Duncan Edwards

[Raoul]

died on this day in 1958.

R.I.P.

 

[KidCreole]

died on this day in 1958.

R.I.P.

If you speak to United fans who saw Duncan, George Best and Cantona play they mostly reckon that this fella was the best of the lot...

You can't really argue with that...

RIP

 

[Dazama]

R.I.P.

 

[tfreebsred]

If you speak to United fans who saw Duncan, George Best and Cantona play they mostly reckon that this fella was the best of the lot...

You can't really argue with that...

RIP

Wish I could have seen him play. All the stuff I've heard is legendary.

 

[Raoul]

The Death of Duncan Edwards

by Arthur Hopcraft, 1968.



Anyone who was in Manchester in February 1958, particularly if he lived there, as I did, will remember forever the stunning impact on the city of the air crash at Munich airport which killed eight of Manchester United's players. The shoch was followed, just as it is in particularly closely tied families after a death, by a lingering communcl desolation. No other tragedy in sport has been as brutal or as affecting as this one.

It was not simply that very popular athletes had been killed and a brilliantly promising team destroyed. There was a general youthfulness about this particular Manchester United team which was new to the game. Manchester relished this fact. The old, often gloomy city had a shining exuberance to acclaim. These young players were going to take the country, and probably Europe too, by storm. To identify wit this procociousness, to watch people in other towns marvelling and conceding defeat, gave a surge to the spirit. Suddenly most of the team was dead.

The players killed were Roger Byrne, Geoff Bent, Eddie Colman, Duncan Edwards, David Pegg, Mark Jones, Tommy Taylor, Bill Whelan. Four of them were England internation players, Byrne, Edwards and Taylor all firmly established with appearances in the England side well into double figures. Pegg had been capped once. It was the death of Duncan Edwards which gave the deepest, most lasting pain to the community. This was not because he was liked personally any more than the others, but because there was a special appeal to people's ideals about him. Walter Winterbottom, the England team manager at the time, called him 'the spirit of British football'. He meant the football that exists in children's day-dreams and good men's hopes: honest, brilliant, irresistibly strong.

There was an extra poignancy in Edward's death in that he lived for fifteen days after the crash. How bitterly that hurt. One of the key components in Duncan Edwards's appeal was his size. Big men in sport are always specially compelling, whether they lumber comically or endear by their dogged willingness. Edwards at twenty-one was a six-footer, weighing 13.5 stone, but with the immense presence he brought to his game he had nimbleness as well as strength, flar as well as calm.

A youth so equipped was bound to prompt affectionate epithets from sportswriters and fans, and people cudgelled their brains to find new ones. He was Kid Dynamite, the Baby Giant, the Gentle Giant, Big Dunk, the Boy with the Heart of a Man. As the daily reports came in from the hospital in Munich, Manchester raised hope for his survival. In the second week of the crash people began to talk in their ready sentimental cliches about the Lionheart fighting his way through again. There was much banality in the words, but the longing was sincere. Then he died.

Edwards was born in October 1936, in Dudley, Worcestershire. As a schoolboy of the forties and a teenager of the fifties he was part of the generation which linked the hard, sombre days of the war and rationing with the more dashing, mobile times which followed in such animated reaction. He would be in his early thirties now and, if still playing football, which is likely, assuredly an old-fashioned-looking figure among the imitating contemporaries of George Best. He had dignity on the field always, even in his teens: that senior officer kind of authority which comes to few players and then late in career, as with Danny Blanchflower, Jimmy Armfield, George Cohen.

I looked through an album of photographs in Edwards's parents' home, which showed him right through his life. The face was grave, the gaze he gave at the world open and tranquil. Winterbottom's description was not fanciful, in spite of being one which any thoughtful man would hesitate to use in connection with any player. Edwards represented the kind of self-respecting modesty whis is not nurtured in the ferocity of the modern game. It has not been deliberately forced out of football; it is just not natural to the age.

The album had pictures of Edwards in his street clothes, as well as in football strips, and in them the period was caught, fixed by his personality. He was bulky in those ill-fitting jackets and wide trousers with broad turn-ups. Clothes did not interest young footballers then; there was neither enough money nor a teenage-identity industry to exploit such an interest. He could have been a young miner freshly scrubbed for a night at a Labour Club dance. He did not look important, in the celebrated sense; he looked as if he mattered, and belonged, to his family and his friends. The anonymity of style was true to his generation and his kind.

