Farewell To Kings

WW1 ended on November 11 1918 and one battle remains unresolved. On the Western Front each Christmas Day since 1914, the two armies would lay down their weapons and play football across a pitch of makeshift mud and corpses on the no-mans land east of Ypres. By 1917 the scores were level and the 1918 event would have seen either England and Germany taking the lead. It never happened. Now, 100 after the end of the Great War, a museum boss hopes to recreate that last game of football to revitalise his ailing WW1 museum. he sets about recruiting the best the army has to offer in terms of football and they take a team to the exact spot where the previous kickabout took place. The protagonist is the Oxford-educated Maurice Faulkner, a former army captain who now runs the WW1 legacy association and the museums which keep open the memories of the First World War. Forever looking to market the museum movement, a plan is co-hatched to play football on a Christmas morning east of Ypres and the event gathers professional momentum. There are deals to cover the match on TV, the team of soldiers are trained by top-flight managers and even the training pitch is reconfigured to be like the conditions they would have faced in 1918 ( the match that never was). The event is doomed as the German team have their own secretive ploy and use the national football team as Faulkner's plan fall into disarray as plans and execution fall at the final hurdle. They plan to play for the referee's original whistle that was used in the first four matches from 1914-1917 and owning that object would have become the focal point of the WW1 museum archive - a modern day holy goblet. No stone unturned in the quest for the victory and the restoration of pride over WW1's final battle.