Background Information

Pals Battalions

Young men who had attended the same school or church, who worked for the same employer or shared the same interest in sport promptly answered the call to arms. Some fifty villages, towns and cities – particularly across the north of England – soon raised battalions of these pals.

Liverpool's immediate response was magnificent; their numbers raising four battalions. Within ten days the Accrington Pals numbered one thousand. Sheffield's patriotic enthusiasm raised the 12th Battalion of the Yorks and Lancashire Regiment, known as the Sheffield City Battalion. Likewise the 15th (Service) Battalion (1st Leeds) The Prince of Wales's Own (West Yorkshire Regiment), famously known as the 'Leeds Pals'. The ranks of the British Army were quickly and proudly swollen by many other battalions of 'pals', among them the Hull Commercials, the Barnsley Pals, the Grimsby Chums, the Tyneside Irish, the Glasgow Tramways Battalion and, indeed, a battalion of public schoolboys.

While the War Office managed to recruit some 351 battalions of infantry during the first 22 months of the war, the number raised by local communities exceeded 640. Teams of local, national and international soccer stars, celebrated cricketers, athletes, boxers, artists and other men with a common interest

frequently formed Pals Battalions. In a recruiting speech made on 6 September 1914 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle remarked:

There was a time for all things in the world. There was a time for games, there was a time for business, there was a time for domestic life. There was a time for everything, but there is only time for one thing now, and that thing is war. If the cricketer had a straight eye let him look along the barrel of a rifle. If a footballer had strength of limb let them serve and march in the field of battle.

Players from local sports fields clamoured to compete against the European opponents of this novel war game. The entire first team from Scotland's Heart of Midlothian Football Club promptly enlisted, sacrificing their handsome £4 a week for the army's shilling a day (about 40p today). Hearts supporters and players from other clubs, such as Falkirk and Raith Rovers, followed suit.