This excerpt was taken from 'The History of the Footscray Football Club: Unleashed' written by John Lack, Chris McConville, Michael Small and Damien Wright.

'Players in the Greater Game': Serving with the AIF

During the Great War, 1914-18, some 16 Footscray players served with the Australian Imperial Forces at Gallipoli or in France and Belgium.

Captain-Chaplain T. C. Rentoul, home on furlough from France early in 1918, told the congregation of the Hyde Street Methodist Church that the 'New War Product, Billjim, the Australian soldier' was distinct among the varied types of Empire manhood gathered on the battlefields:

One of his chief characteristics is love of sport. No sooner is a 'stunt' over and the force back behind the lines than the football or cricket set it out, and the boys are just as keenly interested in the game as they are in the bigger one. Sometimes stray shells even fall among them as they play. The amazing thing is the way football guernseys come to light, supporters and ex-players of the various clubs seeming somehow to have contrived to stow a set of the old colors in his kit... among them the Footscray tricolor.