The situation was very different when he put his football boots on. I went to see Mr Geoff Groves, the headmaster of a secondary school in Dudly, who was one of Edwards's teachers when the boy was at primary school. Mr Groves remembered this eleven-year-old playing for the school against a neighbouring school the day after Edwards got home from a spell of ho-picking. He said: 'He dominated the whole match. He told all the other twenty-one players what to do, and the referee and both the linesmen. When I got home that evening I wrote to a friend and said I'd just seen a boy of eleven who would play for England one day.'

A year later, Mr Groves said, the boy was playing 'in the style of a man, with wonderful balance and colossal power in his shot'. Already he was showing the intelligence in his game which became central to all he did. 'He already understood all about distribution of the ball,' said Mr Groves. 'And he was such a dominating player that the ball seemed to come to him wherever he was.' It is one of the distinguishing marks of the most talented players that they always seem to have the ball exactly when they want it. Edwards was a heroic figure in Dudley long before he became a professional player. He became captain of the England schoolboys' side, having joined it when he was thirteen, and many of the leading clubs were clamouring for his signature. Matt Busby called at his home at 2 a.m. on the morning after his sixteenth birthday and acquired him for United. He was sixteen-and-a-half when he played his first match for United, 6 feet tall and weighing 12 stone 6 lb. At eighteen-and-a-half he became the youngest player ever to be picked for the full England international side. It was the one which beat Scotland 7-2 at Wembley in April 1955, and this was the company he was in:

Williams (Wolves); Meadows (Man City); Byrne (United); Phillips (Portsmouth); Wright (Wolves, captain); Edwards; Matthews (Blackpool); Revie (Man City); Lofthouse (Bolton); Wilshaw (Wolves); Blunstone (Chelsea).

Sir Stanley Matthews who was forty when he played in that match, told me that he thought Edwards could truly be called unique. To Matthews, who learned his football in the days when, as he put it, 'they all said you had to be strong, with big, thick thighs,' Edwards's build was no surprise. 'But', he said, 'he was so quick, and that was what made the difference. I can't remember any other player that size who was quick like that.'

 

[Raoul]

...continued

The point was emphasised eighteen months later, when Edwards, normally a left-half, was placed at inside-left in the England team against Denmark, when the forward line was Matthews, Brooks (Spurs), Taylor, Edwards, Finney (Preston North End). Edwards scored twice and Taylor three times which gives an indication of the scoring power Manchester United had at their command.

The fondness Manchester United's supporters felt for this player was expressed in the common adulation by boys but also in the quiet admiration of the kind which fathers show for successful sons when they speak about them to neighbours, and out of the boys' hearing. In this regard for Edwards there was often a sad sympathy for opposing players who were being crushed coldly out of the game by him. I remember watching one of United's home matches when beside me was a spectator in his fifties, who shouted little but nodded his head nearly all the time in deep satisfaction, letting out occasionally an equally deep sigh which was eloquent in its pleasure. By the middle of the first half one of the opposition's inside forwards was reacting furiously to the frustration of being treated like a small child by Edwards, firmly but without viciousness or even very much concern. The player threw himself several times at Edwards, eithing missing the moving body entirely or bouncing off it, and on each occasion the man beside me sucked in his breath, shook his head and said softly: 'Nay, lad, not with'im, not with 'im.' It was the decent, absorbed football fan like this one for whom Winterbottom was speaking when he called Edwards the spirit of British football.

Edwards's funeral took place at St Francis's Church, Dudley, not far from his home. There were at least 5,000 people outside the church. The vicar made it a footballer's service. He said: 'He goes to join the memorable company of Steve Bloomer and Alex James.' Had he lived long enough Edwards would surely have joined the company of England team captains. Instead he left a memory of brilliance and courage and a sense of vast promise he was not allowed to fulfil.

His grave in Dudley cemetary is elaborate. The headstone has an ingrained picture of him in footballing kit holding a ball above his head for a throw-in. An inscription reads: 'A Day of Memory, sad to recall. Without Farewell, He Left Us All.' There are three flower stands, and one of them is in the shape of a football. It suits the nature of his class and his neighbourhood, and it is attended with great care by his father, a gardener at the cemetery.

