One young Swinton soldier’s letters made the papers 100 years ago, including an extraordinary account of a football match in a battle zone.
Young soldiers who joined up to fight for their country in the First World War would be faced with the horrors of the Western Front; trench warfare and almost certain death in horrendous conditions.
But one Swinton lad, Tom Flintoff, became something of a local celebrity when writing home to his father, the landlord of the Red Lion Hotel in Swinton.
Serving with the 7th Loyal Lancashire Regiment, Flintoff was already well known in Swinton and Walkden as he played for the Walkden Wednesday Football Club.
The Eccles Journal for September 1915 published his fascinating story.
Death was all around for young soldiers in the trenches.
Flintoff describes the precarious position he finds himself in: the French village he and his company are holed up in was being heavily shelled by the Germans.
In one letter the lad tells of seeing enemy planes flying low and bombing their positions.
One aircraft was even shot down directly above them, bursting into flames and raining fire and debris onto their encampment.
To keep their spirits up among all this destruction, Flintoff helped to organise a night football match between the 7th Loyal Lancashire Regiment and the Royal Garrison Artillery.
Just a mile from the front line, Tom writes how “you could hear the sound of the guns going every few seconds”.
With five minutes left to play the referee blew the whistle for the men to stand by their guns, the score was 2-1 for the Lancashire Regiment and the result was allowed to stand.
It must have been a blessed relief to have this short amount of leisure time after the horrors they encountered during their tour of duty.
Further letters tell of how that his Regiment were due back in the trenches for a 19-day spell.
Terrible autumn weather contributed to knee-deep water in these cramped trenches, with each soldier trudging through dirty, freezing mud to bring supplies to where they were needed.
At one point Tom tells of their army-supplied clothing being “an inch thick in mud”, having to throw away their precious socks, sparking fears they could face the dreaded trench-foot.
The condition was a fungal infection of the feet brought on by prolonged exposure to damp, cold conditions.
The British Army faced some 20,000 casualties resulting from trench foot and gangrene with patients sometimes having to have their toes amputated due to the severity of the condition.
It is worth quoting Tom’s letter in which he says: ” The worst of it is that you always have to have your equipment on and carry your rifle and ammunition.
“Just imagine having to walk for an hour and a half in the trenches in three feet of water, it took me all my time to keep my feet and sometimes you didn’t know where you were walking.”
One day Tom and his company mates were out in the pouring rain, filling sand bags and mending trenches, when suddenly they came under fire.
Bullets started whizzing over their heads, with heavy mortar shelling exploding parts of the mud walls around them. Scrambling back to the bottom of these filthy trenches, it was a miracle no-one was hit.
In the last published letter Tom says that he narrowly avoided being hit by shrapnel the night before and four of his comrades were injured, two severely.
Finally, he writes that he wants to get back to the firing line and out into the open.
It seems more a death-wish than a reasonable request for a young soldier, until you realise that the enemy could constantly rain down fire and shrapnel on the soldier’s heads and the trenches held more misery for young men that anywhere else in battle.
Three more years of hell awaited him as the First World War rolled on.
Are you a relative of young Tom Flintoff? Did he survive the Great War and make it back to Swinton to play for his beloved football team? Contact tonyflynn@salfordonline.com.
