The Football Battalion – Staring Down the Barrel of World War 1 – Part 2

Samiran Mishra

4th March 2018 | 12:00 AM

Part 2 of Samiran Mishra’s brilliant account of footballers who sacrificed their lives for the nation in World War 1; legends of the Football Battalion. Part one can be found here.

The Football Battalion - Staring Down the Barrel of World War 1 - Part 2

The year is 1916 and most of Western Europe is convulsed in warfare. The Germans acknowledged the fact that Russia, being so tremendously huge, would require time to mobilise its military before launching an attack on the Central Powers. Therefore, the Germans opted to attack France instead, take control of the country, before ordering the troops to march east to confront the Russians.

But France had a number of fortified defences positioned along its border to engage the oncoming German army.  But the Germans had a contingency plan for an event such as this. They instead chose to march 750,000 troops through Belgium to bypass the French defences altogether and hoped that the Belgians who had been neutral so far would just let them pass. They did not.

The Belgians tried their best to stop Germany from overrunning their country. This is when Britain declared war on Germany.

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