When Edgar Mobbs ran on a rugby field, people watched. Eyes were drawn to him. A towering, upright presence long of stride with knees raised high; elegant and powerful. When opponents came too close, out would shoot the famous Mobbs hand-off a carefully aimed piston smacking into the hapless tackler s jaw. If the founders of Rugby Union could have designed their perfect rugger man a captain of England, the Barbarians and Northampton Saints, a sporting colossus and a true Boys Own sporting icon it would have been Edgar Mobbs. Mobbs was the epitome of the Edwardian sporting hero: a fearsome competitor on the field and a bloody good chap everywhere else. He played the game and his fans loved him, cheering wildly as he graced the turf from Franklin s Gardens in Northampton to Twickenham and Toulouse. Men would follow him wherever he went and in 1914 they followed him to war; first to Loos, then to the Somme and finally to Ypres. But on 31 July 1917, Edgar Mobbs ran alone. In a Belgian wood, not far from the place they called Passchendaele, his men watched with admiration and horror as their leader ducked, dodged and weaved, not around adversaries on a rugby field but through shell-holes and round tree stumps, the air cracking with bullets and fizzing with shrapnel. Mobbs ran. It was to be his final charge. AUTHORS: Jon Cooksey is a leading military historian who has written a number of books about both world wars and the Falklands conflict. He is often asked to write articles about battlefield history for the national press and has appeared in several highly-acclaimed radio and television documentaries for the BBC and is regularly interviewed on BBC radio. With Graham McKechnie he has written, produced and appeared in several documentaries for the BBC on great sporting heroes and soldiers, including Edgar Mobbs. Graham McKechnie is sports editor for BBC Radio Northampton. He has produced and presented several critically acclaimed radio documentaries for the BBC, including the stories of England Rugby Union internationals and First World War soldiers Edgar Mobbs, Ronald Poulton Palmer and Blair Swannell. Before embarking on a career in journalism, he studied history at The Queen s College, Oxford.