His father, Mr. Gladstone Edwards, felt he had to explain why he was working at the cemetery. He said: 'People think I came to this job because he's there. But that wasn't the reason. I had to change my work, and I've always liked flowers and gardening. I felt I wanted to be out of doors.' Duncan was his only child.

Neither he nor his wife could hide the depth of their loss. Nor was there any reason why they should try. When I went to see them Duncan had been dead for nine years, and Mr Edwards, at least, could talk about his son straightforwardly, although all the time with a quiet deliberation. He said that even then there was still a steady trickle of visitors to Duncan's grave. There were days when twenty people would arrive to look at it, like pilgrims. They seldom knew the gardener they stopped to talk to was the player's father. They nearly always said the same thing: that there would never be another Duncan. Mr Edwards added that Friday often brought the most visitors, and they were often lorry-drivers with Manchester accents. They had stopped on their long run home from somewhere south. The next day, of course, they would be at Old Trafford to watch the match.

In Mr and Mrs Edward's small semi-detached house the front room is kept shaded and spotless. It was in here that Mr Edwards showed me Duncan's photograph album, and also let me open a glass-fronted display cabinet and examine the mementoes of Duncan's life. It contained eighteen of his caps at full international, youth and schoolboy level, to represent the eighteen times that he played in his country's senior team. Each was kept brushed and was filled with tissue paper. On top of the cabinet were three framed photographs of Duncan: one taken in uniform when he was in the Army, doing his National Service, another with his fiancee and a third in which he wears a Manchester United shirt. Beside them was a framed five pound note, which was the last present he gave his mother. The tiny room was deominated by a portrait of Edwards in his England shirt, the frame two feet wide by two-and-a-half feet long. The room was a shrine.

That showcase also had a copy of the order of service which was used on the day that two stained-glass windows were dedicated to Edwards at St Francis's Church. They are close to the font, beside a picture of a gentle Jesus which was given to the church by a mother, in memory of a baby girl. One of the windows has Edwards down on one knee and there is a scroll running across his chest which says: 'God is with us for our Captain.' All the survivors of the Munich crash were in the church when the windows were dedicated by the Bishop of Worcester in August 1961. Busby said at the service: 'These windows should keep the name of Duncan Edwards alive for ever, and shine as a monument and example to the youth of Dudley and England.'

Edwards name is also kept in front of the people of Dudley in the title of the Duncan Edwards Social Club, which is attached to the town football club, and in two trophies for local schools football.

The memorials commemorate not only Duncan Edwards's football but also the simple decency of the man. He represented thousands in their wish for courage, acclaim and rare talent, and he had all three without swagger. The hero is the creature other people would like to be. Edwards was such a man, and he enabled people to respect themselves more.


From 'The Football Man' - 1968

 

[tfreebsred]

...continued

The point was emphasised eighteen months later, when Edwards, normally a left-half, was placed at inside-left in the England team against Denmark, when the forward line was Matthews, Brooks (Spurs), Taylor, Edwards, Finney (Preston North End). Edwards scored twice and Taylor three times which gives an indication of the scoring power Manchester United had at their command.

The fondness Manchester United's supporters felt for this player was expressed in the common adulation by boys but also in the quiet admiration of the kind which fathers show for successful sons when they speak about them to neighbours, and out of the boys' hearing. In this regard for Edwards there was often a sad sympathy for opposing players who were being crushed coldly out of the game by him. I remember watching one of United's home matches when beside me was a spectator in his fifties, who shouted little but nodded his head nearly all the time in deep satisfaction, letting out occasionally an equally deep sigh which was eloquent in its pleasure. By the middle of the first half one of the opposition's inside forwards was reacting furiously to the frustration of being treated like a small child by Edwards, firmly but without viciousness or even very much concern. The player threw himself several times at Edwards, eithing missing the moving body entirely or bouncing off it, and on each occasion the man beside me sucked in his breath, shook his head and said softly: 'Nay, lad, not with'im, not with 'im.' It was the decent, absorbed football fan like this one for whom Winterbottom was speaking when he called Edwards the spirit of British football.

Edwards's funeral took place at St Francis's Church, Dudley, not far from his home. There were at least 5,000 people outside the church. The vicar made it a footballer's service. He said: 'He goes to join the memorable company of Steve Bloomer and Alex James.' Had he lived long enough Edwards would surely have joined the company of England team captains. Instead he left a memory of brilliance and courage and a sense of vast promise he was not allowed to fulfil.

