George Nicol played soccer for the 42nd Battalion against the 26th in a selection match on 1 April 1916. The Brisbane Courier of 4 April reported Nicol was selected for a combined AIF squad to play a Brisbane representative team in a charity match to raise money for a soldier injured in a training accident. Nicol, however, did not appear in the final XI who took to the field.
Could we assume Nicol had some skill in the game to be selected, given the number of known soccer players at Enoggera at the time? Whether he had learned the game at his native Longreach, Western Queensland is unknown, as the earliest newspaper report of the game in the town was 1923. Nicol was working as a well borer in Longreach when he enlisted in late December 1915. He was assigned to the 42nd Battalion and departed Australia in June 1916. He spent his service in France and over the course of the war was promoted to Corporal with several stints as acting Sergeant. Other than the occasional bout of illness, Nicol appeared to escape the war without being wounded in action or anything else notable enough to be added to his record.
Various Rockhampton newspapers noted regularly Nicol wrote letters home, though in most cases these letters were only mentioned in passing, but The Capricornian of 31 August 1918 printed an extended excerpt:
France is almost looking its best now. The sun is so warm that we seek the shade or get into our hencoops. Everywhere there are the green crops and flowers even in no man’s land; but then that is generally a peaceful place. The poppy is one of the flowers I like most. Perhaps it is because it is so red, and it is the first thing that catches one’s eye on looking over the parapet. . . I have had the good luck to meet some more schoolmates of mine, and the talks we had brought back old times to me. Some I had not met since leaving school till now. I have had several letters from my mother, and they all seemed very well when writing.
Otherwise, details of Nicol’s service are scant, and he returned to Australia in 1919. One curiosity in Nicol’s military record was his attempt in 1945 to help his mother, Ellen, receive a replacement Next of Kin Badge she had been issued during the first war. Base Records quoted a cost of 6/4, to which Nicol bristled, replying,
I fought in the last war with over 3 ½ years service, and served just on 5 years in this war, I do not feel disposed to let me mother pay 6/4 for a replacement of a badge that had been more than a thousand times coined.
He had returned to Longreach after the first war and worked and continued to work as a labourer. He married Agnes Green in 1921, with the couple later having two children. Nicol was still living in Longreach when the second war broke out and he reenlisted in January 1940 at the age of 45. He was given the rank of Lance Corporal and was soon promoted to Sergeant and later Warrant Officer. Nicol appears to have spent the war in Queensland but as other than some visits to Enoggera and Townsville, his work was classed as “In The Field”. Nicol died in Rockhampton in Match 1966.