This research project was prompted by the enormous interest and publicity that has surrounded the centenary of the start of WW1. We knew that many, indeed thousands, of hockey players were involved and that many lost their lives. The stories do not just relate to serving men but also those men and women supporting the war at home. It soon became clear that people’s service and involvement with hockey spanned a period much greater than the four years of WW1. We therefore decided to begin this research at the start of the 20^th century and to look for any stories that linked hockey and hockey people to any military or conflict situations.

This is a fairly broad remit but by the end of 2015 we had over 140 stories spanning a wide variety of activity. This not only includes very military situations and gallantry but also civilian contributions, school hockey in wartime, espionage and much more. Some of the stories probably merit feature film treatment and indeed one of them has been filmed. Many are very personal, poignant and compelling.

A selection of the stories will be drawn together in a publication before 2018, the centenary of the end of WW1. In the meantime we are presenting a selection of WW1 stories on this website as a tribute to what happened a century ago. They will appear here, on or about their centenaries. Many of our stories will have a Naval background to them as we are fortunate to have amongst our volunteers Lt Cdr Alan Walker RN (Ret’d) who is an acknowledged authority on Naval and hockey history. Alan’s articles will be interspersed with other stories that we have learned of during our compilation of HMS.

If you have any information that relates to hockey or a hockey person to either the military or a conflict then please let us know by contacting The Hockey Museum Curator using the contact form.