In October 2009, I set out on a rugby tour to France with thirty teenage boys. I had uncovered the sad story at our London club, Rosslyn Park, of a lost Great War memorial; a 1919 press clipping stated 72 had died, but no names. Some 109 names of men who lived, loved, played, fought and fell have now emerged from club records and lost memory.
In France, our opposition RC Compiègne had lost 58 of its 120 members. Before our game of rugby on the edge of a forest where the Armistice was signed in 1918, we held a ceremony by their pitchside memorial. We remembered the men of the two clubs, English and French, as well as family forebears. A French Army officer spoke: 'Rugby and warfare', he said, 'share a common language, but we must remember, they are very different.' This set me on the path to writing a first book of remembrance, 'The Final Whistle'. In 2015 I returned again to explore this question: why this common language?
My generation can still hear in its mind's ear the commentator Bill McLaren, Second World War artillery gunner, describing the boot of Gavin Hastings as 'mighty like a howitzer'. The Times reported 'aerial bombardment' when Wales played New Zealand in 1935; passes are 'fired', full-backs launch 'torpedo' kicks, and scrum-halves 'snipe' around the scrum. In 2013 after a youthful, unfancied England side defeated Ireland in Dublin, one journalist wrote: 'These are no mere kids who need the roar of a Twickenham crowd to encourage them to puff out chests. These are guys for the trenches, steely and trustworthy.'
NZ Troops play rugby in France 1917. Alexander Turnbull Library, New Zealand
Where did it come from, this language bond between rugby and warfare? And how is it that a century later the imagery born of the Great War is still deployed to add colour and drama to sports reports? It is not, heaven forbid, lazy journalism but something deeper, more intuitive, and an echo of shared values.
My conclusion is this. There are many sports that carry danger and physical risk for individual competitors, notably anything to do with horses and cars. Boxers willingly climb into the ring for a beating, and sadly even cricketers now face untimely death at the crease. Uniquely, however, in team sports rugby players deliberately and consistently, and without the protection of helmets or padding, put themselves in harm's way on behalf of others - on behalf of the team and in its common cause.
This is what soldiers also do, and their comradeship sustains them far more than patriotic ideals, mission statements or even Kevlar. Perhaps this explains this unconscious bond between rugby and soldiering and, in consequence, an almost symbiotic vocabulary.
King George V present the King's Cup 1919. Alexander Turnbull Library New Zealand
In a far better-qualified view, former Australian Army Chief, General Sir Peter Cosgrove put it more explicitly: 'There are similarities,' he argued, 'between the harsh and lethal demands of warfare and the thrill we get from a full-bodied contact sport like rugby. The thing about rugby is that it does prepare people to keep going under severe stress when things they have to do are extraordinarily hard.' Cosgrove was not the first military commander to draw the parallel. Admiral Lord Jellicoe concurred:
'Rugby football, to my mind, above all games is one which develops the qualities which go to make good fighting men. It teaches unselfishness, esprit de corps, quickness of decision, and keeps fit those engaged in it.'
After the final whistle of 1918, rugby provided a sporting celebration of Empire and military teamwork, as well as of the human triumph of survival and a welcome return to the pastimes of peace. The King's Cup of 1919, played by teams of returning soldiers, was the first sporting expression of newly-won nationhood for former colonies. In a format recognisable today, rugby-playing soldiers of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, the British Army and the RAF did a springtime victory lap of Britain to popular acclaim. All long before football's first World Cup in 1930. Almost 100 years later, during the Centenary of the Great War, we have just witnessed the most successful Rugby World Cup ever. (The winner on both occasions was New Zealand).
In 2015, we also saw how sport can lift the spirit of nations and - in time of evil - bring them together in common decency and mutual support. After the Paris attacks came the Marseillaise and soccer solidarity at Wembley Stadium. Even the tennis Davis Cup final in an anxious Belgium became a sporting celebration in defiance of terrorism.
Sport can forge connections across nations and help heal conflict. In Afghanistan, Asad Ziar, who promotes rugby to a tough, violence-hardened people, says rugby - the rough, physical 'melon-ball game', which appeals to those whose traditional sport is buzkashi, a hybrid of rugby and polo using a goat's carcase as 'ball'- 'can help divided communities to focus on sustainable peace and reconciliation and build international understanding and friendship'.
Afghan children play rugby by the ruins of the Presidential Palace. Image courtesy of Asad Ziar
The British Ambassador to Kabul echoed him at a recent tournament celebrating the Rugby World Cup: 'Playing sport isn't just important because it's fun and encourages a healthy lifestyle. Sport is a valuable means to build bridges between communities, because it promotes peace, tolerance and understanding. Rugby's core values of passion, fair play, respect, discipline and teamwork can provide an important source of inspiration for young people.'
Cliché has it that sport is 'war without guns'. If it is so, then so be it, and all the better for it. Henry Allingham, one of the last two veterans to pass away in 2009, said of the Great War: 'Of course I remember. I was there. I have no choice but to remember'. We, who were not there, do have a choice. We must choose to remember.
If rugby and warfare do indeed share a common language, we must remember they are very different. We must remember.