It is a fact that many thousands of hockey players fought in WW1, many from the very start. However, the question of who was the first hockey player to die during the Great War may never be truly answered considering the unbelievable carnage that took place from day one.
It is possible that many of the fallen could have been hockey players but that this has not been picked up on before now. We can therefore only work on the information that has been uncovered. This indicates that Lt Charles Arthur Campbell of the 1st Battalion Cheshire Regiment was the first hockey player to die in WW1. He was killed on the 24 August 1914 and that evening his body was brought into the village of Audregnies by some pious Belgian civilians and buried close to the wall of the church there.
A fuller account appears in our Hockey Military Stories section here.
