One Hundred Years Ago

Cricket, death and a tale of belated remembrance.

Mike Atherton.

The Times.

Monday, 23 March 2020.

PTG 3061-15161.

On the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the First World War, I wrote a piece about a Yorkshire and England cricketer called Major Booth (Major being his given name). Researching cricketers who had died in the war, I came across this incredibly moving story about Booth, who died in a shell hole in the arms of the man, Abe Waddington, who would go on take his place in the championship-winning Yorkshire team after that war.

It is the piece I am most proud of because of what happened afterwards. A great nephew of Booth’s contacted me and wanted to know why Booth had not been commemorated at Lord’s, even though he had played for the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC). In fact, an MCC cigarette case was the only reason they were able to identify Booth’s body after his death at the Somme.

This was a puzzle to me, because there are rolls of honours at Lord’s on the southern staircase commemorating the 612 MCC members who died in war. There was, however, an anomaly. Because Booth was a professional cricketer, and because professionals could not become members of MCC until 1968, six years after the abolition of amateur status, Booth had not been so commemorated. He had played for MCC but was not a member.

It struck me that if that was the case for Booth, it would be the case for others. I contacted Colin Maynard, the assistant secretary of MCC, who found a dozen other men in the same situation, eight of whom had died in the First World War, four in the Second World War. Their stories were often very moving, such as FP Hardy of Somerset, a survivor of Verdun, who killed himself at King’s Cross Station because he could not face returning to the Western Front.

Four years after this piece was written, a very moving ceremony and dinner was held at Lord’s to belatedly recognise the 13 players involved, among them Colin Blythe, Kent and England, and Hedley Verity, Yorkshire and England (PTG 3054-15126, 19 March 2020), who, like Booth, represented MCC but because of their professional status were not members of the club. Representatives of all the armed forces were present and I was honoured to give the speech.

Booth was an all-rounder, a brisk swing and seam bowler and a batsman good enough to have scored a double hundred against Worcestershire. Having made his trial debut for Yorkshire in 1908, and for England on the tour of South Africa in 1913-14, he was in his cricketing prime. Nobody in England took more wickets in the summer of 1914, the year he was made a Wisden Cricketer of the Year. A long career beckoned until Lord Kitchener pointed his finger.

The recruitment office in Leeds was in Hanover Square and, in August 1914, Booth signed up straightaway, telling contemporaries that “it is our duty; we cannot do anything else”. By September, 1,275 men had been recruited into the 15th Service Battalion (1st Leeds), The West Yorkshire Regiment (Prince Wales Own) — otherwise known as the Leeds Pals.

These pals trained in the Yorkshire Dales for two months, and in December 1915 they sailed for Suez and Egypt. In March 1916, they set sail back to Marseilles, took the train to Pont-Remy five days later and then marched north to Bertrancourt, arriving on 29 March. By 30 June they were ready and waiting for the big push at what became known as the Battle of the Somme, the important strategic town of Serre, half a mile across no man’s land, their target.

German machineguns were embedded deeply in wooden and concrete shelters and many of them survived the lengthy eight-day bombardment. Within moments of the whistle sounding the advance, there was carnage. According to one witness, the advancing men were knocked down “like tin soldiers swept with a stick” and in that first hour alone roughly a quarter of the Leeds Pals engaged in the battle had died. Few made it to the German lines; those who did found themselves enmeshed in barbed wire and were finished off by German patrols later that same day. Another witness recorded the lines of dead like “swathes of cut corn at harvest time”.

The British Official History records the valour of these Pals battalions sent to their destruction on a day that accounted for 20,000 British soldiers — their “magnificent gallantry, discipline and determination” in the face of machinegun fire.  Booth was in charge of the number ten machinegun team. After urging on a Pal who had been hit by shrapnel, Booth was wounded, taking shrapnel to the shoulder and chest, so he had no choice but to take cover in one of two shell holes thereabouts. Mortally wounded, in the shell hole he remained.

Following behind the Leeds Pals were the Bradford Pals, among their number a promising 21-year-old cricketer called Abe Waddington. Waddington became an outstanding all-round sportsman, playing golf for Yorkshire — he played twice in Open qualifiers — as well as playing in goal for Bradford City and Halifax Town. He played cricket for Yorkshire after the war and, eventually, for England, with whom he travelled to Australia in 1920-21 with J. W. H. T. Douglas’s hapless touring team.

Like Booth, Waddington was injured during the advance, taking shrapnel to his legs and hands. He, too, took shelter in a shell hole, amazingly the same one where Booth lay dying. Booth was something of a hero to Waddington, who had seen Booth play before the war, and, more recently, during interbrigade matches. Waddington nursed Booth in his arms — as tenderly, one imagines, as the horrific conditions would allow — until Booth passed away. As night fell, Waddington was rescued, but Booth’s body resided where it lay.

