call them to remembrance
Reviewed by James Holzmeister, English, Columbus Technical College
14 january 2015 archive
On the face of it, Gwyn Prescott's Call Them to Remembrance presents itself as a work that will appeal to only a small niche of readers with an interest in Welsh rugby and perhaps the First World War. To these readers, the work certainly delivers. Through authoritative accounts of the sporting and military careers of thirteen men who hold the rare distinction of both playing for the Welsh national rugby team and perishing in action during World War I, Prescott presents an informative and enlightening discussion of his subject. Augmented with copious use of period documentation, Prescott's biographies are detailed and thoughtfully presented, providing a fine tribute to each man through their exploits on the field and in the trenches. Each of the thirteen chapters offers a fascinating perspective of sport and society that will be useful to historians of both Welsh sport and the Great War. But there is certainly more to the work than this. To its credit, Call Them to Remembrance is evocative of the achingly dry historiography popularized by E.P. Thompson and largely devoid of the overt narrative found in general histories of sport and war. Thus, the work may do little to excite the untutored imagination but provides an invaluable perspective for the learned reader. Ideal for use as a supplemental text in the study of the late Victorian Age, Call Them to Remembrance is a work whose relevance and enjoyment stretches well beyond the purview of either sport or war.
The playing careers of the thirteen men featured in Call Them to Remembrance span a period of time with particular significance for the game of rugby in Wales as well as British sport more generally. Indeed, as Prescott contends, these years constituted "a period of remarkable developments in the evolution of Welsh rugby," and led to a subsequent period of Welsh dominance in the international game (Prescott 153). Prescott's descriptions of players, tactics, and matches bring century-old action to life for those with some knowledge of Welsh rugby in specific or the game more generally. Additionally, and for those with less working knowledge of the Union game, the work ably places sport into the larger sociocultural whole of late Victorian society. The thirteen men featured in the volume are drawn from across the geographic and economic spectrum thus demonstrating the unifying cultural themes of competition and patriotism that drew individuals together through sport and military service. The composite sketch derived from the sporting biographies in Call Them to Remembrance offers a compelling portrait of Welsh rugby which in turn provides insight into popular culture in Wales during the later nineteenth century.
While it is evident through the pages of Call Them to Remembrance that Gwyn Prescott is more sporting historian than World War I specialist, the presentation of the players' military service is accomplished with an equal attention to detail and comprehensiveness. Prescott's presentation is again well supported by primary evidence and the military dispatches that lie at the heart of his wartime biographies are ably supported by a variety of period sources. While Prescott's presentation of the war may lack some of the vigor and panache found in his writings on sport, the unembellished detail with which he traces each player's unique course through the conflict is both appropriate and useful. From Mamet Wood to the Dogger Bank, each man's story is presented with a quiet dignity that highlights not the heroics and horror of combat, but rather the arbitrariness of life and death within such a conflagration. Whether killed by direct enemy fire during an attack, a stray shell in the trenches, or by infection in an aid station, the experience of these thirteen men offers a compelling snapshot of the whole.
And it is perhaps this point which proves to be the real value of Prescott's volume. Separately, each man's story is engrossing. Yet when taken together, the thirteen stories presented in Call Them to Remembrance are subtly more valuable. As a supplement to more general studies of the Victorian age, Modernism, and the First World War, the lives of the thirteen men featured in Call Them to Remembrance exemplify not merely a tragic loss of talent and vigor, but also the end of the naïve promise that was the hallmark of the Victorian age. Driven to combat by the same high-minded imperatives that had led them first to the sporting field, the lives and deaths charted in the work serve to bring voice to the crushing disillusionment embodied within the war. While each of these sporting men rightfully deserves the private memorialization supplied by Call Them to Remembrance, this memorializing imperative should carry as much significance for our thinking about the late Victorian age and World War I in general, as it does for any one individual. Ultimately, it is collectively that the biographical vignettes contained within in the work gain their true significance. Together they successfully encapsulate the diverse and vibrant culture of Welsh sport in the late Victorian era and this is effectively juxtaposed against the maelstrom of the First World War. Redolent of the memorializing impulse that swept British culture in the wake of the Great War, Call Them to Remembrance is as much about the men who lived and died as it is the sociocultural experience of the war. In aggregate, the thirteen stories collected in the work are invaluable for their ability to put a sublimely human face on these broad topics of history.
Prescott, Gwyn. Call Them to Remembrance: The Welsh Rugby Internationals Who Died in the Great War. Cardiff: St. David's Press, 2014. xiii + 162 pp. Illustrations, Maps, Suggestions for Further Reading. $39.99.
Copyright © 2015 by James Holzmeister