Lives in Cricket No 22 - Jack Mercer

119 For King and Country, again so easy for him, in any case, to accept invitations to appear in exhibition games. In 1943 he had just a fortnight’s break and during that time, he managed to play for the Army at Headingley and for Glamorgan against an Army eleven at Cardiff. The latter gave him another chance to appear alongside several of his former colleagues, including George Lavis (who scored a fine century), Dai Davies, Cyril Smart and Johnnie Clay, who had been instrumental in organising a series of fund-raising matches in South Wales. Indeed, for the decent-sized crowd at the Arms Park it must have felt like the late 1930s all over again as Jack and George Lavis took the new ball, with Jack extracting lift and swing to claim the wickets of Harry Halliday and Tom Pearce, before Clay took three for 8 to polish off the tail as Glamorgan won by 129 runs. When at home in Sussex during his leave entitlement in July 1944, Jack also got the chance to play in a match at Priory Park, Chichester, for an eleven raised by New Zealander Stewie Dempster against a Sussex XI that included Jim Parks senior, the Langridge brothers and Ronnie Boon, Jack’s former Glamorgan colleague from the early 1930s, now a physical training instructor at an Army camp on the south coast. Along with an occasional Bradford League game, this was Jack’s only cricketing activity of note that summer as the steady influx of refugees and other displaced nationals from Eastern Europe at the Belfast camp meant he spent much of his time in Northern Ireland. A month after playing at Chichester, Jack heard the awful news that Maurice Turnbull had been killed in northern France. The Glamorgan captain, a major in the Welsh Guards, had been on the front line during the summer of 1944, landing at Arromanches in Normandy shortly after D-Day. As always, Turnbull led fearlessly from the front and during their advance into Northern France, he led several raids on Nazi troops as the Allies moved forward. However, in one of these sorties, near the village of Montchamp, some thirty miles inland from the beach-heads, Maurice was to pay the highest price for his bravery, as he was shot through the head and killed instantly as he bravely launched a counter- attack against an advancing column of Panzer tanks. The following summer a series of special matches were arranged at various grounds in South Wales as part of the Maurice Turnbull Memorial Fund, with Jack – like many other of the club stalwarts – turning out in the exhibition matches as they collectively remembered the man who had done so much for the club during the 1930s. Despite his leave being at a premium, Jack had no hesitation in accepting an offer to play at Swansea in the two-day friendly in the first week of August for a Glamorgan team led by Johnnie Clay against an Army side. Given the circumstances, it was a highly emotional time for Jack to see Arnold Dyson, Emrys Davies, Trevil Morgan, Haydn Davies and several of his other former colleagues who had all benefitted from playing under Turnbull’s fine leadership in the 1930s. In the course of the two days –