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July 1st, our fateful day

More from Great-uncle Roland’s diary:

Friday 30th June 1916. 7pm.
I have just got back from the trenches, which were squelching with mud … It was a lovely afternoon with a fresh wind blowing. Some of the trenches were badly knocked about. I looked over into Hunland as I came out – the wood in front looking like currant bushes with the blight.

Some trees were down in our wood. I passed the cemetary, as I came back, and looked at [Lt. Wilfred Dent Wroe’s] grave. I am moving up by myself at 8.30, having a little time here to wash and have a meal. I had three letters tonight and the Observer, rather delayed, all posted on Sunday.

This ends the diary before the “push” as I must pack up.

Thirteen hours later 2nd Lt. Roland Ingle was dead. He is buried in the same Becourt Military Cemetery he had visited the day before.

Fast forward ninety years. The World Cup is building to a crescendo, and we are bombarded by war-time allegories. The Times carries a picture of Wayne Rooney in a Kitchener style pose, accompanied by the famous slogan “Your Country Needs You.” My brothers have answered the call, and are in Germany. They have been mingling with the German fans, jubilant after their victory over the Argentines.

Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I’m very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.

Bill Shankly’s famous quote persists. I hope he said it firmly with his tongue in his cheek, because it is, of course, utter tosh. Football doesn’t matter like wars matter. Actually, I think most fans know this, despite the hyperbole. There are those who would say that clearly, I haven’t been visiting the right sort of pubs in the wrong parts of town… and yet today in Edinburgh, arch-rivals Hearts FC and Hibernian FC have joined together to commemorate The Somme.

The fun of the game is precisely giving yourself over to a set of arbitrary rules, and ‘buying into’ the theatre that ensues. Sure, one has to suspend disbelief, pretend for a moment that it does matter. But the party atmosphere that my siblings have reported back can only exist if one ultimately acknowledges that is all a game. Something done purely for fun, for enjoyment, for escapism. Those who allow the boundaries to be crossed, as Shankly suggests, are idiots. They are just like those who believe that soap-opera characters are real people.

Contrast the “a game as a war” analogies, with the attitudes of the men at The Somme. I read today that some British soldiers there had a competition, to try and kick a football into the German trenches as they went for the big “push” at 7.30am. No-one claimed the prize, because all those who had competed were killed. As Roland Ingle wrote, they took chances of life and death as all being “part of the game”.
And so over ninety years the analogies are mirrored, reversed. The ball kicked over the trenches in 1916 lands at Rooney’s feet. His “shot” is fired back through the decades, and men fall over, never to stand again. We use the language of war, words like “this fateful day” and “our hero,” to describe events and people that are no such thing. The real heros have already met their fate. And now, because of The Fallen, we are free, to play a game with the Germans and the Portuguese, united by a complete triviality, the one excuse for a party. This is how we honour them.

Look, Uncle Roland! Now they are our friends.

English and German Fans mix in Cologne, before a World Cup 2006 fixture

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Somme Diary

Below is an excerpt from the diary of 2nd Lt. Roland Ingle, my Grandfather’s uncle, written in the days immediately preceding the start of the Battle of the Somme. In a long Sunday entry, Roland describes the ‘preliminary bombardment’, and thoughts on the imminent push.

Sunday 25th June 1916

I went up the hill again last night after mess – about 10pm; we could hear no noise down below, facing to the wind, but when I got up top, it was obvious that the bombardment was proceeding. Sharp flashes, like sheet lightnening, showed our guns firing – on right and left; our guns in front were silent just then. All along the horizon there were red flashes – not sharp and white like gun flashes, but just blazes with sometimes a little cloud above. It was, of course, a wonderful sight; flashes right and left caught your eye in quick succession. And all the time, beyond was the red burst of the shells falling on their target. I stood some time looking and two sergeants came up – we talked the usual gossip that we had all heard; any story passes these days and the funny thing is, on-one seems to mind if it is something in our favour or decidedly against us. It is a story or a rumour to carry on with – some things are true, but anyhow it is something to talk about. I have heard two distinct rumours that the anxious would find unpalatable – one , that a doctor…
… another, that our latest and most wonderful aeroplane has settled peacefully behind Hun lines. Nobody worries if they are true or not. As the time for us to move approaches, I suppose we shall be excited and nervous, but now for most people, and I should think for the most thoughtless and unimpressionable, it is just a contemplative pause and a rest. Excitement braces the muscles in healthy people, and that is the feeling you have at the thought of this ‘great push’ beginning. As I said before, as an alternative to trench warfare it is welcome – to me especially, with my doubtful powers of endurance.
Someone made the inevitable remark last night (I forgot to tell you I am in the headquarters mess of the batallion we are attached to) – that we are now taking part in what may be an historic event – for us personally, of course, historic but also possibly in years to come a historic event in The Great War. One man’s part in any move nowadays is so small that he is not likely to be nervous about the effect of his work on the final result; and fortunately the habit of “carrying on” – (that immortal phrase) – is by this time so engrained in him that in spite of great shattering of everything else he has a hope that he will be able to do it. And no-one should forget that a free throwing of yourself into a forward move gives the thing a momentum that nothing else can – beyond any mechanical discipline. If the least thoughtful could analyse his feelings, he would say, I suppose, that provided he was hitting hard he didn’t care what happened to him. And the men who are going to be knocked out in this push – there must be many – should not, certainly, be looked on with pity; because going forward with resolution and braced musceles puts a man in a mood to despise consequences; he is out to give more than he gets; he really dies fighting, and a man, who is used to sport, takes these things – even in the great chance of life and death – as “part of the game”.

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