Girdwood, British Library) Wrestling (sometimes on mules) World War I Gurkhas wrestle on the regimental transport mules.
WARFARE 1917 FUNNY GAMES PATCH
The patch made a bad football pitch, but the letter-writer won, so he wasn’t sore about it. One soldier wrote in a 1915 letter that his unit played against a rival battery in an old cabbage patch. The famous Christmas Truce soccer game was part of this tradition, but games were commonly played between allies rather than adversaries. American and European football were both played in the trenches, though it’s obvious that European football would be more popular everywhere but the American Expeditionary Force. Michael of the Christmas Truce created for “The Illustrated London News”) Football (American and European)įootball was also popular, but was obviously a team-based event that lent itself well to one unit playing against another. The “Christmas Truce” took place around Christmas, 1914, and included some sports events, like football matches. They biffed at one another until neither could stand, it was awfully funny.” The latter was great especially the bout between a Farrier Sergeant and a cook’s mate. One British soldier wrote: “We are having a good time here in the way of concerts, sports, boxing tournaments etc. Soldiers talked about the fights in letters, and it seems that the more violent the fight was, the better. These could be tournaments where one company or platoon fought another, but they were also often just quick, relatively impromptu matchups. Unsurprisingly, some of the top activities were a little violent, and boxing was a top activity. Unless there’s another link cited, the letters are pulled from this digital file from the British National Archives.)Ī large crowd of World War One soldiers watching two boxers sparring in a ring during the boxing championships at the New Zealand Divisional Sports at Authie, France, in July 1918. (Note that this article uses information from the letters of British soldiers written in 1915. Here are six games and other activities they turned to: And it takes a lot to keep your morale up and your terror down when your work hours are filled with enemy mortars, artillery, and machine guns. 100 years ago, our great-great grandfathers were in the trenches of France, and fighters on both sides of the war had to while away their time when they weren’t actively working or fighting.
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