Not surprisingly, the memory of those few hours, in particular the sight of rats tearing away at Booth’s dead body as Waddington was taken away on a stretcher, haunted Waddington for the rest of his life. It was not until nine months later that Booth’s body was found, and even then only because an MCC cigarette case was found in the pocket of a tunic. Nothing else was identifiable.

Booth’s remains lie in a grave in Serre Road Cemetery Number One, along with 2,411 others, many of them unidentified. He is also one of five Yorkshire cricketers commemorated on a plaque just inside the Hutton Gates at Headingley, as well as at the church in Pudsey, west Yorkshire, home of his Pudsey St Lawrence club.

It is hard to read of this story even now. What must Waddington have seen as he descended into the shell hole where hundreds of Pals lay wounded, dying and torn apart? What must he have felt as he came upon his hero, Booth? And then, as they lay there, among the limbs, the blood, the mud, the rats and with the carnage swirling all around them? Did any words pass between these two cricketers, or was it too late?

Having survived the war, it is not difficult to guess at the motivation that must have driven Waddington on in 1919, when cricket resumed after the four-year hiatus. In a desperately poignant twist, Waddington got his chance in the Yorkshire team because of Booth’s absence as an all-rounder. Yorkshire won the County Championship that year and Waddington shone, taking 100 wickets in a triumphant start to his career.

Waddington appeared to be a contradictory character. He dressed as a bit of a dandy but played his cricket the old-fashioned Yorkshire way; that is to say, hard and without sentimentality. He occasionally found himself in trouble on and off the field. He was forced to apologise for dissent during a match in Sheffield in 1924, was a ferocious sledger and once at a golf club in Bradford poured a glass of beer over the captain of the club.

Not surprisingly, given his experiences as a soldier who had been ordered into slaughter, it was said that he maintained a healthy mistrust of authority throughout his life.

Touring village club stranded in Peru during lockdown.
James Roberts

Oxford Mail

Sunday, 22 March 2020.

PTG 3059-15145.

A village team from Oxfordshire is stuck in a Peruvian hotel amid a coronavirus lockdown are desperately searching for a way home.  Stanton Harcourt’s tour was thrown into chaos when they were given 24 hours to leave the South American country after a state of emergency was declared a week ago.  But the 14-strong group were unable to board a plane back to the UK before all flights were suspended and have since been stranded in Peru’s capital, Lima.

Matt Eagle only joined the trip two days before the emergency was declared, but the situation unravelled rapidly over the following 48 hours.  The 27-year-old said: “When I arrived it hadn’t really kicked off as much, so I had a couple of days to explore Lima.  But then the president announced a complete lockdown and shut the borders.  We tried to get out last Monday, which proved impossible as the airport was manic. The authorities were telling us not to try to get a flight as it was so busy”.

The club had already travelled through Brazil and Argentina, with Peru their third stop before they were due to finish in Colombia and fly home on the last day of the month.  Eagle captained the side to victory in one of their final two tour matches two Saturdays ago, with more cricket soon out of the question.  The Peruvian government have since imposed a nationwide curfew between 8 pm and 5 am every day, with people only allowed out to visit supermarkets or pharmacies.

The team checked into a hotel to find all the facilities closed, although the gym and bar have since reopened.  But Eagle, a Stanton Harcourt resident, revealed the team were putting all their energy into plotting a route back.  He said: “It’s quite scary being stuck here. We’re just biding our time working out how we’re going to get home.  The military are patrolling the streets with machine guns and questioning you if you’re out and about.  They’re doing the right thing by trying to contain the spread, but it’s unsettling being this far away from home”.

Peru confirmed its first coronavirus-related death on Thursday, while the country had 234 recorded cases by Saturday.  UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab admitted repatriating citizens from the country was proving particularly difficult. Colombian airline Avianca was to operate a charter flight to London this weekend, but tickets costing up to UK£3,000 ($A6,055) have left Eagle and his teammates hoping for other options.  He said: “They’re exploiting people in a dire situation.  There’s a lot of people that literally can’t afford to pay that, but they’ll do anything to get home. Most of our group is healthy and okay, but some have health problems and we’re all worried about everything in the UK”.

Stanton Harcourt have appealed for help from Robert Courts their local Member of Parliament, who said: “I and my team are in regular email contact with the club and have offered them assistance from the Foreign Office, to whom I have spoken a number of times and am urging to work with the club to bring them home as soon as possible”