Lives in Cricket No 8 - Ernest Hayes

On the Western Front: 1914 to 1919 Ernest Hayes’ war is summarised in his scrapbook in half a dozen lines: As soon as the season closed I attested for the Army by joining the Sportsmen Battalion [actually – the Sportsmen’s Battalion (23rd Royal Fusiliers) 15 ] and before going to France had some good cricket with them in 1915. Thank God I am back safe and sound from the war and can now put photos of the period 1914-1919 in this book. Joined as a private, I became 1 st Lieut., was mentioned in despatches 1916 and received the MBE in 1919. For laconic, modest understatement, that last sentence takes some beating. He received the Victory Medal, awarded to military and civilian personnel who served in a theatre of war; additionally, however, he was entitled to wear on the ribbon of that medal two bronze oak leaves, denoting in each case a mention in dispatches. He also received the British War Medal for service abroad and was awarded the military version of the MBE. The bulk of the scrapbook contents for this period relates to hostilities on the sports field, rather than those in the trenches and there are more photographs of battalion and regimental football and cricket teams than there are of soldiers in battledress. While in training at Oxford, he captained an Army officers’ team against the Isis Club and later, in 1919, wrote to the British Expeditionary Force Sports Journal about cricket in France while looking forward to the resumption of cricket in England. Nevertheless, his war record was a distinguished one, as evidenced not by Hayes himself, but by the London Gazette and correspondence received from one of his former comrades. Unlike France and Germany, Britain had no conscript army until the Military Service Act 1916, and Hayes was one of the million who responded to the call of Lord Kitchener, Secretary for War, for volunteers. The 23rd Sportsmen’s Battalion comprised men older than the average soldier who, because of their lifestyle, were generally fitter. It seems to have attracted a ‘new type of soldier’ and was rather more ‘cosmopolitan’ and less stratified than many 84 The Golden Age Ends on the Western Front 15 His medal card says ‘22/R Fus’ which would appear to be a War Office error. The Royal Fusiliers’ Website lists the Sportsmen’s Battalion as the 23rd, though his later correspondent refers to it as the 22nd.