Van of Valor

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

After Two Decades, a Relegation Under Fire, and a Second Heartbreak Last Month, Relegated: A Journey in Claret & Blue Finally Drops

Dr. Kevin P. Wallace and L. Wright Wallace release a genre-shattering memoir — part combat chronicle, part terrace testimony — for anyone who has ever loved something that breaks their heart exactly when they need it broken.

LONDON / NEW YORK — June 7, 2026 — It took almost twenty years to write. It was finished in a single moment: when the final whistle blew at the London Stadium last month and West Ham United were relegated for the second time in Kevin Wallace’s life. Today, Dr. Kevin P. Wallace and anthropologist L. Wright Wallace — the husband-and-wife team behind the Van of Valor project — release Relegated: A Journey in Claret & Blue, a memoir that defies every convention of the football book.

Relegated. Twice. Once in a war zone. Once in a stadium.

Kevin Wallace wore a West Ham shirt under his body armour in Afghanistan. When shrapnel tore through his vest, he didn’t think about medals or mission reports. He wondered if the badge survived. That image anchors a narrative that stretches from a flickering eighteen-inch screen in a combat camera office — Italian soldiers laying hands on his shoulders as the Hammers went down — to a 27,106-mile road trip across America collecting the stories of wounded warriors, with West Ham matches as the punctuation between grief and hope.

This is not your typical football memoir. There are no tactical breakdowns, no gossip from the training ground. Instead, Relegated traces the scarlet and blue thread that stitches a life lived between uniforms: airman, artist, husband, and a Yank adopted by Plaistow lads who judged him not on his passport but on whether he’d buy a round and sing “Bubbles.”

“This book began in 2003, in a dusty office on Bagram Airfield, watching pixels struggle to show us the worst day of our football lives,” said Dr. Kevin P. Wallace. “Last month, when West Ham went down again, I understood something I hadn’t two decades ago. Relegation isn’t just a table position. It’s a place you go — physically, spiritually — and the people beside you in that place are what you carry out. The scoreline never mattered. The person next to you always did.”

The memoir moves from the Boleyn Ground’s final, tear-soaked season to a Prague tunnel where two Americans nearly caused an international incident on the night Jarrod Bowen lifted the Europa Conference League trophy. It includes a “rage tent” art studio built to process trauma, and it introduces Lauren Wallace — co-author, anthropologist, and fellow convert — who chronicles how a woman raised to be suspicious of crowds ended up belting “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles” on a bench in Old Town Square.

“I married into a chaos I didn’t understand,” writes L. Wright Wallace. “I thought I was studying a subculture. Instead, I was handed a scarf, a light, and a family that taught me how to shield a flame in the pissing rain.”

About the Book Relegated: A Journey in Claret & Blue is available in paperback beginning June 7, 2026, through major online retailers. It is the latest offering from Dr. Kevin P. Wallace and L. Wright Wallace, creators of Van of Valor, a storytelling initiative focused on the intersections of service, sacrifice, and the beautiful game.

About the Authors Dr. Kevin P. Wallace is a retired U.S. Air Force combat camera officer, artist, and lifelong West Ham United supporter. His work — whether behind a lens in a war zone or inside a rage tent with veterans — explores how we narrate survival. L. Wright Wallace is a cultural anthropologist who studies belonging. Together, they travel, write, and answer every 4 a.m. kickoff alarm. They are based in the United States.

Up the Hammers. Always.

Order here:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H4CL9YPF