At the beginning of the 1914-15 season, Celtic, fresh from winning their eleventh Scottish title, travelled to Edinburgh to take on Hearts. The home side had won two titles in the 1890s before being eclipsed by the Glasgow giants, and had been crowned World Champions in 1902 by beating Tottenham Hotspur, but hadn’t been able to win the league for nearly two decades. There was a sense of optimism, then, when scored in the 27th minute, Harry Wattie netting for the hosts. Hearts’ goalkeeper James Boyd ensured that the Celtic onslaught came to nothing, before deep into the second half Tom Gracie doubled the lead and put the game to bed. That same day, King George V declared war on Germany, and within four years all three – Wattie, Boyd and Gracie – were dead.
The Scottish football season did not immediately respond to the conflict, and Hearts fine start to season continued with eight straight wins, eventually stretching to 19 out of 21. But resistance began to grow, both inside and outside the game, to the idea of sport carrying on. Airdrieonians chairman Thomas Forsyth argued that ‘playing football while our men are fighting is repugnant’ at a meeting where a motion was debated to suspend the football season, while a campaign in London sought to shame footballers for continuing their professions while others signed up to fight and die for the country. The London Evening News called on players to ‘play their part in a greater game. That game is war, for life and death.’ A letter in the Edinburgh Evening News demanded Hearts change their name to the ‘White Feathers of Midlothian’, a reference to the symbol of cowardice given to those who hadn’t volunteered. The pressure told, and football was suspended.
The criticism was perhaps a little unfair. Hearts had already set in motion preparations for the possibility of military service, and players including Speedie had already volunteered and was in basic training as the run continued through the autumn. As the seriousness of the crisis became apparent, the administrators agreed to let the army use matchdays as an opportunity to recruit at Tynecastle, but the lack of any organised recognition of the war continued to be contentious.
By the end of November, football was becoming a secondary concern, and George McRae had been given permission to raise a battalion in Edinburgh. Sixteen Hearts players stepped forward to serve, although five were turned down for health reasons. Eleven, then, went on to join the battalion, along with players from Hibs, Dunfermline and Raith Rovers, and twice as many from the amateur game. The battalion reached its maximum strength on the 12th December, a few days before representatives of Clapton Orient held a meeting in London to propose volunteering, and would inspire the creation of the Footballers Battalion south of the border. The season continued apace, but where the Edinburgh clubs had come forward in earnest to support, their counterparts in Glasgow had ‘not sent a single prominent player to the army’, according to the Edinburgh Evening News.
Hearts went from training straight into matches and, unsurprisingly, their form suffered. Eight wins from their seventeen games after being called up saw their title challenge falter, and Celtic capitalised. Gracie, to his credit, was the joint highest goalscorer. But there was only one champion in the minds of the public, ‘and it’s colours are maroon and khaki’. In September of 1915 came the devastating news of James Speedie’s death, and Gracie followed a month later, final shocks of mortality before they made their own way to France at the beginning of 1916.
The Western Front was a quagmire by the time McRae’s battalion made it to France, and the destruction was at a scale never seen before. But worse was yet to come, and on the 1st July the deadliest day in the history of the British Army came to pass. The Battle of the Somme ran until November – 141 days – and saw 420,000 British casualties, but almost 15% occurred on the first day. Alfred Briggs, one of the Hearts players, was shot in the leg, the arm, the foot, the ankle and the forehead. Somehow, he survived. Harry Wattie, however, was among the 20,000 dead, with teammates Duncan Currie and Ernest Ellis. Boyd died a month later. Deployed in a different battalion in Arras in 1917, John Allan was the final of the Hearts players to fall.
They left behind eight more players who suffered life-changing injuries in the fighting. Of the eventual 19 Hearts players who served, just two returned home unscathed. Seven paid the ultimate sacrifice.
We will remember them.