His grave in Dudley cemetary is elaborate. The headstone has an ingrained picture of him in footballing kit holding a ball above his head for a throw-in. An inscription reads: 'A Day of Memory, sad to recall. Without Farewell, He Left Us All.' There are three flower stands, and one of them is in the shape of a football. It suits the nature of his class and his neighbourhood, and it is attended with great care by his father, a gardener at the cemetery.

His father, Mr. Gladstone Edwards, felt he had to explain why he was working at the cemetery. He said: 'People think I came to this job because he's there. But that wasn't the reason. I had to change my work, and I've always liked flowers and gardening. I felt I wanted to be out of doors.' Duncan was his only child.

Neither he nor his wife could hide the depth of their loss. Nor was there any reason why they should try. When I went to see them Duncan had been dead for nine years, and Mr Edwards, at least, could talk about his son straightforwardly, although all the time with a quiet deliberation. He said that even then there was still a steady trickle of visitors to Duncan's grave. There were days when twenty people would arrive to look at it, like pilgrims. They seldom knew the gardener they stopped to talk to was the player's father. They nearly always said the same thing: that there would never be another Duncan. Mr Edwards added that Friday often brought the most visitors, and they were often lorry-drivers with Manchester accents. They had stopped on their long run home from somewhere south. The next day, of course, they would be at Old Trafford to watch the match.

In Mr and Mrs Edward's small semi-detached house the front room is kept shaded and spotless. It was in here that Mr Edwards showed me Duncan's photograph album, and also let me open a glass-fronted display cabinet and examine the mementoes of Duncan's life. It contained eighteen of his caps at full international, youth and schoolboy level, to represent the eighteen times that he played in his country's senior team. Each was kept brushed and was filled with tissue paper. On top of the cabinet were three framed photographs of Duncan: one taken in uniform when he was in the Army, doing his National Service, another with his fiancee and a third in which he wears a Manchester United shirt. Beside them was a framed five pound note, which was the last present he gave his mother. The tiny room was deominated by a portrait of Edwards in his England shirt, the frame two feet wide by two-and-a-half feet long. The room was a shrine.

That showcase also had a copy of the order of service which was used on the day that two stained-glass windows were dedicated to Edwards at St Francis's Church. They are close to the font, beside a picture of a gentle Jesus which was given to the church by a mother, in memory of a baby girl. One of the windows has Edwards down on one knee and there is a scroll running across his chest which says: 'God is with us for our Captain.' All the survivors of the Munich crash were in the church when the windows were dedicated by the Bishop of Worcester in August 1961. Busby said at the service: 'These windows should keep the name of Duncan Edwards alive for ever, and shine as a monument and example to the youth of Dudley and England.'

Edwards name is also kept in front of the people of Dudley in the title of the Duncan Edwards Social Club, which is attached to the town football club, and in two trophies for local schools football.

The memorials commemorate not only Duncan Edwards's football but also the simple decency of the man. He represented thousands in their wish for courage, acclaim and rare talent, and he had all three without swagger. The hero is the creature other people would like to be. Edwards was such a man, and he enabled people to respect themselves more.


From 'The Football Man' - 1968

Thanks for that one. The bit at the end about his family is pretty sobering.

 

[spare ribs]

I know I'm going to get pilloried for this reply,but I've been thinking about it for a while and I should share it with open minded fans.
It seems to me that Duncan Edwards shares the same fame as people ,such as Kurt Kobane,Jimi Hendriks,James Dean and other celebrities,who died tragically,in their prime.
The same case could be made for such people as Norman Whiteside,Robbie Fowler or Howard Kendall,if they'd been cut down in their prime.
Once again I don't mean to put Duncan Edwards down but he played top class for 3 years and may have ended up like Stan Collymore. How many players have we seen shine,in their teens,only to fade after expectations were raised.
PS I really don't mean this to be a Put Down!
RIP Duncan Edwards

 

[Red Dreams]

I know I'm going to get pilloried for this reply,but I've been thinking about it for a while and I should share it with open minded fans.
It seems to me that Duncan Edwards shares the same fame as people ,such as Kurt Kobane,Jimi Hendriks,James Dean and other celebrities,who died tragically,in their prime.
The same case could be made for such people as Norman Whiteside,Robbie Fowler or Howard Kendall,if they'd been cut down in their prime.
Once again I don't mean to put Duncan Edwards down but he played top class for 3 years and may have ended up like Stan Collymore. How many players have we seen shine,in their teens,only to fade after expectations were raised.
PS I really don't mean this to be a Put Down!
RIP Duncan Edwards

All who saw him play claim he was an amazing player. Those who had seen him play regularly claim he was not just the best player who played for United but the best player the world had ever seen even.

