Prisoner of War Football - Facts, Fiction, Bribery and Propaganda!
By Alex Alexandrou

The first of a series of seminars for the 2024-25 season in partnership with the Army FA, Western Front Association and a number of football clubs took place this month at Exeter City hosted by the Senior Reds, a supporters group set up in 2012. It has a strong emphasis on providing speakers and organizing visits and other events to promote social wellbeing. Members of the group undertake voluntary tasks for the club, as well as raising funds for various projects.

The talk was accompanied with an exhibition featuring the History of the Army FA and Army Football as well as attendees being treated to free copies of the Western Front Association’s journal – Stand To! and its Bulletin magazine, along with the obligatory and complementary hot drinks and biscuits for sustenance.

As can be ascertained from the title, the seminar topic had an interesting twist to it to say the least. Roger Slater, the Wealdstone FC historian who has decamped to Devon was the keynote speaker. Roger gave a fascinating talk on what has turned out to being an ongoing research project, which by his own admission has grown at an exponential rate and leads him down many research rabbit holes!

Despite the inclement weather, many of the Senior Reds braved the wet and windy conditions to listen to Roger talk about Prisoner of War football from both a First World War and Second World War perspective. He presented a thoroughly detailed and researched talk that was wide-ranging and highlighted the importance for the inmates of POW camps of organizing, playing and watching football in terms of the positive impact it had on fitness, morale and in some cases saving lives.

Roger stated that his interest in this subject was piqued by reading about how POWs on both sides of the Boer War conflict were encouraged to play football. This interest was then further developed when he successfully bid in an auction for POW football memorabilia that once belonged to Harold “Spud” Taylor, who had prior to World War Two played for Grimsby Town.

As Roger explained, he was fascinated by these artefacts that included a match programme, engraved cigarette case, medal and shield, that he decided to research the player and POW football further and it is fair to say that this has now become a passion that has led to an article on the Football and War Blog Article website, ongoing research on other individuals and giving presentations. As they say, from little acorns!

Roger highlighted specific matches such as a cup final between Newport County and Liverpool and yes they did use the names of football clubs, with many of the players playing in front of the largest crowds they had ever encountered. Which at least made internment during the Second World War bearable.

There was then the story of an “Aston Villa” team that had allegedly been beating a team of German guards 27-0, when the match was stopped. Roger went on to highlight how difficult this story had ben to verify and that he had to deal with elements of loose facts, fiction and propaganda. It also highlighted how difficult it is to research elements of POW football and ensure that presenting such events can be authentically verified.

To date, Roger has details of over 200 POW players that includes British, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese to highlight a few of the nationalities and individuals such as Julien Darui, and Alous Eisentrager to name but a few individuals on his database, with possibly one of the most interesting characters being the Spanish player, Satunino Navazo, a Republican who had fought against Franco, who ended up at the Mauthausen Concentration Camp in Austria. I have visited this camp and it is true what they say about it, the birds fly around it but you never hear them. As Roger highlighted, to save his life and that of others, Navazo convinced the camp authorities to let him start a football team. This included befriending a young Jewish orphan and telling him to inform the authorities that he was the son of Navazo, which they believed. Both survived the camp, with Navazo eventually adopting the boy. Humanity coming to fore in the face of brutality.

Another to survive the camps was Norwegian, Asbjorn Halverson. Roger told the story of Halverson’s and his SV Hamburg German teammate and friend, Otto Harder, who rose through the Nazi ranks and had been the previous Kommondant of the Neuengamme camp, where despite being severely emaciated, Halverson survived and saw out the war.

Roger went on to tell the stories of World War One POW footballers such as Walter Kimberley who had played for clubs such as Aston Villa, Coventry City and Walsall and less well known stories such as that of Norman Gaudie, a reserve team player with Sunderland prior to the conflict and a devout Congregationalist. His beliefs leading him to refuse to serve in any capacity be it combatant or non-combatant. He was arrested and became a prisoner of the British Army. Despite pressure put upon him and others who had made a similar decision based on beliefs and conscience to change their minds, they refused. This would lead to the death sentence being passed and then commuted to a term of imprisonment. This story highlighted the social and political elements of enlistment and being a conscientious objector, which for Gaudie and others meant in effect being excluded from both an employment and societal perspective after the end of the conflict.

As for bribery, Roger told the story of Barney Travers who had been a POW during World War One but had survived relatively unscathed and went on to play for Fulham in the post war period. However, he was embroiled in a match-fixing scandal that led to him being banned by the FA but as Roger highlighted, this was not as cut and dried a case on first reading and shows again the importance of thorough research and cross-checking, a point Roger emphasized, as a different story will inevitably emerge compared to the original. Roger is still looking into this particular story as another source has recently come to light that may assist in getting to the bottom of what actually went on with this case, particularly as the FA pardoned Travers in 1950, even though he had played abroad in Spain in the intervening period!

Roger had a number of Exeter City stories. For example, one was of former player, Percival Hartley, who was interned in the famous footballing camp – Ruhleben during the First World War and took part in the Ruhleben Football League. He stayed on in Belgium after the war but ended up being interned again during the Second World War! He also spoke about Ralf Shields, a POW during World War One and Alec Wilson, who had done so much for the Grecian Archive, who was a Second World War POW.

Roger told the story of Cliff Bastin, once a player for Exeter City, who the Italians claimed to have shot down in 1941, despite the fact that he was an Air Raid Warden and Fire Watcher in London! Roger’s research showed that the incident of an RAF plane being shot down was correct and that in all probability one of the crew convinced their Italian captors that they were in fact Cliff Bastin, which saved his and his fellow surviving crew members’ lives.

A fitting end to this POW football account of facts, fiction, bribery and propaganda!