These Incredible 'Rules of Golf' From a British Course During WWII Will Make You Realize Just How Soft You Truly Are
By way of background, this comes to me from a comic friend of mine, Graig Murphy. (Follow @GraigMurphy.) He got it from his buddy Matt, who is from our ancestral homeland of Weymouth, MA. The story goes that the friend's mom was doing some cleaning and found it among the stuff his grandmother hung onto after she moved to the States from England.
In case it's hard to read:
TEMPORARY RULES OF GOLF, 1941
RICHMOND GOLF COURSE
London, England
1. Players are asked to collect the bomb and shrapnel splinters to save these causing damage to the mowing machines.
2. In competitions, during gunfire or while bombs are falling, players may take shelter without penalty or ceasing play.
3. The positions of known delayed action bombs are marked at a reasonable, but not guaranteed, safe distance therefrom.
4. Shrapnel and/or bomb splinters on the Fairways, or in Bunkers, within a club's length of a ball may be moved without penalty, and no penalty shall be incurred if a ball is thereby caused to move accidentally.
5. A ball moved by enemy action may be replaced, or if lost, or destroyed, a ball may be dropped not nearer the hole without penalty.
6. A ball lying in a crater may be dropped not nearer the hole, preserving the line to the hole, without penalty.
7. A player whose stroke is affected by the simultaneous explosion of a bomb may play another ball. Penalty one stroke.
With a footnote that reads, "Fortunately, rules like these are not now needed in the game of golf. We hope that they never again will be. But, as a keep-sake of history, I thought you might like to have a copy." - Harry McGrath, 145 State Street, Boston.
Just so we're clear about what was going on in London in 1941:
Oh, is that all? Taking shelter in the middle of a round, just because to avoid gunfire and aerial attacks? Getting free relief from shrapnel and craters? Getting to play another ball with just a one stroke penalty when a Luftwaffe bomb explodes in your backswing? Whatever happened to "Play the ball where it lies"? What a bunch of poncy little sissy boys these must've been.
I kid. This is why there will always be an England. This is why the Brits has gone unconquered since the Norman Invasion almost a 1,000 years ago. This is why Napoleon and the Kaiser and even the Nazi war machine couldn't gain a foothold on the island. Because the British are the kind of people who'd rather take their chances with delayed action bombs might kill them than risk dying the kind of horrible death that comes from a life lived without golf.
To put that video further into context, at this point, it was the United Kingdom going it alone against Nazi Germany. The Germans' surprise attack against Russia (Operation Barbarossa) didn't happen until June of 1941. The US wouldn't get off the bench and into the war until Pearl Harbor in December of the year. It was in May of the previous year that Operation Dynamo got the British Expeditionary Force off the beach at Dunkirk. A devastating retreat, but one that kept them in the fight. I heard recently of an author of historical fiction who based all his World War II novels in a time before the German defeat at Stalingrad because, he pointed out, that until then there was no reason to believe the Nazis would fail to conquer the world because no one had stopped them before. But during this time, the Brits were doing a hell of a job of hanging in there.
What we refer to as The Battle of Britain, the air war over England, lasted from July to October of 1940. When historians refer to The Blitz, they're talking about this period. Constant night bombings of London. Air raids. Destruction and fires on a massive scale. Hermann Goring's bombers and fighters were sent less for strategic purposes than to break Londoner's will to fight. But by every single account, all that bombing had the opposite effect. People sheltering in the Underground threw parties and sang. The pubs stayed open. Beer was never rationed. The only thing that hindered fire fighters and rescue workers were the throngs of people who came out to cheer them on. One day, 13,000 people showed up for a cricket match. All that stupid, pill-addicted tub of lard Goring succeeded in doing was steeling the Brits to defend their island to the last. As one American on the scene was quoted, "By every test and measure I am able to apply, these people are staunch to the bone and won't quit … the British are stronger and in a better position than they were at its beginning"
And that strength and resolve meant fighting the war with firehoses, with rifles, with the controls of a Spitfire, and at times, with a driver and a putter. God bless these people. Even 80 years later, they make you proud to be from the same species as them. Remember how their generation was playing 18 in midst of aerial bombardments and navigating their shots through live ordinance the next time your playing partner is sitting next to you in the cart complaining about the weather or how hard the greens are or the fact someone didn't rake the trap. And in the words of Henry V, hold your manhood cheap while any speaks who played at Richmond Golf Course in 1941.