Someone of that quality would hardly have lost all his abilities. He could have messed his life up of course but he was a steady and sound person by all accounts. A marvelous human being even.
Even Charlton was in awe of him claiming Edwards made him feel inadequate as a footballer.
I'm certain if you tried to make a 'case' that he may have become ordinary you would fail!

 

[Red Dreams]

R.I.P. Great One.

 

[Red Dreams]

Raoul. Thank you for posting this thread.

 

[MelvinYeo]

RIP Duncan Edwards.

I may not have seen him in action, but reading through people's posts and books, I can safely say he was a legend.

I feel very sad that I couldn't see him live in action

 

[Jacqueline_S]

Jimmy Murphy on Duncan Edwards - 'The Greatest of them all was an English footballer Duncan Edwards'

'A giant of a player in both ability and stature and undoubtedly destined for great things for both United and England after making his league debut at the age of 16.
Grevously injured in the crash he fought bravely for his life for 15 days on a kidney machine. At one point he asked Jimmy Murphy what time the kick-off was for Saturday's match against Wolves.
The doctors said he was so strong and brave, but it was a losing battle. He died aged 21'

Rest In Peace

 

[Jacuzzi]

Rest In Peace

 

[Julian Denny]

The picture above of him signing the autograph at Highbury before that final classic league game is my favourite photo of Duncan. I'm not sure why - perhaps because it embodies both the stature and greatness of the boy/man as well as his humility. The photo is featured on the front cover of his book "Tackle Soccer This Way". If anybody has a copy - treasure it !

 

[green demon]

RIP Duncan Edwards.

I may not have seen him in action, but reading through people's posts and books, I can safely say he was a legend.

I feel very sad that I couldn't see him live in action

Even sadder is that not only was he before our time for seeing him live, but there is so little film of him as well.


If he'd have lived he would probably still have been playing when I started going to football. When I first saw United Edwards would have been only 33. That team included Best, Charlton, Law et al. If Edwards (even at 33) had have been in that team they would have been unstoppable.

 

[Dominant]

I know I'm going to get pilloried for this reply,but I've been thinking about it for a while and I should share it with open minded fans.
It seems to me that Duncan Edwards shares the same fame as people ,such as Kurt Kobane,Jimi Hendriks,James Dean and other celebrities,who died tragically,in their prime.
The same case could be made for such people as Norman Whiteside,Robbie Fowler or Howard Kendall,if they'd been cut down in their prime.
Once again I don't mean to put Duncan Edwards down but he played top class for 3 years and may have ended up like Stan Collymore. How many players have we seen shine,in their teens,only to fade after expectations were raised.
PS I really don't mean this to be a Put Down!
RIP Duncan Edwards

I don't think this thread needed this post from you.

 

[Elizabeth]

I used to use the same holiday hotel as a couple of old girls from Dudley;one of whom knew Duncan.She told me "wasnt a soul in Dudley didnt have tears in their eyes the day he died".Sums it up really

 

[Julian Denny]

I know I'm going to get pilloried for this reply,but I've been thinking about it for a while and I should share it with open minded fans.
It seems to me that Duncan Edwards shares the same fame as people ,such as Kurt Kobane,Jimi Hendriks,James Dean and other celebrities,who died tragically,in their prime.
The same case could be made for such people as Norman Whiteside,Robbie Fowler or Howard Kendall,if they'd been cut down in their prime.
Once again I don't mean to put Duncan Edwards down but he played top class for 3 years and may have ended up like Stan Collymore. How many players have we seen shine,in their teens,only to fade after expectations were raised.
PS I really don't mean this to be a Put Down!
RIP Duncan Edwards

A theory that's utter garbage I'm afraid. Duncan was greater than all those you mentioned put together. He had achieved so much by the age of 21 that everyone was of the opinion that he was greatness personified and that was before Munich. There was no evidence or indeed any possibility that he would fade. You see he had absolutely everything. More so than any other player. Only John Charles, who was a lot older and vastly more experienced, came anywhere near as the complete player. As for Stan Collymore and Robbie Fowler they shouldn't be mentioned in the same book let alone the same sentence when you're talking about Duncan Edwards.

