“Leather” and the Fighting Spirit: Sport in the British Army in World War I

Abstract

In 1931 General Harington declared that it was “leather” — in the shape of footballs and boxing gloves — that had won the Great War for Britain. During the First World War, sport — previously popular but unofficial in the British armed services — became formally integrated into the military system, both as “recreational training” and as an officially sanctioned form of leisure for other ranks. This article traces the process by which sport in the British Army was transformed from a mainly spontaneous and improvised pastime into a compulsory activity. It discusses the relationship between sport and war in the public school ideology of “athleticism”; examines the ways in which sport was seen to have military utility in raising morale, esprit de corps, and the “fighting spirit”; and demonstrates how the amateur model of sport came to be imposed on all British service sports as a result of the war. The article concludes that sport in World War I had real benefits both to individual soldiers and to the army as a whole.