Leicester Fosse and the First World War: Part 25

2014 marked the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War. 

There were huge losses on both sides of the conflict. Over 50 players from Leicester Fosse Football Club fought in that War. They served in a variety of regiments, including the famous Footballers’ Battalion. Four Fosse players were decorated during the conflict. Twelve more were killed in action. A 13th player died in a Prisoner of War camp. Two more died after surviving the war, one of Spanish flu, and the other of tuberculosis. 

The final Leicester Fosse player to die and be buried in a Commonwealth War Grave was Ernest Nuttall. He was the oldest ex- Fosse player to lose his life, at the age of 49. He was also the player who served the furthest from home, thousands of miles away in the wastes of Siberia, when he became embroiled in the Russian Civil War, which was inextricably bound up with the final phases of the First World War, and which continued until 1920, long after the Armistice had been signed. 

Paul Taylor’s research has already established Ernest’s pre-war football career. Born in Leicester on 1 February 1871, he was a wing-half who played for Syston Wreake Valley and Mill Hill before signing for Leicester Fosse in 1889. He played in the Fossils first ever FA Cup game in 1890, was in their County Cup winning team in 1891, scored the Club’s first ever FA Cup goal in 1891, and was the Club’s captain for its first season as a Midland League side in 1891/92, when Leicester Fosse moved to Filbert Street. After playing 35 games for the Fossils in their first two seasons in the Midland League, he moved to London, became a solicitor and played for Crouch End. 

Researching Leicester Fosse players’ involvement in the First World War for this series has unearthed for the first time the truly remarkable story of Ernest’s experiences as a combatant in Siberia. 

At the outbreak of War, Ernest, already in his mid-40s, was still practicing as a solicitor and living with his wife, son and servant in West Kensington. He enlisted in the 25th Middlesex Garrison Battalion which was posted to the Far East in December 1916. In April 1917, the Battalion arrived in Hong Kong for garrison duty. Sixteen months later, it was then posted to the Russian port of Vladivostock, at the eastern end of Siberia. Ernest arrived there on 3 August 1918. 

By this time, the old Russian Empire, which had been on the Allies’ side from the outset of the First World War, had dropped out of the conflict following Lenin’s Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917. 

The British, along with the other Allies, were in Siberia to support the Russian counter-revolutionary forces (the Whites) against Lenin’s Bolsheviks, or Communists (the Reds). The Allies’ aim was to defeat the Bolsheviks, and install a White Russian government which would re-enter the war against Germany. 

There exists a very detailed account of the 25th Middlesex’s experiences in Siberia written by their commanding officer Colonel John Ward. It is called “With the Die-hards in Siberia”. From this we can piece together Ernest’s experiences. It is a complicated story! 

The 25th Middlesex was considered to be a low grade unit composed of men unfit for service in an active theatre of war. Ernest was probably assigned to it because of his age, although it does seem strange that a man of his education and background remained a private throughout the war. 

Ernest’s battalion was the first Allied contingent to land in Siberia. They were soon joined by other Allied soldiers from France, Japan, the USA, Canada, Italy, Poland, Serbia and Romania. This multinational army was under the command of a Japanese General. 

In mid-October 1918, Ernest and the 25th Middlesex travelled 3500 miles west on a month-long train journey to Omsk, a city in the heart of Siberia. Part of their mission was to protect the famous Czech Legion. 

This was a force of Czechs and Slovaks who were in Russia and who wanted independence from Austria, Germany’s ally. Many of them had been Russian prisoners of war. In an attempt to rejoin the War on the Allies side against Germany and Austria, the Czech Legion decided that the best way out of Russia and back to The Western Front was to travel thousands of miles east along the Trans-Siberian railway to Vladivostock and then travel by sea to France. Whilst strung out along the Trans-Siberian railway, they regularly attacked the Bolsheviks. 

Part of the multinational Allied army’s mission was to provide troops, money and supplies to help the Czech Legion. This is why Ernest found himself in Omsk, a city on the Trans-Siberian Railway. 

In Omsk, Ernest’s battalion was only really capable of “showing the flag”, but in November 1918, they went to the front with a regimental band as a guard for the White Russians’ new Minister of War, Admiral Kolchak who was visiting the Czech Legion. On 18 November 1918, a week after the War had ended in Europe, Ernest found himself involved with his Battalion setting up machine gun posts in Omsk supporting a coup by Kolchak which had made him the Supreme Commander of White Russia. 

With the war over in Europe, the Allied soldiers, Ernest amongst them, obviously wanted to return home. However, the British Government, heavily pressured by the War Minister Winston Churchill, wished to retain a military mission in Siberia as a counter to Lenin and the Bolsheviks whom they saw as a great threat to the post-war world. 

Consequently, Ernest had to endure a long cold winter in distant Siberia. It wasn’t until May 1919 following a big press campaign back in Britain to bring the 25th back home, that Ernest’s battalion started the long train journey back east to Vladivostock. They reached there in July 1919 and by September 1919 Ernest was back in Britain. 

This had been a gruelling experience for Ernest who was not that far off from his 50th birthday. His health had suffered in the sometimes frozen wastes of Siberia and within five months of returning home he had died of tuberculosis. 

Ernest is buried in East Sheen Cemetery in Surrey, one of 33 First World War Burials. 

The story of Ernest Nuttall, the last and oldest player to count amongst Leicester Fosse’s war dead, and the player who served farthest away from Filbert Street, concludes this series of Leicester Fosse and the First World War. 

However there is much research still to be undertaken into this topic, and we are pretty sure we will discover yet more details about Leicester Fosse’s involvement in that cataclysmic conflict a century ago. 

If you have any information that you think might be relevant to this subject, please contact . 

The documentary film “Foxes Remembered: The story of Leicester City and the First World War” can be viewed at the . 

Pictures 

1. Ernest Nuttall, Leicester Fosse. 1891/92 

2. Ernest Nuttall as Leicester Fosse’s captain 1892/93. 

3. British soldiers on parade at Omsk. 

4. Allied army HQ at Omsk. 

5. Allied officers near the front at Omsk. 

6. British Army staff at Omsk.