While reading the book "Cricket in the First World War: Play Up! Play the Game" by John Broom (published by Pen & Sword, Barnsley, 2022), I came across a poem by James Norman Hall. Mention was also made of his war-time service.
After graduating, James became a social worker in Boston for the Society for Prevention to Cruelty to Children, while he attempted to establish himself as a writer and study for a Master's degree at Harvard University.
James was on holiday in the United Kingdom in the summer of 1914, when war broke out. Posing as a Canadian, he enlisted in the British Army, serving in the Royal Fusiliers as a machine gunner during the Battle of Loos. He was discharged after his true nationality was discovered, and returned to the United States. His first book, “Kitchener's Mob: The Adventures of an American in the British Army” (published in 1916), tells of his wartime experiences. The book sold quite well in America and, after a speaking tour to promote the book, James returned to Europe in 1916 on an assignment for “Atlantic Monthly” magazine.
He was commissioned to write a series of stories about the group of American volunteers serving in the French Air Force’s Lafayette Escadrille but, after spending some time with the American fliers, he got caught up in the adventure and enlisted in the French Air Service. By then the original Escadrille had been expanded to the Lafayette Flying Corps, which trained American volunteers to serve in regular French squadrons.
During his time in French aviation, James was awarded the Croix de Guerre with five palms and the Médaille Militaire. When the United States entered the war in 1917, James was commissioned as a Captain in the Army Air Service. There he met another American pilot, Charles Nordhoff. After being shot down over enemy lines on 7 May 1918, James spent the last months of the war as a German prisoner of war. After his release he was awarded the French Légion d'Honneur and the American Distinguished Service Cross.
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| LaFayette Squadron insignia |
The La Fayette Squadron (French: Escadrille de La Fayette) was the name of the French Air Force unit escadrille N 124 during the First World War. The squadron was composed largely of American volunteer pilots flying fighters. It was named in honor of the Marquis de Lafayette, French hero of the American War of Independence. In September 1917, the squadron was transferred to the US Army under the designation 103rd Aero Squadron. In 1921, The French Air Force recreated an N124 unit who claimed lineage from the war-time La Fayette escadrille and is now part of the escadron 2/4 La Fayette.
In 1925, James married Sarah Winchester, known as Lala, who was part-Polynesian. They had two children: the Academy Award winning cinematographer Conrad Hall (1926–2003) and Nancy Hall-Rutgers (born 1930). A prolific author, James died on 5th July 1951 in Tahiti and is buried on the hillside property just above the modest wooden house he and Lala lived in for many years. His grave bears a line of verse he wrote in Iowa at the age of 11: "Look to the Northward stranger / Just over the hillside there / Have you ever in your travels seen / A land more passing fair?"
'The Cricketers of Flanders'
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| cover of the book in which I found reference to the poem |
The first to climb the parapet
With “cricket balls” in either hand;
The first to vanish in the smoke
Of God-forsaken No Man’s Land;
First at the wire and soonest through,
First at those red-mouthed hounds of hell,
The Maxims, and the first to fall,—
They do their bit and do it well.
Full sixty yards I’ve seen them throw
With all that nicety of aim
They learned on British cricket-fields,
Ah, bombing is a Briton’s game!
Shell-hole to shell-hole, trench to trench,
“Lobbing them over” with an eye
As true as though it were a game
And friends were having tea close by.
Pull down some art-offending thing
Of carven stone, and in its stead
Let splendid bronze commemorate
These men, the living and the dead.
No figure of heroic size,
Towering skyward like a god;
But just a lad who might have stepped
From any British bombing squad.
His shrapnel helmet set atilt,
His bombing waistcoat sagging low,
His rifle slung across his back:
Poised in the very act to throw.
And let some graven legend tell
Of those weird battles in the West
Wherein he put old skill to use,
And played old games with sterner zest.
Thus should he stand, reminding those
In less-believing days, perchance,
How Britain’s fighting cricketers
Helped bomb the Germans out of France.
And other eyes than ours would see;
And other hearts than ours would thrill;
And others say, as we have said:
“A sportsman and a soldier still!”
By James Norman Hall
Sources: Catherine W. Reilly “English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography” (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1978) p. 366. Wikipedia and"A TREASURY OF WAR POETRY:BRITISH AND AMERICAN POEMS OF THE WORLD WAR 1914-1917" (1917)
