Sportsworld: The role of football in history

The role football played in world peace

World War One Christmas
truce footballer honoured
with plaque
25 December 2014
Nottingham
British and German soldiers met in
No Man's Land to play a Christmas
Day game of football in 1914
A soldier believed to have
supplied the football for a
Christmas Day game during a
World War One truce, is being
honoured with a plaque.
Pte William Setchfield was sent a
ball as a Christmas present in 1914
while fighting in the trenches.

Historian Francis Towndrow, who
has been researching the game,
said the soldier, later labelled a
"deserter", may have been punished
for taking part.
The plaque is being unveiled in his
hometown of Newark,
Nottinghamshire.
Mr Towndrow has been piecing
together information from soldiers'
letters and diaries about the truce.
Shortly before Christmas 1914, Pte
Setchfield's commanding officer,
recorded that he received a
deflated ball in the post as a gift.
The soldier's father and brother
worked at a shoemakers in Newark
which also repaired leather
footballs, Mr Towndrow discovered.
Letters home to his family talked
about his love of football and in
particular his team Nottingham
Forest.
'Enemies as friends'
One of Pte Setchfield's letter,
reprinted in the Newark Advertiser
at the time, read: "We spent a
wonderful Christmas. The Germans
came over to us in the afternoon
and we had our photos taken with
them but it would be a big task to
put everything that happened into
a letter."
Records show that his Royal
Warwickshire Regiment was facing
the German 134 Saxon Regiment at
the time.
Kurt Zehmisch, from the Saxons,
wrote in his diary in 1914: "The
English brought a football from the
trenches and pretty soon a lively
game ensued.
"This Christmas, the celebration of
love, managed to bring mortal
enemies together as friends for a
time."
Pte William Setchfield is thought
to be the goalkeeper, back
centre, in this picture of Newark
team St Leonard's FC, taken in
around 1906
Pte Setchfield survived the war,
married and is recorded as having
sent a wreath to his brother's
funeral in 1946, but Mr Towndrow
has found no death certificate.
His medal record shows he was
awarded the 1914 Star but was
recorded as a "deserter", for which
he would have been court
martialled.
Mr Towndrow believes this may
have been his punishment for
being involved in a game which the
authorities at the time had frowned
upon.
"Could it have been he was
involved in that game so much that
he was used as a scapegoat? We
don't know."
In August, under-21 teams from
Newark and its German twin town of
Emmindengen replayed the game
near Ypres, the original site.
The plaque is part of a community
garden in Sconce and Devon Park,
Newark, and has been donated by
local stonemason Roger Brown.
A photograph believed to show
the British Warwickshire
Regiment and German Saxon
Regiment during the Christmas
truce of 1914