Bob Jones is a retired professional geologist and palaeontologist, as well as being a keen amateur historian specialising in the pre-1666 City of London. He writes an excellent blog which can be found at www.lostcityoflondon.co.uk/ and so this interesting history of the 24th (2nd Sportsmen's) Battalion, The Royal Fusiliers, is something of a departure for him.
Dr Jones
explains in his dedication that he had a family interest in writing this book;
his maternal grandfather, Private Charles Reuben Clements served in the
battalion until he suffered serious wounds at the Battle of Havrincourt on 12
September 1918 and spent the remainder of the war in hospitals in the United Kingdom,
before returning to civilian life in 1919The
Sportsmen’s Battalions were an extension of the idea of the various “Pals”
Battalions of Kitchener’s “New Army”, except that these men were not work or
professional colleagues but instead were bound together by their love and
proficiency at the chosen sports.
These Sportsmen’s Battalions were the
brainchild of Emma Pauline Cunliffe-Owen, a remarkable woman of mixed
Anglo-German parentage, who reputedly met two big-game hunters in London
shortly after the outbreak of war and jokingly asked them why they had not
enlisted. When they asked her in reply why she had not raised her own
battalion, the idea stuck!
The 23rd
(1st Sportsmen’s) Battalion had been raised in September 1914 and had quickly
become over-subscribed, leading to the formation of the 24th (2nd Sportsmen’s)
Battalion during the following November. As the Battalion’s title suggests, the
vast majority of the recruits came from a sporting background, or could at
least shoot or ride.
The author
explains that there were three professional footballers amongst the recruits –
Serjeant Adams of Southend United and Fulham, Serjeant Arthur Evans of
Manchester City, Blackpool and Exeter City and Private Henry George Purver of
Brentford – the latter two of whom were killed at Delville Wood on 31st July
1916. Another of the recruits was Charles Percy “Charlie” McGahey, one of
Wisden’s “Cricketers of the Year” in 1901, who played for Essex as well as
representing MCC in two test matches in Australia in 1901-02. In common with
many of his contemporaries, McGahey was also an excellent footballer who
appeared for Millwall, Woolwich Arsenal and Spurs.
We hear of
the Battalion’s training regime and later of their involvement during the
various battles and campaigns of the war on a year-by-year basis and learn of
the casualties inflicted upon the Battalion at each of the battles they were
involved in.
The author
has managed to glean many photographs of the personnel involved in the
narrative and finishes the book with some useful appendices in which we can
read many biographical sketches of the various men who served with the
Battalion, as well as a separate appendix that tells us something of the life
of Charles Reuben “Charlie” Clements, the author’s maternal grandfather,
another accomplished footballer – this time at club level – for Ealing
Wednesday, a team formed largely of shopworkers, who preferred to play on their
early closing day rather than on Saturday, so as not to lose their best day’s
takings.
As one
would expect when considering the author’s background, this is a meticulously
researched and nicely written book that manages to combine the wider history of
the Battalion with some family history and I have no hesitation in commending
it to you. The book is available to buy direct via the author’s website as
detailed above.
Published by Amazon
Available from https://lostcityoflondon.co.uk/books/
Price: £8.99
Softback, pp 296
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