[…] I’ve written about connections between sport and war before. Here’s another which I came across just last night, so perfectly timed that I can’t resist posting it. It’s from a book written in October 1941 or so by the pseudonymous Auspex, who is talking here about the RAF’s sweeps over France that summer, which he claims is the first stage in the air offensive which will eventually lead to Britain’s victory over Germany: It began in mid-June. It was then that the Royal Air Force started their return match with the Luftwaffe in the series of tests for the ashes of the air. The first had been played on our home ground, in July-September, 1940. We won that match. We routed the German air force over and around this island, routed it decisively and without possibility of appeal. The next round was set on the enemy’s ground. We went over and challenged him there.1 […]

That’s a great list, thanks Peter. Tally-ho would be another one, depending upon whether you regard fox hunting as a sport or not …

I must admit that tent-pegging and the Field Gun Run were entirely new to me!

I was originally going to say that it’s a pity that international disputes can’t be resolved on the football field rather than the battlefield.

Then I remembered the ‘Football War’ of 1969 where existing tensions between Honduras and El Salvador were heightened by rioting at a qualifying match for the 1970 World Cup. The resulting war (said to have been the last where piston-engined aircraft were used by both sides) resulted in 2,000 fatalities.

On a lighter note, had football historically been the language of diplomacy, then I don’t think that the British would’ve stood a chance at empire-building had they faced penalty shoot-outs…

Some sporting terms used by the RAF (from Eric Partidge’s A Dictionary of R.A.F. Slang (1945) include:

- Bag: To shoot down. From sportsmen’s slang.
- Daisy cutter: A faultless landing. From cricket, where it = a drive clean along the sward.
- Football feet, to have: To make excessive use of the rudder.
- Gone for six: Killed; dead. From cricket.
- Hockey stick: A bomb-loading jack or hoist. From a vaugue resemblance.
- Nursery slope: An easy target on which bombing-beginners practise.
- Tee up!: Get ready! Cf. the Army’s to have (a thing) teed up or ready. From Golf.
- Touch down: To land. From football. [Rugby?]

You only have to look at tent-pegging and the Royal Navy’s Field Gun Run (essentially a sporting reenactment of the defence of Ladysmith during the Boer War) to realise that the British do like to mix sport and war…