'Some Celtic fans just don't know their history when it comes to the Great War'

The 60-year-old has enlisted for substantial duty. He is writing a series of six books on the Glasgow Irish and the Great War. Its purpose is to celebrate a section of history that he believes has been “airbrushed” and to counter the myths and misconceptions of the 1914-18 and its participants.

“I was annoyed about the ‘bloodstained poppy’ protest by the Green Brigade in 2010,” he says.  It led him to both investigate the past and illuminate it. “I was interested in both military and social history,” he says. He had been born and bred in Blackhill and became part of an “economic conscription”.

“I was 22, I was going nowhere. I was unemployed so I joined the army,” he says. It suited him. He remained for 22 years, serving with the Queen’s Own Highlanders and attaining the rank of regimental sergeant major. The impact of a parachute jump damaged two vertebrae and McCallum gave up his move to become a commissioned officer. He then dabbled in history and writing, compiling a short history of Gargunnock, the Stirlingshire village where he bought a home.

Celtic fans who boo the minute's silence are 'booing their ancestors', says Ian McCallum

He also became accomplished at detailing family lineage and his expertise at research has been used both to fill his books and to settle arguments. “There was a guy at Celtic Park who sat beside me for years and I got into a heated discussion with him over the poppy demonstration by the Green Brigade. I didn’t realise he was so ill-informed. I asked him for details of his father, full name, birth date etc. I discovered that not only had his father served in the army in the Great War but had volunteered and wanted to sign up for an extra two years at the end of it. The guy arguing with me wasn’t best pleased.”

He adds of boos over the minute’s silence: “These fools are booing their own ancestors. If these guys had booed the silence at Parkhead right up until the 1960s they would have been lynched. But they would not have booed because supporters then knew they had relatives who had served or were serving the armed forces.”

He points out that 50,000 Irishmen were serving in the British Army at the outset of the Great War. “It is also forgotten just how the Glasgow Irish, basically a euphemism for Irish Roman Catholics, reacted to the outbreak of war.”

Celtic fans make their point - but some have done so from a position of ignorance, argues McCallum  

He points to the parish of St Roch’s in the Garngad which encompassed about 12 streets of tenements, largely filled with Roman Catholics of Irish descent. “Within six weeks of the war starting, the priests at St Roch’s were saying prayers for 300 parishioners who were at the front.” An appendix in the book lists parishes and the number of men who left for war from Sacred Heart at 600 through to St Joseph’s, Milngavie, at 22.

“The Celtic support diminished by about 5000 a match such was the scale of volunteering,” says McCallum. “Celtic as a club too were up to their knees in the Great War. In this, it reflected the community from which it drew its support. For example in 1915, at the annual sports day in August, lorries went around the park in a recruiting drive for the army. The Wee Green book (a Celtic handbook) also carried adverts for army recruitment into the 1960s.”

McCallum covers the more famous Celtic participants in the Great War such as Willie Angus, the Celtic player who won the Victoria Cross. He adds: “Willie Maley, the famous Celtic manager, also tried to join up but was turned down because of his age. He wrote a letter to the Glasgow Herald which was published under the heading 'Too old at 40'.” Maley, of course, was the son of a soldier and his sons were served and wounded in the Great War.

Ian McCallum, former soldier and author of a series of six books on the Glasgow Irish and the Great War  

But McCallum has wider purpose rather than to namecheck or expand on the stories of famous Celts. This is the story of a community, a social history of how the Glasgow Irish rallied to a call to arms. “I use the months of the war to chart both the football land events and those in the war and on the streets in Glasgow. The war started at the start of a season so it has been quite manageable in terms of matching football to events on the front line. But I had to write The Gathering Storm, a sort of primer to the war, because it would save me explaining things as the conflict unfolds."

The latest volume, The Storm Breaks, is a story both of the war and the 1914-15 season. It ended with Maley’s great Celtic team winning the league but there was controversy over that triumph. Six Hearts players served with the famous McCrae’s Battalion, a volunteer unit with strong links to the Gorgie club. Supporters believed their exertions diminished their ability to win the title but McCallum points out: “The Hearts players did military training certainly that season but the Celtic players had to return to reserved occupations. I believe the latter had the harder task. Believe me, I know about military training and it is not worse than doing a shift down an Edwardian pit.” 

He also confirms in the book that Tom White, chairman of Celtic and vice-president of the SFA, travelled with a delegation of Scottish football officials to Whitehall to discover precisely what the Government wanted of football. “There was a lot of moral pressure that professional football should not be played during the war. White basically asked Ministers: ‘What do you want us to do? We will do anything to help the war effort’. It was decided that full internationals and the Scottish Cup be sacrificed but professional football should be continued though players’ wages were reduced to £1 and they had to return to starred [reserved] occupations,” he says.

The league was won with a team featuring such stars as James McColl, Patsy Gallacher and Joe Dodds. The triumph was toasted heartily in Glasgow but its aftermath rolled over the battlefields.

A Private Kelly, of the 2nd Battalion Scottish Rifles was on the front line near Bois Grenier. He wrote home to tell how an impromptu concert had broken out when news of Celtic winning the championship reached France. Hearing the joyous clamour, the Germans joined in.

“We were only 90 yards from the German trenches, “ wrote Kelly, “and they shouted over to us in good English: 'Good old Jimmy Quinn [famous Celtic centre-forward]. Roll on Cowcaddens! When are you going back to Glasgow, Jock?”

Many of those Jocks, of course, did not return home. Many, too, were Celtic supporters, lest we forget. 

The Gathering Storms and The Storms Break, the first two volumes of Ian McCallum’s series on the Glasgow Irish and the Great War, are now available. See www.theglasgowirish.com