Things you probably didnt know about WWI?
The Football League suspended its programme after the 1914–15 season although the FA continued to allow clubs to organise regional competitions and amateur tournaments were difficult to run with so many men in the army so women stepped into the breach.Munitions workers munitionettesas they were known formed football teams and played against rival factories. Munitionette football attracted a wide following and many matches were played at the grounds of professional clubs. When peace came however the female players had to hang up their boots and go back to the domestic lives they had been leading before the war. But the sport continued to enjoy success until women were banned from playing in Football League grounds in 1921.
The Chinese Labour Corps were volunteers from the Chinese countryside who were sent to Europe to fulfil a vital but almost completely overlooked role in making an Allied victory possible. They were paid a pittance and were generally regarded by both the British and French as expendable coolies.
The minimum height requirement for the British Army was 5ft 3 inches but many shorter men were caught up in the recruiting enthusiasm of August 1914 and were keen to enlist. Rather reluctantly the War Office established a number of bantam battalions attached to more conventional regiments. Many bantams were coal miners and their short height and technical expertise proved a great asset in the tunnelling work that went on underneath the western front. However bantams were not very effective in battle and by the end of 1916 the general fitness and condition of men volunteering as bantams was no longer up to the standard required. It wasn’t easy to maintain recruitment increasingly the bantam battalions had to accept men of normal height. And there’s not much point in a bantam battalion that is largely made up of taller men so after conscription was introduced in 1916 the bantam battalions idea was quietly dropped.