100-year heroes deserve football to take a day off

THE GREATEST recognition James Blake will receive for dying in the service of his country is the sentence in this newspaper.

Like so many, the private had signed up to do his bit back in 1914, in his case with the 9th Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire regiment. Blake wasn’t a young man. He hadn’t been conscripted. He was 48 years old. As the day broke on August 9, 1915, he had been tasked with building a trench near the beaches of Gallipoli along with colleagues.

It was towards the end of a 15-hour shift. They were just about to be relieved by the Royal Worcestershire regiment when tragedy struck.

The battalion took heavy casualties because some bright spark hadn’t realised that digging a trench within open sight of machine guns, positioned on the hillside above, would put a group of men in obvious danger.

They were sitting ducks. Unsurprisingly, the Royal Warwickshires took heavy casualties. My great uncle was one of them.

Mown down on foreign soil thousands of miles from home in a hail of bullets.

Researching my family tree, he wasn’t the only one to have suffered.

My great grandfather, Arthur Brindle, was in the Royal Fusiliers. His brothers William, Joseph and Walter were in the Royal Garrison Artillery.

Remarkably, they all returned home. However, my great grandfather later caved in to his demons. The precise details of his demise were never spoken about.

Whichever stage of the conflict you delve into, the horrific detail of the disaster at Gallipoli is repeated time and again.

Only the geography changes. Ypres, Passchendaele, Verdun, the Somme. For the boys in the Royal Navy, the battle of Jutland.

Almost one million men from the British Isles – and Ireland – met the same fate as my relatives.

Next month, we will remember them all.

Those who fell in the service of their country. Building trenches, drowned at sea, shot down as they advanced across no man’s land.

‘Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori’ (it is sweet and honorable to die for one’s country) as the poem by Wilfred Owen goes. Those one million lost souls would doubtless disagree.

The 11th day of the 11th month – marks the centenary of the ending of that criminally wasteful war.

It also happens to fall on a Sunday. One hundred years ago to the day since the bloodshed stopped.

Of course, football will pay its respects.

There will be poppies on shirts, there will be a minute’s silence, there will be virtue signalling left, right and centre. But football will still take place. The Manchester derby has just been moved to the 11th day of the 11th month. There are three other fixtures in the Premier League. Which is just a chance wasted. This was a glorious opportunity for the Premier League to show that it is not all about the product, money or greed.

That football can still offer a sense of perspective. A dose of reality.

And what better way to show UEFA, FIFA and the wider public that Remembrance Sunday and the oh-socontroversial poppy symbol is a source of national pride. That we WILL remember them. If someone – anyone – had given the subject any thought, the day should have been left free of fixtures.

And if just one child had raised the question as to why there wasn’t any football it would have been worth it.

Just to recount the tale of James Blake. Or those relatives that you, dear reader, possibly lost too.

November 11 is, to all intents and purposes, any given Sunday. Only, of course, it’s not.

And it really should have been treated as such.