror of World War I is well-documented at the National WWI Museum and Memorial. This summer, so is the history of WWI soldiers who passionately played football (soccer) to cope with the trauma and, with any luck, survive another day.
Such is the bittersweet remembrance of “The Beautiful Game,” on exhibit at the museum through Sept. 14 in support of the World Cup games in Kansas City.
Featuring absorbing biographies of WWI footballers, rare photographs and films of squads and matches, as well as historic military/football artifacts that linger in the mind, “The Beautiful Game” illustrates how the grinding tragedy of the Great War could be eased and perhaps even briefly transcended by the game that soldiers loved — and lived — to play.
“I’m a big soccer fan, so it was kind of on my radar as something I wanted to do eventually,” says Dr. Christopher Warren, vice-president of collections and senior curator at the National WWI Museum and Memorial. “But then when Kansas City was picked
as a (World Cup) host site and we were going to have the FIFA Fan Fest on our property … it was just perfect timing.”
As shared in the exhibit, the game’s implicit bond was dramatically demonstrated at Christmastime in 1914, when some ravaged battlegrounds on the Western Front, however fleetingly, became common grounds of brotherhood with spontaneous “kick-arounds” between otherwise kill-or-be-killed enemies.
“There’s a lot of mythology behind this, sometimes making it larger than it actually was,” Warren explains. “Other places on the Western Front, they’re still fighting each other. They don’t stop. There’s no camaraderie.”
Yet a couple of impromptu “Christmas Truce” instances rate among the more remarkable stories of the war.
“The most famous one is the Germans begin singing Silent Night on Christmas Eve at nighttime,” Warren says. “And the British start singing … and the next morning you have these white flags come out. And everybody’s kind of feeling each other out. Is this for real? Is this some kind of a ruse? They come out of their trenches and they meet in No Man’s Land and they exchange chocolate and cigarettes and coffee and whatever they have.”
Then a soldier from one side or the other — no one knows for sure — throws out a football.
“They basically had a kick-around,” Warren says. “It wasn’t like an organized game, Germans versus the British type thing, necessarily. It was more of an informal, ‘Hey, let’s kick the ball around a little bit.’ Because it’s a communal experience and it’s a way of not focusing on what they’re going through. They can focus on a shared experience of a game that both
sides love.
“But I can’t imagine being one of those soldiers, because they know at some point this has to end and they have to go back to thinking about killing each other again.”
Perhaps the most remarkable object on display is the ball that was kicked across No Man’s Land by soldiers of the London Irish Regiment while leading an attack during the Battle of Loos in September 1915.
“They’re getting ready to go over the top, with all the fear and trepidation that these guys have,” Warren says. “And (a battalion footballer) decides that he’s going to use this football as kind of a rallying cry. So he says, ‘C’mon, boys! Keep up with me! Pass me the ball!’ And that’s what they do.
“This is the only ball known to still exist that was actually kicked in the battle. It stayed in that regiment as kind of a trophy, a piece of regimental history. It was kept in a little barracks there in London and became kind of revered as this very different type of relic of World War I. We knew of its existence, doing our research, and so we reached out to that regiment, which had donated it to a museum in Northern Ireland.”
Efforts to boost morale on the home front also receive their due in “The Beautiful Game,” including the story of British women who replaced men on factory assembly lines and, more visibly, on factory football teams.
“The women thrive,” Warren says. “They hold matches for sometimes tens of thousands of people. They hold matches to raise money. They hold matches to get men to enlist, to incentivize them. They hold matches against men who are recuperating from wounds — friendly matches, men against women and mixed teams.
“They really are the forerunners of the modern game today. It probably would have happened, regardless, but in a much slower way. Or maybe it wouldn’t have. Who knows what the history would have been without these women setting the standard and showing people, not only that they could play, but that it was entertaining. People wanted to watch that, which is very important.”
“The Beautiful Game” continues at the National WWl Museum and Memorial, 2 Memorial Dr., through Sept. 14. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily except Tuesday. For more information, 816.888.8100 or www.theworldwar.org.
