A Game Sustained

64 3: Shocks to the system: 1916 ‘ Cricket this year looks likely to occupy an even less conspicuous position than last…There will, however, be ample opportunities for recreation provided for batsmen and bowlers who are in need of recreation after a hard week at munitions etc.’ Huddersfield Daily Examiner, April 1916 ‘Yorkshire will not be Yorkshire for some time without Major Booth’ Roy Kilner, July 1916 Over the winter Britain and her allies discussed co-ordinated offensives for 1916. From February to December 1916, the French lost nearly 400,000 men as Germany attempted to take Verdun. From July, the Somme became the scene for months of intensive fighting, when British Empire Forces casualties were 420,000 killed, injured and missing. 47 At home in Yorkshire, the war came close again when, on the night of 5/6 March 1916, a Zeppelin airship raided Hull. 48 The declining number of volunteers pushed the Government towards a more coercive approach to recruitment, and from October 1915 under Lord Derby’s scheme men between 18 and 41 were encouraged to ‘attest’ their willingness to volunteer. This was done on the understanding that the youngest would be taken first, and single men before married. However, the process identified that, of around one million single men available for service, only 350,000 had come forward, and reluctantly the government turned to conscription. In January 1916, the Military Service Act imposed conscription on single men from 18 to 41, with exemptions for certain categories. This still proved insufficient for the Army, and at the end of 1916 around 2.5 million men of military age remained in civilian life. 49 The people of Yorkshire got used to the demands of war. Land, including cricket grounds, continued to be taken over for military activities. At Headingley, artillery battery training