The Scottish Military Research Group - Commemorations Project

DelBoy · Posted: Thu Jun 20, 2013 11:02 pm Post subject:

http://local.stv.tv/edinburgh/magazine/223946-hearts-war-memorial-clock-tower-to-return-to-haymarket-by-summer/

Hearts War Memorial: Fans look forward to return of Haymarket clock

“There are football teams out there with much greater playing records than Hearts, but there isn’t a football team with anything like Heart of Midlothian’s record of horrible sacrifice.”

The words of historian Jack Alexander about the actions of a group of men almost 100 years ago will be endorsed by all those who support the maroon half of Edinburgh, and many others.

In the final months of 1914, as World War One settled into its deadly stalemate and public opinion started to turn against footballers for playing on while others went to fight, Hearts players signed up en masse to the 16th Royal Scots - commonly referred to as ‘McCrae’s Battalion’.

Hearts were the first football team to join up together, while players from Hibs, Falkirk, Dunfermline and Raith Rovers were among the others who also served.

By the end of the war, seven Hearts players - Duncan Currie, John Allan, James Boyd, Tom Gracie, Ernest Ellis, James Speedie and Harry Wattie - had all made the ultimate sacrifice.

In 1922, in honour of the Hearts team and those they fought beside, a clock tower war memorial was built in the Edinburgh’s Haymarket.

Now, as Edinburgh and the rest of the country prepare to mark the centenary of WW1, fans of the club and many more are getting ready for the return of the memorial to its rightful home.

The memorial was moved five years ago to accommodate tram works. It was put in storage, and there were fears at the time that it may never return to Haymarket and be moved to another location in the city. But those fears never became a reality.

A spokesman for the City of Edinburgh Council said the re-instalment of the war memorial will take place at its old location at Haymarket in June. Further details will be announced by the local authority in the next few weeks.

For Jack, a 50-year-old historian who has acted on behalf of Friends of Heart of Midlothian War Memorial - a campaign group which is committed to the return of the clock tower to Haymarket - it will be a special moment.

“I don’t think anybody, perhaps other than tie (Transport Initiatives Edinburgh), wanted the memorial to be removed from the junction at all,” he commented.

“The most important thing is it is coming back. We are going to have a chance to reorientate it so it is pointing the right way this time, and put some nice landscaping around it.

“It is important to me, as a historian, because it is visible in Haymarket. The people that built it put it there, and it is not our business 100 years later to second guess them.

“It is arguably the busiest junction in Edinburgh. Everybody that goes past it sees it and that is something that we want to preserve.”

The war memorial remembers a Hearts team who, like everybody else, had their lives changed by the outbreak of war in 1914.

Regarded as one of the best teams in Scotland at the time, two Hearts players - Geordie Sinclair and Neil Moreland - were called up the day after war was declared against Germany as they were army reservists. A few months later, Jimmy Speedie decided to volunteer.

However, some members of the public, in the years before conscription, questioned why fit and healthy footballers were enjoying sport while other men were dying in the fields of France.

Hearts team in 1914

The Hearts team, pictured in 1914. Courtesy of Big Hearts Community Trust.

When Sir George McCrae raised a new battalion 13 more Hearts players decided to do their bit and enlisted together in November, 1914. Football did not stop, and after conscription was introduced in 1916 the Hearts team was made up of guest players, servicemen on leave, youths and men engaged in vital war work.

Alex Knight, a club archivist with Hearts, uncovered a song by T M Davidson and David Stephen called Hearts Lead The Way which captures the spirit behind those volunteering players:

When the Empire is in danger, and we hear our country's call,

The Mother’s land may count on us to leave the leather ball.

We've hacked our way in many a fray, we've passed and gone for goal,

But a bigger field awaits us, and we were keen to join the roll.

On July 1, 1916, McCrae’s Battalion fought alongside many others on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. That day remains the darkest in the history of the British Army, with 20,000 dead and 40,000 more injured. Three Hearts players were amongst those killed.

Jack, the Director of the McCrae’s Battalion Trust, said: “In the First World War, Scotland lost a higher proportion of its young men than any other nation that took part. We forget that generation at our peril.

“The houses those men lived in are still standing, their sons and daughters are still alive. It is very recent history and something the city of Edinburgh has a responsibility to remember with pride.

“An old lady, whose father was in the battalion and died alongside the Hearts players in 1916, once said to me that the stones around the base of the clock tower are stained with tears of generations of people who stood there and had come to remember.”

Jack, who is not a Hearts fan, also believes the act of sacrifice by the Hearts players had far wider significance for the game of football in the UK.

He added. “In 1914, there was a completely unjustifiable campaign of vilification directed at professional footballers on the basis that they should play football while other men were serving at the front.

“Then, just like today, a great many football teams were trading well above their capacity to pay their bills. If football had been suspended by the government, there is no doubt that a number of large clubs would have went out of business.

“The enlistment of the Hearts players singlehandedly prevented football from being stopped. The very day the Prime Minister was being asked to stop the game in Parliament, the Hearts players joined up and the Prime Minister was able to mention in Parliament that the example in Scotland proved football didn’t need to be suspended.

“There are big teams playing today, in English and Scottish football, that would not have been able to sustain the debts they were carrying if they weren’t able to play ever week.”

For Hearts fans, they are just pleased that their war memorial will soon be back at its Haymarket home.

Bill Alves, Chairman of Heart of Midlothian Shareholders Association, has been attending games regularly since the 1970s. The 63-year-old said: “For me, the most privileged thing I am able to do as chairman of the shareholders is to lay a wreath there on Remembrance Day.

“The memorial has been part of my life and Haymarket’s life for a long time. It is arguably Hearts’ proudest moment when the whole team volunteered to fight in 1914. It is part of Edinburgh, it is not just part of the club, so it will be great to have it back.”

Allan Black is a Hearts fan from Linlithgow. He is a retired army Major after serving for 23 years. He added: “It is almost unique, what it represents, and it is very important to the history and tradition of Hearts but also of the city of Edinburgh.

“I am looking forward to the Remembrance Day gatherings being held with the memorial. The original location was chosen for its prominence and significance. No other location will provide the same honour to what it represents and to all the memories it engenders.

“It has always been part of the fabric of Edinburgh and of the club, for me. The Remembrance Day gathering would not be the same elsewhere.”

Terry O'Donnell from the Federation of Hearts Supporters Clubs said: “The Federation fully supports the ethos of the clock and all that it stands for. We are glad to see the Memorial being returned to its rightful position.

“The time however this has taken is nothing short of disgraceful.

“I was first taken to the service by my late father when I was just a youngster and it helped me to understand exactly what being a supporter of the Heart of Midlothian was all about, pride, respect and comradeship.”

A special memorial to those who lost their lives in McCrae’s Battalion stands in Contalmaison Chateau Cemetery in France and is visited by football fans every year.

By the summer, supporters will also have the opportunity to once more pay tribute at Haymarket to men who decided to put their football boots to one side and took up arms to fight for their country.

Kenneth Morrison · Posted: Sat Sep 28, 2013 4:43 pm Post subject:

Well summer is pretty well over - is the clock memorial back in place?

I see that a new memorial to the seven players who were killed has been unveiled at Tynecastle.
http://www.heartsfc.co.uk/articles/20130927/moving-ceremony-at-tynecastle_2241384_3473331
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Ken

David McNay · Posted: Sat Sep 28, 2013 9:06 pm Post subject:

I was in Edinburgh last week - the clock is back in pride of place at Haymarket.