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Dear all
A hundred years ago… while
pre-Gallipoli sparring continued around the Dardanelles (the Greeks refusing to
join the Allies’ side despite the rather presumptuous bribe of an offer of
territory around Smyrna), the Turkish Army occupied Urmia (then Persia, April
16), and German zeppelins bombed Tyneside and East Anglia and French airships
bombed Freiburg and Strasbourg, on the Western Front the Battle of Ypres was
set up when British forces captured the nearby “Hill 60” by tunneling under
German trenches and detonating 5,000 pounds of explosive (April 17).
Down
in Malta, though, lodged comfortably enough at St George's Barracks, north of
Valletta, my father Private Sam Sutcliffe’s 2/1st
City Of London Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, having got over their surprise at
not being sent straight to France, the Front, and the horrors they’d heard so
much about… followed last week’s outburst of jolly practical jokery by taking
the chance to spruce themselves up.
FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
A
thousand volunteers, including 16-year-old Sam’s brother Ted, 18, and their
pals from Edmonton, north London, most of them came from poor families and –
unless they’d sailed with the merchant marine – hardly any of them had ever
been abroad before. So the heat of spring in the Mediterranean took them by
surprise – pleasantly, when they could take their ease in the shade, less so
when it came to route marches, square-bashing and other strenuous training
exercises wearing their heavy winter uniforms and woolly long johns.
However, relief was at hand, as my father
recalled (NB new readers, in this first part of the Memoir Sam wrote in the
third person and called himself “Tommy”):
‘Out of the blue, tropical kits consisting of lightweight,
cotton-twill tunic trousers and a sun helmet were handed out. What a relief to
get out of the heavy uniforms. Now they could begin to enjoy the Mediterranean
climate.
Some men looked
good in the new clobber, others had unluckily drawn clothes that fitted badly.
Tommy regarded his baggy, overlong trousers with some dismay. Their length
could be concealed by turning up about four inches at the end of each leg –
this would not show when he wore puttees*. The baggy backside was the problem
and it really worried him so he searched for his brother, thinking he might
have learned something from his particularly artful associates.
Ted, whom he found
wearing the old trousers, told Tommy to go and get his heavy ones too. Then he
led him to a building within the barracks area. Inside were four Maltese men,
two of them busy on sewing machines, one cutting pieces out of tunics and
trousers, while the fourth drew white chalk marks on the uniform of a soldier
standing before him.
“Take your place
in the queue,” said Ted. Soon after complying, Tommy was getting chalked. “Pay
one shilling, come tomorrow,” said the tailor. Tommy left the twill trousers
and put on the heavy ones. So, for a bob, the necessary alterations were made –
though next day the lad worried anew, because now the trousers were almost
skin-tight, the tunic shaped and close-fitting too, and all this done without official
permission. Also, was this tight outfit really suitable for a hot climate?
Too late now,
anyway. He regained some degree of comfort by ceasing to wear vest and pants.
Many sinners besides himself used the tailors’ services, and perhaps the
officers approved the slick effect, for no action was taken about the matter.’
Soon
a fierce training regime made the Fusiliers bless the day those tailors found
the barracks and a business opportunity:
‘Hours of work now changed. What the Army called the “gunfire
ration” – a mug of tea and large dry biscuits – was taken at 6.30am, followed
immediately by 30 minutes physical training, wearing only the twill slacks.
Then “ablutions”, breakfast – whatever that might turn out to be – and on
parade at 8am. Three hours non-stop training next, then dinner at noon, after
which those who had no “jankers” or special jobs were free till 5pm.
Most of them
easily acquired the siesta habit, waking for tea at 4pm and all set for three
more hours of stiff evening training which left most men fagged out at 8pm.
Not many ventured
far after that hour, Monday to Friday – especially at the end of one of those
occasional days when, despite the high temperatures, they’d undertaken a long
march lasting some hours (albeit with a 10-minute break every 4 miles, and an
hour’s break and a meal after the first three hours). Each man carried a water
bottle and a haversack and the contents had to last until evening.
The heat made
these marches very severe tests. Most of the men dispensed with underclothing
as soon as they knew what was coming up. Sweat soon darkened their uniforms.
Tunics could be taken off during the hour’s rest and they dried off quickly,
leaving white patches of salt in strange patterns on the cloth (despite this,
Tommy never once entered the barracks laundry for, like many others, each week
he gave his soiled clothes to a Maltese woman who washed and pressed
everything, no matter what the quantity, for sixpence).
Back then no one
in authority thought of giving the men salt to replace what they sweated out.
Tommy suffered fatigue intensely, but his resolve to do no worse than the older
men around him prevented him from admitting anything.
Troubled as he
was, he yet felt sorrow for the oldest man among them, dear old ex-journalist
Ewart Walker. Never a groan nor a word of complaint from the gallant old man,
but the sweat streaming down his face, and eyes bloodshot and strained behind
those pince-nez, the legs that wouldn’t straighten up, all told their tale.’
And
here’s a striking moment – for me anyway, editing my father’s writings; I
realise it’s no particular landmark for a reader. It’s just that suddenly he’s
venturing into the greater intimacy of first-person, albeit temporarily for now
and “quoting” Tommy as if his teenaged 1915 self were talking to his
septuagenarian 1970s self:
‘“By then the Maltese tailors had rendered my sun helmet
ready for wear too. Issued with it had been a pugaree**, a length of fine gauze
material which you had to arrange in layers just above the helmet brim. To do
the job correctly required many pins and more skill than I possessed. But one
of my scarce sixpences crossing a Maltese palm put me among the really
well-turned-out soldiery. Although we still had to wind those puttees round our
ankles and calves. Why, in that hot climate? And it was compulsory for rankers,
but officers could wear neatly creased trousers with turn-ups.”’
* For the younger crowd, puttees
are strips of cloth British soldiers back then had wind around their legs from
ankle to knee for… some reason or other (“support and protection” Wikipedia
suggests). The word is one of many co-opted from Hindi by British Army men
serving in India and bent a little – the original, patti, means “bandage”. After WWI many other armies followed the
British in adopting them. So maybe they made all the difference!
** Pugaree – from Hindi again: pagri meaning “turban” (that comes from
Turkish!).
All
the best –
FSS
Next week: Sam alias Tommy the tourist goes to town, meets the Maltese –
and some ancient skeletons…
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