The Hampshire Family Historian | Vol.48 No.3 | December 2021

Member’s article

Military material for football historians

In the September issue of this journal, I celebrated the marriage between us Official Historians of Southampton FC and family historians approaching us with regard to their footballing ancestors. Notwithstanding what Princess Diana famously said about three in a marriage, this article introduces a third party: the military historian. In fact, we have been dependent in researching our latest project – the involvement of 300+ Southampton footballers in the First World War – on four kinds of military historian: published professionals who have generously elaborated for us, privately; two local “assistants”, both of them veteran visitors to war-sites with myriad records to consult; historians of other football clubs; and family historians, several of whom have explored the Imperial War Museum and/or the National Archives yet have still needed to swap information with us Saints historians. As in my September article, my interest here is in that fourth type of historian: the genealogist approaching us football historians, whether proffering research findings or seeking footballing details – or, very often, both. While some such contacts were made long since with Official Historians Duncan Holley and/or Gary Chalk, who began researching the club’s history in the 1980s, others have been more recent, latterly accelerated by Duncan’s website of Saints profiles that he launched in 2020. Of all the instances I might cite, I shall home in on a couple of “boy soldiers” from Hampshire, bringing in related exchanges as and when appropriate. As you might expect, most of our familial sources are separated by two or three generations from their footballing

ancestors. Yet Duncan has been researching ex-Saints for so long that he actually met Len BUTT , a survivor of the Great War, and long corresponded with Terry SHELLEY , whose father’s football-dominated war would be an apprenticeship to a record-breaking career at The Dell. Duncan and Len had plenty to talk about, including the latter’s prospects of becoming the first centenarian ex-Saint – he would die 17 days short of that milestone in December 1993 – and they never got round to discussing his war-service with the 1/5th Hants Battalion in India. Not that there was a lot to be discussed. The Hampshire Regiment would send eight battalions to India in 1914-18, but the regimental history records that they had absolutely “nothing to report”. This was not a theatre of war. The enemy was disease, to which the battalion would lose but nine men. Those deaths receive less attention, in the history of the Hants Territorials, than the cricketing achievements of the 1/5th Battalion. Butt, who was among those achievers, had joined the Saints in 1912 and would play a few times for them as they won the Third Division (South) in 1922. We know less about the battalion’s football team. It was reported to be “up to a good military standard”, but the 1/4th Wilts had bragging rights over them in 1916, with three wins and a draw. That Wiltshire battalion continued to win trophies in Palestine – a story that benefits, with several photos supplied, from our contact with two descendants: Terry Shelley, as already mentioned; and Peter Waylen, sending us from Florida his memories of his granddad, Fred MUNDY – memories that include the exploits

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