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Sporting War and Sporting Peace 1914-1919 - Kenneth Hutchings

With World Mental Health Day on October 10th, the next two parts of Peter Bloor’s series looking at those sportsmen and women involved with sport and the First World War focuses on Kent cricketers Colin Blythe and Kenneth Hutchings. In this piece, Peter reflects on the latter and Hutchings bravery on the cricket pitch as well as the war battlefield. 

Hit by “the South African express”

At the start of their match in June 1907 against the touring South Africans, Kent were already missing four regular players and during the course of it effectively lost two more, Arthur Fielder and Kenneth Hutchings. Arthur was able to field, but not bowl, in the South Africans’ second innings after straining a leg muscle, but Kenneth was unable to field at all after being hit on the left hand by a sharply rising ball from “the South African express” Johannes Kotze on the first day.

“Hutchings bats one-handed”

The bruising, and the possibility that he had also broken a small bone, kept Kenneth out of cricket for the whole of July but with Kent still needing 14 to win he did go in last in their second innings wearing a thick bandage of wadding to bat almost one-handed. “Every time he struck at the ball he must have suffered agonies” said the Morning Leader but Kenneth was nonetheless able to score two singles and 2 with a superb drive off Reggie Schwarz. He and Fielder, who could not run at all well, had taken Kent to within 3 runs of their target when Kenneth left his crease and hit Schwarz’s next ball with as much power as his injured hand would allow, only to give a grass-level catch to Kotze and victory to the South Africans with 10 minutes left to play.

“K.L. Hutchings upholds Kent’s best traditions”

As the son of a doctor and a former public schoolboy with a career in business Kenneth, a Gentleman amateur cricketer, was seen as suitable to captain Kent, who did not appoint a professional Player to the position until 1953.

His brief but sporadically brilliant career was already fading fast but in June 1912 he was captaining Kent at Northampton in the absence of Edward Dillon. By two o’clock on the last day the home side needed just four to win with four wickets remaining when the players began to leave the field for lunch with light rain falling and a wet afternoon expected. From his position on the boundary Kenneth waved the players back on and then allowed the batsmen to run the winning four for a stroke that should only have gone for two, just before the rain that would have saved Kent arrived as the players left the field to noisy cheering for his sporting gesture.

A Gentleman and an Officer

Kenneth’s background also fitted him, in the eyes of the army, to be a junior officer, and he was duly serving as a 2^nd Lieutenant with the 12^th Battalion of the King’s Liverpool Regiment on the Somme at the start of September 1916.

In 1915 he had written to a friend, telling of three narrow escapes, one when a bullet from an enemy patrol lodged in a sandbag an inch from his head and two from shell-bursts. Kenneth and three other officers agreed that their escapes from the shells had been miraculous, but he was expecting no such miracle when the 12^th attacked the Somme village of Guillemont on September 3^rd 1916.

“A fine soldier, perhaps too reckless but brave”

Kenneth reflected in his letter that “When you consider you may be blown to pieces at any moment you start thinking a wee.” Some in the Battalion distracted themselves from the dangers with sport - on July 18^th an Officers versus Sergeants football match resulted in a 4-3 win for the former - but Kenneth it seems thought more than “a wee” over the next year and wrote to his friends telling them to “watch the papers” for news of his death. The mental strain showing still more clearly, on the eve of the attack he told his fellow-officers of a presentiment that he would not survive it – and he was proved sadly correct when, at some time after the Battalion moved forward, Kenneth was killed by a shell.

In 1907 against the South Africans it had been the pain in his hand that told Kenneth he should not be hitting the ball, or perhaps even batting at all, yet he did both, to the best of his ability and almost successfully. Now - and this is to by no means equate sport with the horrors of the trenches - his mind was telling him that he should not lead his platoon into the attack, but again he confronted his fears and did what had to be done, on this occasion at the cost of his life rather than a month’s cricket. As “Wanderer” wrote in The Sportsman following Kenneth’s death he “had the spirit of a soldier and athlete”, something he had clearly demonstrated as both Mr. K.L. Hutchings of Kent and 2^nd Lieutenant Hutchings of the King’s Liverpool Regiment.

References

The quotes and other information in this article are taken from The Morning Leader, The Morning Post, The Daily News, The Sportsman, other, local newspapers 1906-1916 and the 12^th Battalion King’s Liverpool Regiment War Diary, The National Archives reference WO 95/2126/2.

Images – Kenneth Hutchings and Arthur Fielder both Wills 1908, King’s Liverpool cap badge and colour Wills 1907, and wounded at Guillemont Imperial War Museum, reference © IWM Q 4173