Re-enacting the Christmas Day truce football game

This summer, the Newark Town FC under-21s travelled to Belgium to re-enact history’s most famous football match – the Christmas Day truce game. The replay was inspired by a compelling secret uncovered by local Newark historian Franics Towndrow: the revelation that an ordinary working man from Nottinghamshire could be behind one of twentieth century history’s most moving stories.

On Christmas Day 1914, British and Germans fighting the First World War in Belgium climbed out of their trenches into no man’s land. In a spontaneous outbreak of peace, they shook hands, exchanged gifts, sang songs together – and played what became history’s most famous football match ever. Now, 100 years later, Nottinghamshire historian Francis Towndrow has uncovered an incredible new perspective on that fateful match. Francis has tracked down the Nottinghamshire soldier who most likely supplied the football.

Local boy William Setchfield probably never imagined he’d make history. A cobbler’s son and professional soldier from Newark, he was due to be demobbed on the 4th of August 1914, the day Britain declared war. Instead of returning to Britain from his post on Malta, however, he soon found himself landing in the killing fields of Flanders. There’s strong evidence he was at the heart of the football match just three months later.

We already know William’s regiment, the 1st Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, took part in the match. An account from another soldier refers to the ball being contributed and kicked into play by “an Old Bill character” – popular slang for a veteran. As a 26-year-old professional soldier, Setchfield fits the bill – he would have been a hardened old timer to the generally younger men in the trenches. A pre-Christmas letter to his brother from Setchfield – who Towndrow describes as a “mad keen footballer” – discussed football and mentions a mysterious gift being sent over. As Setchfield’s family were shoemakers – exactly the people who made Britain’s leather footballs at that time – the signs suggest this was indeed the football used to play their truce match. His own comment on the events, however, remains vague. Writing to his brother afterwards, he simply said: “We had a wonderful Christmas. The Germans came over to us in the afternoon, and we had our photos taken with them, but it would be a big task to put everything that happened in a letter.”

So why did Setchfield clam up? “The top brass was very much against the match,” explains Towndrow. “There was even talk of charging some of the senior officers with desertion. If Setchfield provided the ball, he could even have been shot. That was the feeling on the day.”

After the truce match, William Setchfield fades from view. We know he was still serving in 1917, and married a local girl called Florence Bramley in 1921. They were still together in 1946, when they sent a wreath to William’s brother’s funeral, but afterwards the trail goes cold. “We can’t find any record of him or his wife dying,” says Towndrow. “We think maybe he went to Canada, America or some other country soon after the war.”

That’s not where William Setchfield’s story ends, though. One hundred years to the day after William Setchfield arrived in Flanders, Nottinghamshire men crossed the channel to make history once more. Thanks to funding from the National Lottery, Towndrow and football team chairman, Paul Baggaley, brought over an under-21 team from Setchfield’s hometown of Newark to play a German team from their twin town, Emmendingen.

They played on the ground nearest the original truce match – less than a mile from where both Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill served as soldiers during the war – a site where 12 fallen New Zealand soldiers lie buried beneath the pitch itself. Paul Baggaley remembers the day’s strong emotions.

“We got both teams together behind the cross. There was this realisation that 100 years ago, these young men would have been killing each other instead of standing with their arms round each other’s shoulders".

Newark Town FC received £8,500 from the Heritage Lottery Fund to help make their historic rematch possible. Overall, £60 million has been awarded to more than 1,000 projects that explore and explain the heritage of the First World War.