Perspective: Carnage Cruelty and Cricket on This Day; the First World War Memoir of a Warwickshire Soldier Provides a Stark Dissection of Militarism for the Post-September 11 Generation, Says Richard McComb

Byline: Richard McComb

The date stamp at the front of the book showed it was last taken out of Birmingham Central Library in 1938. As far as I know, it may have remained unread for more than 60 years.

A Subaltern's War, first published in 1929, was written under the pseudonym Charles Edmonds. It drew on the reallife exploits of Charles Carrington, who served in the 1/5th Battalion, the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, during the First World War.

Carrington used his war journal, the letters home to his mother and battalion papers to compile the work.

The name of the author was unknown to me until I read a new history of the 1914-18 conflict. I became intrigued about Carrington after reading his contributions featured in Max Arthur's Forgotten Voices of the Great War. In the book, Carrington gave an account of a cricket match played between British and Australian troops at the Western Front in 1917. The description appeared alongside a picture of soldiers from the Australian 3rd Division at Passchendaele.

An impromptu test match was played with bats, balls, bales and stumps on a patch of unshelled ground. The next day, the Germans bombarded the Australians as they came out to play.

Carrington said: 'Some were killed and …

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Publication information: Article title: Perspective: Carnage Cruelty and Cricket on This Day; the First World War Memoir of a Warwickshire Soldier Provides a Stark Dissection of Militarism for the Post-September 11 Generation, Says Richard McComb. Contributors: Not available. Newspaper title: The Birmingham Post (England). Publication date: December 14, 2002. Page number: 8. © 2009 Birmingham Post & Mail Ltd. COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group.

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