The Madness of Captain Nevill

On July 1, 1916, four platoons of the 8th East Surreys led by a seemingly mad Company Commander Captain William P Neville charged out of their trenches and onto the Somme killing fields of 'No Man's lands'. Under the absurd notion of galvanising his troops Nevill ordered four footballs to be booted in front and for the men to chase and kick on as they advanced.

Recently returned from leave in England Nevill had expressed concerns to fellow officers as to how his men would react as many had never before experienced combat. Not wanting to be embarrassed he came up with the inconceivable idea of the footballs. Sure in his mind that given something to concentrate on the Surreys would ignore the blood, gore and flesh of their friends exploding amongst them?

On the eve of battle Captain Nevill informed the 8th Surreys of his supposed master plan and they listened incredulous as he explained how a prize would be awarded to the first man able to kick a ball into a German trench. This obviously assuming any survived the horrors of the German machine guns that lay in wait.

Nevill's men were to be the ill fated first wave of an all-out assault that like so many before was designed to shorten the war. Of the four platoons under Captain Nevill's command that day who climbed out of the trenches only a handful survived. Like dominoes in the wind they fell, maimed and slaughtered, their lifeless bodies hung on barbed wire or blown to pieces in foxholes.

The Regiment roll call in the aftermath of battle confirmed the deadly losses suffered by the Surreys. Included amongst those fallen, Captain William P Nevill.

His initial worries over his troop's courage under fire proved totally foolish and unfounded. As for Nevill's surreal idea of a prize for the first to kick a ball in a German trench? He was no longer around to award it.

The courageous Surreys who died that day were led by a man whom each evening used to stand on the fire-steps and shout insults at the Germans. One wonders what went through Nevill's mind as the carnage raged and his men were cut down all around him. Odds on thoughts were never about kicking a ball through the shattered earth of 'no man's land'?

Today one of the footballs can still be viewed in the National Army Museum, an everlasting monument to the madness of war. Whether Nevill honestly believed his actions helped those under his command that day to keep their nerve is a question that can never really be answered Was he mad or simply misguided? My guess is a little of both.