I’m a huge soccer fan (I support Everton in the English Premier League – COYB!), so I was delighted to come across this account of a World War I soldier from Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania playing the game near the front in France. He was not a fan of “the beautiful game.”

Clarence Morgan wrote to his mother, Libbie, in Port Carbon in the fall of 1918. The Pottsville Republican later printed the letter, which reads in part:

“Over here you don’t see any baseball. Soccer is the game.

I played it a couple of times but I got a swollen lip, a bump on my hand, so I prefer [American] football or falling down air holes…”

As a result of the Great War, soccer was becoming the most widely played sport in Europe. It featured in one of the most famous moments of the conflict.

In December 1914, Allied and German soldiers left their trenches and met in No Man’s Land in what became known as the “Christmas Truce.” Along with singing hymns and shaking hands, soldiers along some stretches of the Western Front kicked a ball around.

Clarence Morgan survived the war and returned home to the Coal Region in 1919.

(Featured Image: British soldiers playing soccer in Greece in December 1915 – Wikimedia)

---

Read more about Coal Region soldiers in World War I

From Pennsylvania’s Coal Region to Palestine | George Korson’s experience in World War I

A wounded Pennsylvania soldier’s letter home from France | World War I

Pennsylvania soldier killed on the Western Front | October 1918

Coal Region doctor became a British war hero in March 1918

---