I am enjoying researching these War Years matches, as they are very little spoken about in football history. Probably because the Wartime leagues were all based on the limited practical possibilities during the conflict, rather than the rules, promotions & relegations of the official English & Scottish Football Leagues. But now that era is almost beyond living memory, it has become as though the War years matches never took place. I am hugely grateful to the late Colin Cameron for the details in his books Home and Away with Charlton Athletic & The Valiant 500. These details - dates, opponents etc. give me a search reference for newspaper archives, which then can provide match reports & trivia for almost every first team game played. And all absolutely fresh knowledge to me. These Wartime games were important, indeed vital to morale during WW2, which (especially up to 1942) was by no means certain to be won by Britain and her Allies. Lives were lived in the kind of hardship and trepidation for a possible terrible future that we can scarcely imagine now. Our Wartime footballers deserve to be remembered - just as our brave Wartime service people rightly are. And the millions of folks who kept the home fires burning.
