At the start of September 1914, less than a month after the outbreak of the First World War, the Football Association (FA), issued a mandate stating that clubs should offer up their fields ‘for use as Drill Grounds’.
![English soldiers play football in France 1916, Courtesy of Imperial War Museum](http://euppublishingblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/english-soldiers-play-football-in-france-1916-iwm-copy.jpg?w=604)
In an article in Britain and the World, Brandon Luedtke illustrates a parallel transformation during the First World War: on the home front, the making of the football pitch into a battlefield; at the war front, the reinventing of the battlefield as a playing field.
He highlights that throughout the First World War, the football pitch satisfied many of the very real material and psychological needs of the English war effort.
>>Learn more and read the article from Britain and the World