Orient continues its preparations for the 1919/20 season with a number of further signings. The most recognisable name is David Calderhead Junior, but it is David Senior who is the famous one. The secretary-manager of First Division Chelsea since 1907, Calderhead Senior took the West London club to its first FA Cup Final in the last season before the war. David Junior is now 30 years old and despite spending time playing under his Dad at Lincoln City and Chelsea, his career has never taken off. Once considered a promising youngster he only managed 43 first team appearances for Chelsea in seven years at the club. He spent the last season before the war with Leicester Fosse apparently without making an appearance. Nevertheless, Calderhead is a centre-half, a position where Orient is sorely in need, and he is expected to be the first choice in that position in the coming season.
On one of his rare appearances for Chelsea in 1911, Athletic News identified some qualities; “Calderhead is a sound player without approaching the brilliant. But he never tries to overdo finesse and trickery, he passes better than any half-back Chelsea possesses and he is the sworn foe of any centre-forward who attempts to cross his path”.
Meanwhile wing-half Billy Hind has signed for another season. Hind, who hails from Newcastle, first signed for the club in 1908, playing nearly 200 times before the outbreak of war. Now 34 years old and returning to civilian life after being wounded in the war, Hind can probably not be expected to be much more than a handy squad player for the O’s from now on.
The Daily Herald also reports that Orient have signed a goalkeeper called Dennon from Queen’s Park Rangers, although there is no record of him ever having played for the club.
Meanwhile the fixtures for the new season are out and with both divisions now extended to 22 clubs, for the first time the Football League season will start in August. Clapton Orient open with an away tie at Huddersfield Town on Saturday August 30th, with the first home game the following midweek against Fulham. Huddersfield, like Orient, are a solid mid-table Second Division side. In 1914/15, the Terriers finished 8th while Orient were 9th, so this will go down as a tricky but winnable first match. Fulham, similarly, were a mid-table outfit before the war and the O’s will be hopeful of two points from their first home match of the season. The fixtures are arranged so that teams play each other more or less back to back, so O’s play Huddersfield again at home on 6thSeptember in the first Saturday fixture at home.
In the wider world the big news across all front pages is the Paris peace talks. The allies have issued their peace terms to the German (or ‘the Hun’ as they referred to in some of the popular press) and Germany initially rejects them. The terms are indeed considered in some circles to be harsh, involving the loss of territory, heavy sums in reparations and controls on Germany’s military and industrial capacity. The Labour Party in Britain believes the Allies are punishing Germany’s workers for the sins of the Kaiser and that harsh treatment can only lead to further war. However Leader of the House of Lords, Lord Curzon, states that no modification of the treaty terms will be permitted and Prime Minister Lloyd George says that if Germany refuses to sign the peace at Versailles, the Allied armies will march them to Berlin to be signed there.
Nevertheless it is widely believed that the Germans will succumb and the peace will be signed in June. This is just as well, because the men are desperate come home and British armies are now fighting on two new fronts; in Russia in support of the White Russians against the Bolsheviks and in Afghanistan where the British are attempting to repel an Afghan invasion of India. British Commander in Chief Sir Douglas Haig says that peace can be secured by giving all nations the benefits of British freedom and justice.
The last days of the Paris Conference are punctuated poignantly when the funeral cortege of Nurse Edith Cavell passes through London on the 14th, watched by huge crowds on its way to the martyred heroine's home city of Norwich.
A sign that peace is returning is that much of the month is taken up with the drama of the race to become the first to fly across the Atlantic, for which feat the Daily Mail has offered up a £10,000 prize. Australian Harry Hawker and his navigator Kenneth Grieve ditch their Sopwith in the ocean and are missing for several days, eventually being found by the Royal Navy and brought back to London in triumph for a parade and a meeting with the King. In the meantime an American air force team has gradually been making its way across via the Azores in an NC4 seaplane, arriving in Portugal on the 28thto become the first in history to make the 4000 mile crossing by air. The British forces own Captain Jack Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown are in Newfoundland waiting for an opportune moment to make their attempt. Now that the prize of the first flight has gone, will they attempt the additional and far more dangerous feat of making the crossing non-stop?
Technological wonders abound, and Mr Marconi arranges an astonishing demonstration of ‘phoning without wires’ at his works in Chelmsford. A gramophone record is heard playing 20 miles away, and although it is not entirely clear why anyone would want to listen to music over such a distance, the enormous implications of wireless telephony for future communications are obvious.
Finally, there is a series of ghastly reports of stabbing and razor attacks, mainly on women in the street or in their own homes and demobilised soldiers are implicated in a number of cases. The most shocking of these is probably the murder of a father, mother and two daughters with an axe and a hammer at home in Forest Gate by a man identified by witnesses as wearing a soldiers uniform. The culprit, Henry Perry also known as Beckett is captured in East Ham some days later and readily confesses. It emerges he has been injured in the forces in Palestine and suffers severe headaches whenever it rains. Due to doubts over his war record, Perry has been denied a war pension and he has been living with the family in Forest Gate to whom he is related by marriage. He is committed for trial and, of course, hanged in July 1919. Every man returned a hero, but not every man enjoyed a hero’s return.
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