Sport and the Military

The Duke of Wellington did not claim that the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the myth was widely repeated because it was believable. As Tony Mason and Eliza Riedi’s excellent book demonstrates, there has been a powerful relationship between organised sport and the military since the former developed into an integral part of British popular culture in the late Victorian period. Indeed, so powerful was this relationship that the more romantic Victorians and Edwardians were not above claiming that war was simply an extension of sport. Mason and Riedi’s book is structured around a chronological account of sport’s relationship with the military. Before the First World War, the popularity of sport in the armed forces was driven by the enthusiasm of junior officers and the ranks, rather than by any official policy. Indeed, among officers, equestrian sports were so popular that they seemed to be distracting some from their duties and reinforcing older traditions of privilege and pleasure in the face of programmes of modernisation. It was during the 1914–18 conflict that sport came to be seen as playing an important role in boosting morale, developing a fighting spirit and maintaining fitness. Thus sports such as football, rugby and boxing gained prominent and formal places in physical training programmes which complemented their popularity as informal pastimes among soldiers. The inter-war period saw all levels of sport reinforced as part of service life, although not without criticism from those who believed that this was taking precedence over more serious military preparation and training. Nonetheless, sports and games helped make life more tolerable for many of those serving, not least those conscripted during the Second World War and the period of national service running up to 1960

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