 

[LenSharkey]

RIP The Big Man

 

[Chester Road]

Can't bear to read all of this.

Spare Ribs - you are so out of order on this one that you can't know anything about his brief career or have spoken to any of the older generation who watched him play.

There can't be many sadder sporting stories than the death of Duncan Edwards.

RIP

 

[Honest John]

I work with a guy who was at a match against Arsenal. They couldn't do anything about the boy. "We just stood there and marvelled at him" says he.

That was it. Not just United fans but all fans.

RIP Big fella

 

[Plechazunga]

My old man was on the terraces watching the great 40s side of Rowley and Carey, the Busby Babes, Law, Charlton, Best, Crerrand and the rest, through the seventies too, and he says Edwards was the greatest footballer he's ever seen live, and the greatest he's seen at all along with Puskas, Pele and Maradona.

I remember him telling me about Edwards when I was a kid, and I used to daydream whole games looking at photos of the Babes. I just rang him to tell him it was the anniversary, and asked him what he remembers most. He's in hospital at the moment and sad though it made him, thinking back seemed to take his mind away from all the pills and pains and all that shit for a while.

He had everything, apparently: wonderful skill, speed, power, grace, the lot. What stood out most in my dad's mind was the impression you had when looking at him of a meeting of opposites: he was hard as rock and built like a tank, but so young, just a boy, and so fast - that's something you don't often hear about him but he was lightning apparently. A marvellous, and very clean, tackler, and a fine passer of the ball long and short. But what was most extraordinary, according to my dad, was his amazing drive - even more than Keano, he says!

He told me about one game against Everton, probably at Maine Rd he thinks because OT was still being renovated after the blitz, a bruiser of a game on a pitch thick with mud, and the leather ball caked with it and weighing a ton. Edwards had kept United in it, tackling like a man possessed, breaking things up in midfield and appearing from nowhere when the defense was breached. A few minutes from time, he picked the ball up and ran, my dad says in his mind it's three-quarters of the pitch but let's say half, and it looked for all the world like the Everton players were bouncing off him as he surged down the mddle and smashed it home.

(Less palatably for us reds, my old man says the modern player who reminds him most of Edwards is Steve Gerrard! )

Of course it's too easy to deify people who've died. No doubt he had his flaws, no doubt he'd have had great seasons and tough ones where he was off his game. But you hear the same thing from any United fan who was there, and fans of other clubs too (one die-hard United-loathing City fan i know says he was by far the greatest player he's ever seen): United, England and the game were robbed of one of their greatest men.

 

[Gazza]

The official mag recently did a feature on Big Dunc. They say his last words at the hospital were, "Get stuck in lads (against Wolves)" which sounds to me like more than a tad fanciful, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was true.

www.duncanedwards.co.uk

 

[7ronaldo7]

R.i.p

 

[ste_michaels]

Forever United!

Forever Remembered!

 

[claci]

Rest in peace Duncan.

 

[redcharlie]

Thanks to Raoul and Plech for those beautiful tributes to the man. Reading what Raoul quoted had me in tears.

 

[Plechazunga]

Yeah me too n all...soppy as hell we are Charlie!

 

[Gillespie]

Forgive this intrusion by this Gooner.My Dad was an Arsenal fan,just like me .

I was too young to see Duncan Edwards play ,but my Dad did;he said that Duncan Edwards was a magnificent player.Like noone he'd ever seen.

I told him in all my time that George Best was the best player I'd seen,well,in a Man Yoo shirt,certainly......my Dad said...yeah ,he was good....but Duncan Edwards was better.....who knows ??

I read that Bobby Charlton also said that Duncan Edwards was the best Man Yoo player he had ever seen.

I wish I had seen him.

Respect to you Mancs.

 

[Plechazunga]

Thanks Gill, lovely post. Yes Bobby Charlton did say that. He said he felt like a boy playing next to a man when alongside Edwards for the first time in the army.