For Team and Country

Sport on the Frontlines of the Great War

Imagine Wayne Rooney, Andy Murray, and Mo Farah exchanging the glamour of their careers for the brutality of war—and quietly giving their lives for their country. Today the news would be dominated by the sacrifice of Britain’s most famous sporting icons. A century ago the brightest sporting stars of their generation did just that: hundreds of thousands of sports stars rallied to their country’s colors: many never returned from the mechanised carnage of World War I. The names of Walter Tull, Edgar Mobbs, and Percy Jeeves are unfamiliar today—lost in the terrible lists of the dead of World War I. But they belong among the pantheon of true British sporting heroes. All were—quite literally—at the top of their game; all made the ultimate sacrifice in "the greatest game of all"—war. For Team and Country reveals how sport itself was Britain’s first and most vital recruiting sergeant in the fight against Germany, and tells the remarkable and inspiring stories of the sportsmen whose prowess on the field was matched only by their bravery in the King’s uniform.