Sunday March 24th, 1918
Sports 10am. Nice day but rather windy. We were made to attend them. Charlie Wild comes in third in Veterans race. Fell in at 5pm to march down to Rates for Brigade Sports. Arrived about 9:30pm tired out.
Battalion Sports Day
Interesting contrast today between Frank’s and the Battalion’s diary entries. The latter boasts that the Sports Day was ‘very successful’ and Frank complains that ‘We were made to attend them.’ In fairness, from all I have read on sports during the war, the majority seem to have thoroughly enjoyed them.
Some events were grander than others. Archibald Don wrote while in Aivatli, Macedonia, in February 1916, ‘We have had today, in perfect weather, a most successful ‘sport meeting’ – racing, piping, tug of war etc. There is no other ‘front’ where one would have a sanded track and hurdles and tea served in a marquee three hundred yards in front of the front line trenches. We did well, and beat the Argylls² in most events. Sisters and nurses from the Scottish Women’s Hospital relieved the scene of masculine monotony’¹
This photograph is of the very Sports Day that Archibald Don is describing. The spectators, from both the 10th Battalion, Black Watch and the 12th Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, are apparently watching a German aircraft under fire. It must have strayed into view and now provides an added spectacle to the event.
It seems strange that the marquee is in front of the front line trenches, until one remembers that Archibald was in the Birdcage. As he writes a few months later, ‘For the first time since the war began an army has been able to construct what might have been, or may even still become, an active ‘front’, in the absence of the enemy. We have been able to pick and choose our line…. We have been hard at if now for eighteen weeks and there is plenty that still might be done, and no doubt will be.’ Unknown to Archibald, the BSF will soon abandon this carefully constructed line of defence to move closer to and take on the enemy.³
Obviously not a fan of Sports Days, how will Frank get on at the Brigade Sports to be held at Rates tomorrow? Especially after a long march…
13th (Service) Battalion War Diary – 24th March 1918 – No 1 Sector, Olasli
Divine Service, Evening Prayer 18:00 hrs in the Recreation Tent. Battalion Sports. These were very successful and lasted from 10:00 hrs to about 17:15 hrs when the Commanding Officer presented prizes.
References & Further Reading
¹ ‘Archibald Don – A Memoir’ (1890-1916)
² Archibald served as an officer with the 10th Battalion of the Black Watch. The Argylls that he mentioned were the 12th Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.
³ ‘Under the Devil’s Eye’ by Alan Wakefield and Simon Moody, Chapter 4 ‘The Birdcage’
* ‘Sports Day‘ from Imperial War Museums