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Bloomer's team on the occasion of his farewell match at Ruhleben Camp

A highly-accomplished portrait of Bloomer drawn by a fellow prisoner

Bloomer with his caps and medals in happier times

Derby County legend Steve Bloomer

                                                                BLOOMER’S WAR

DERBY COUNTY’S ENGLAND INTERNATIONAL STEVE BLOOMER SPENT THE ENTIRE FIRST WORLD WAR INTERNED IN A CIVILIAN PRISON CAMP IN GERMANY. SCARCE ARCHIVES TELL THE FULL POIGNANT STORY, AS BLOOMER’S BIOGRAPHER PETER SEDDON REVEALS.

After 22 seasons in top-class football, Derby County’s Steve Bloomer ‘hung up his boots’ in the summer of 1914 and found himself out of work. But not for long. Ambitious continental clubs were keen to avail themselves of English experience, and Bloomer was a star catch. Within a few weeks he accepted the post of ‘coach and instructor’ to the Berlin Britannia Football Club. Leaving behind his family at 35 Portland Street, Bloomer arrived in the German capital on 14 July 1914.

The timing proved fateful. Three weeks later, Britain and Germany were at war. ‘Alien civilians’ were at first merely ‘observed’, but Bloomer was arrested at midnight on 5 November 1914 and frogmarched to the Ruhleben Civilian Internment Camp on the outskirts of Berlin. When he next saw his wife and children the date was 22 November 1918. Almost one million British Empire servicemen had died in the interim.

Conditions in Ruhleben were rudimentary in the extreme. The site was that of a former racecourse hastily adapted to retain up to 4,000 civilian prisoners. The camp’s name in German meant ‘peaceful life’, which must have seemed like a cruel joke to the newly-arrived internees.

The men (there were no women) were bundled into the horse-stalls in the stable blocks, or else into the haylofts above. They were given a straw-filled sack and a horse-blanket each. There was no heating and minimal light. Each man received a tin bowl and a coarse face-cloth, but no eating utensils. Bloomer recalled that ‘a piece of repugnant blood sausage and watery ‘skilly’ were all we ate in those dark early days’. His coaching dream had become a nightmare.

It quickly became clear to the prisoners that the Germans had no idea how to run an internment camp. Left to the resident officials, the starkly primitive conditions at Ruhleben would have prevailed for the entire war. That signalled a living hell. So the prisoners made a novel suggestion. Taking responsibility into their own hands, they sought permission from their captors to effectively run the camp themselves. The mission statement was ‘to create a place fit for Britishers to live in’. Permission was granted, and the community which developed at Ruhleben became one of the most remarkable in military history.

What made such a bold move possible was the calibre of the internees. Most foreign civilians in Germany at the outbreak of war were there because they had talent. Bloomer’s was football. But the men arrested on the same fateful night included scientists, musicians, actors, golfers, jockeys, academics, tennis players, business entrepreneurs, quick-witted salesmen and captains of industry. Thrust together in adversity, these were not men to accept their fate lying down. Instead they made things happen.

The community they created was a microcosm of a typical British town. Small businesses sprang up to cater for every need. There was a theatre and an extensive programme of educational classes. The ‘streets’ were named after famous London thoroughfares. The officers created a club for themselves, complete with white-coated waiters. Ruhleben had its own postal system, political elections, and a committee for absolutely everything. A well-stocked library and the ‘Ruhleben Camp Magazine’ provided ample reading matter. Those who valued their privacy could even pay to use a ‘ticket only’ lavatory.

The end result was a queer hybrid indeed. Ruhleben was a university, public school, army barracks, holiday camp, ‘Gold Rush’ frontier settlement and tumbledown shanty town all rolled into one. But Bloomer still described it as a ‘hell-hole’ on his return. Despite the veneer of normality, it remained a prison camp above all else. Critics who chided the internees for having a ‘peaceful life’ seemed to forget that the improvements were all of the DIY variety.

One thing above all others sustained many of the captives. Bloomer made it clear - ‘Myself and many others would not have survived without it’. He was talking of sport.

The men had kicked a ball around in the yard from day one, but were initially forbidden from playing full-scale games in what had been the centre of the racecourse. They lobbied and protested every day until the stubborn camp commandant, Baron von Taube, finally relented. Under the leadership of the Scot, John Cameron, former player and manager of Tottenham Hotspur, the Ruhleben Football League was formed. When the inaugural game took place in March 1915, it was Baron von Taube himself who performed the kick-off. The Ruhlebenites were certainly a persuasive bunch.

Psychologists have studied the camp in detail. It seemed that the prisoners had slowly moulded the Germans into vaguely comic puppet figures who would do their bidding almost unwittingly. Even with a smile. As an example of ‘stiff upper lip’ Britishness, the spirit and humour of the Ruhlebenites was remarkable. The German authorities were utterly flummoxed by much of what went on. How did British officers get hold of the Times on the day after publication? Why were the men delirious with excitement when a packing case full of equipment arrived from Lancashire County Cricket Club? And why all those silly songs, nicknames and daft catch-phrases? The Germans began to wonder if they might really be the prisoners. It was a triumph of will for the allies.

Steve Bloomer played a leading role in the football, despite his 40 years. He captained the Ruhleben select XI and led his barracks to the first Premier League title without dropping a point. Nor was he the only old International in Ruhleben. His former England and Middlesbrough colleague Fred Pentland proved a real soul-mate to Bloomer.

In summer the prisoners turned to cricket on ‘The Oval’, played to packed houses. Bloomer smashed the camp batting record with a cool 204 and once recorded impressive bowling figures of 6 for 15. There was athletics too. Bloomer won the ‘Old Age Handicap’ at the Ruhleben Olympics, sprinting the 75 yards in 9.6 seconds. Everybody in camp knew ‘Steve’. When he finally left Ruhleben in March 1918, a farewell football match was staged in his honour.

But no amount of celebrity could ease the pain of imprisonment. That is evident in a letter Bloomer sent in May 1916 to Ernest Gregson, the landlord of the Eagle Tavern in Green Street, Derby: ‘Thank you for the cigarettes. I am so grateful that my Derby friends don’t forget to send me comforts. It is hard being kept here all this time, but we are a merry crew. All that is really troubling me is that I want to see good old Derby again.’

Bloomer constantly hoped for news of his release. In April 1917 he was called to the commandant’s office, but it was a cruel false alarm. The ‘news’ was that his 17-year-old daughter Violet had died of a kidney complaint. He was finally released from Ruhleben on 22 March 1918, but was required to stay in neutral Holland. He lodged in Amsterdam with a chemist and his family, and quickly secured a coaching position with Blauw Wit (‘Blue and White’). He even played in a number of exhibition games. Contrary to popular myth, his physical condition after four years imprisonment was fine.

Derby’s favourite son sailed into Hull on Friday 22 November 1918 and arrived at Derby station the same evening, where his wife and family were waiting. Steve Bloomer seldom spoke of his lost four years. Like all the ‘Ruhlebenites’, he knew what he knew:

‘In Ruhleben we were all brothers. We made a life for ourselves out of nothing. We will always share a kinship and never forget. There were some terrible times. Make no mistake that boys became men in Ruhleben. But it is far more pleasant to recall the good times when we went out to play cricket and football. Those were the days when men became boys again.’

The above is abridged from Peter Seddon’s full-length biography - Steve Bloomer:Football's First Superstar - published by Breedon Books.

• Bloomer, Steve

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