Leicester City In The Second World War: More Guest Players At The Football Club
Ted Drake continued City’s tradition of using star international guest players when he made an appearance for the Club at Walsall in a Wartime League Southern Section match in November 1941.
During the war, he was an RAF Flight Lieutenant. He had won two league championship titles and the FA Cup with Arsenal in the 1930s. He set a top-flight record by scoring seven goals against Aston Villa in 1935. He also won five England caps before the war.
After the conflict, he managed Chelsea to their first league title in 1955.
Several more international stars guested for Leicester between 1941 and 1946. Leslie Jones served in the RAF during the war. He was an Arsenal team-mate of Drake and a member of their 1938 title-winning side. He made the first of his 18 wartime appearances for City in the 1941/42 season.
Before the war, he had been capped by Wales 11 times and he also won five wartime international caps.
An outside-left with a powerful shot, Les Smith was an RAF rear gunner who played for top-flight Brentford. He guested for City in 1941/42. He was selected for England to play against Romania in the last international before the war and went on to play in 13 wartime internationals, including three Victory Internationals in 1945/46.
Willie Buchan, who made five guest appearances for Leicester in 1942, won a Scottish league title in 1936 and a Scottish Cup in 1937, before transferring to Blackpool in November 1937. He was a PT instructor in the RAF and also played for Scotland in a wartime international against England in April 1943.
Another star player who guested twice for the Club in 1942/43 was Scotland international inside-forward, Patsy Gallacher. Capped by his country in October 1934 for a match against Ireland, he played over 300 games and scored over 100 goals for Sunderland, winning the old First Division title in 1936 and the FA Cup in 1937, before joining Stoke City in 1938.
Charlton Athletic’s inside forward Bert ‘Sailor’ Brown was another star guest for City. He played one game against West Bromwich Albion, in the Wartime Football League North in October 1944. Despite his nickname, which emanated from his distinctive rolling gait while walking and his ‘muscularly stocky build’, Brown, after serving as an auxiliary policeman in Greenwich, became a sergeant in the RAF during the War.
He had signed for Charlton in August 1934, where he won promotion in successive seasons: to the Second Division in 1935 and to the First Division in 1936. His side then achieved the runners-up spot in the top flight in 1937. Athletic continued to be a top four side in the final two pre-war seasons.
Such was Brown’s standing at the time he played for Leicester, he was selected for England to play in the four wartime internationals that season. He also played in two Victory Internationals the following season.
Four of Brown’s team-mates in his six wartime internationals illustrate the quality of star players who had guested for Leicester during the conflict.
He played alongside Tommy Lawton, who had been the first of City’s star guests back in 1939, in all six games. He formed a left wing partnership with Brentford’s Les Smith in four internationals. He also played alongside Billy Wright twice and Jimmy Mullen once.
These two young Wolverhampton players had guested for City throughout the 1940/41 season. Meanwhile, Leicester also fielded some other notable wartime guest players who were not internationals.
Between 1942 and 1945, Bury defender Jimmy Gemmell made over 50 wartime appearances for City, playing alongside the stalwart Sep Smith 16 years after they’d both played for England Schoolboys in a trial at Filbert Street in 1926.
Two other guest players in 1944/45 were Everton’s wing-half Maurice Lindley, who later became famous as Don Revie’s assistant manager at Leeds United, and Derby County’s outside-left, Angus Morrison, who went on to be a post-war star at Preston North End, scoring for them in the 1954 FA Cup Final.
In 1945/46, the final season arranged along wartime lines, there were, among others, four particularly noteworthy guests.
Spanish Civil War refugee Emilio Aldecoa made four guest appearances before moving back to Spain after the war, where he played for Atletico Bilbao, Real Valladolid, Barcelona and Sporting Gijon.
Wartime RAF bomber pilot Ken Chisholm, from the Scottish First Division side Queen’s Park, later played for Leicester in the 1949 FA Cup Final.
West Bromwich Albion winger Joe Johnson, on the other hand, had won five England caps in 1936/37 while playing for Stoke City.
Finally, George Edwards, who guested in City’s last-ever wartime fixture, had been a member of Aston Villa’s War Cup-winning side of 1944.