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Regimental Football Match and an Outdoor Stew

The chaps of 6th Battalion, the Queen's Royal (West) Surrey Regiment, enjoy a game of football while a man cooks a rustic stew outdoors.

Amateur film 1935 2 mins Silent

From the collection of:

Logo for Screen Archive South East

Overview

A rare Dufaycolour film which shows a leisurely football match being played by off-duty soldiers in improvised kit, some time in the late 1930s. They play with a heavy leather ball and later chat with lineside spectators while an elderly man cooks a rustic stew on an open fire as a number of farm animals look on.

The maker of this film, Captain Kenneth Lockwood, served with the 6th Battalion, Queen's Royal (West) Surrey Regiment prior to and during the Second World War. After capture by the Germans, he was at first imprisoned at Laufen Castle in Bavaria before being transferred to the notorious Oflag IVC in Eastern Germany - otherwise known as Colditz. Despite many attempts at a 'home-run', prisoner-of-war slang for a successful escape, Lockwood was unable to break free from Colditz until the castle was overrun by United States forces in 1945. After the war, Captain Lockwood became the secretary of the Colditz Association, a post he held for 50 years until his retirement in 2006. He received an MBE in 1990.