Lives in Cricket No 18 - FR Foster

Chapter Eight War and the 1920s The start of the Great War brought changes of such a huge scale to the lives of so many people that it was sometimes described by many of the more leisured classes as the end of their world. Tough. This writer’s grandfathers were working in the South Staffs coalfield in 1900, still there in 1914, again when the armistice was signed in 1918. Not much changed for them. Frank Foster’s life certainly changed however, but only partly and indirectly because of the war. Naturally a number of Warwicks players obeyed the call. Jack Parsons was so keen to do the right thing that he called at the Foster house in his Territorial Army uniform to seek advice. He was impressed at the opulence of the place, and taken aback by the servants on hand to see to every whim of the Foster family, but the attitude of Frank Foster disappointed him. Foster apparently took exception to his even wearing his ‘Terriers’ uniform, pointing out he was still being paid by the County Club, not the Army. Unabashed, Parsons joined the Warwickshire Yeomanry, was eventually commissioned, had a distinguished war and in later years became an Anglican clergyman, the only first-class professional cricketer ever to change careers in that way. Frank Foster professed to believe in God: there the similarities seemed to end. Incidentally this attitude towards the war is somewhat surprising since Birmingham raised three battalions and Foster Brothers clothed two of them, as well as making nosebags for the French Cavalry. The company and, indirectly Frank, did all right out of the horrific conflict. There is, though, a mystery over what Frank Foster actually did in the war. Brother Harry, presumably because he was running the family business (but also perhaps due to health problems), did not serve, but brother Edgar did his bit while other brother Arthur was also commissioned early on. Of wars, Arthur’s grew ‘curiouser and curiouser.’ A lieutenant at the outset, when finally released from the glasshouse in 1920 he was a private. A serial deserter he was in and out of prison, and never left British shores, which maybe explains why he was never shot, since no-one better deserved such a fate. Arthur’s service record also reveals the presence of two sexually transmitted diseases. This appalling man showed no improvement in lifestyle later on; even now some of the damage he did is remembered with disdain by those affected. Then there is Frank. The Solihull School magazine for March 1915 states that he was a lieutenant in the Public Schools Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, but I have traced no record of this in official sources. In any event whether or not he 91