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Article: "Leather" and the fighting spirit: sport in the British Army in World War I.
- Article from:
- Canadian Journal of History
- Article date:
- December 22, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Canadian Journal of History. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The assiduous and organized cultivation of sport, and what is more important the spirit of sport, has become one of the most distinctive marks of the British Army, and it will be a task worthy of the greatest historians to record what this sporting spirit has done, not only for the British Army, not only for the British Empire, but for the whole civilized world during the present war.
-The Field, 16 March 1918
Sport has provided some of the most abiding images of the Great War. The impromptu football played between British and German soldiers during the 1914 Christmas Truce and the British troops kicking footballs across No Man's Land at Loos and at the ...