 For Worcestershire, however, he continued to play consistently up until the First World War; he made his highest score of 43 for the county against the touring South Africans in May 1912.After the war, he played a few more times for Worcestershire, but his place behind the stumps was now mostly being taken by the ill-fated Arthur Jewell and Bale retired from the game in 1920.Bale was an occasional bowler, and took the first of his nine first-class wickets for London County in 1904, claiming the scalp of Warwickshire's Tom Fishwick.