“I feel one can say with some conviction that no man should willingly leave his home to fight, wound, maim or kill other men about whom he knows little and whom he certainly does not hate. When all men refuse to commit such follies the foundations of a true civilisation will have only just started to be laid.”
- Sam Sutcliffe, circa 1974 (extracted from his Memoir)

Sunday 29 November 2015

Sam and pal Peter’s final onslaught on the Turks – through the medium of song; then, after month of lousy food, Sam’s summoned to Brigade HQ and finds himself luxuriating on steak and onions!

For details of how to buy Sams full Memoir in paperback or e-book & new excerpted Gallipoli episode mini-e-book & reader reviews
All proceeds to British Red Cross
For AUDIO excerpts click Here  Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook Here


Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… apart from a big artillery exchange along the Western Front on November 30 (to no particular purpose it seems), lower levels of attrition took over for the winter. Likewise on the Eastern, although in Latvia the Russian Army had further success at Illuskt (November 29), but they were “repulsed” by the Germans at Dvinsk and Lake Babit (December 5).
    Further south, two costly conflicts ceased. The 4th Battle Of The Isonzo ended inconclusively (December 2), exhausted by the severity of both casualties and the weather after a climactic battle at Tolmin (now in Slovenia) – since November 10 Italian casualties had totalled 49,500, Austro-Hungarian 32,100. And the relentless invasion of Serbia by German, Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian forces concluded (December 4) with the Serbian Army driven out through Albania, the survivors shipped across to Corfu (they suffered 30,000 casualties, their foes’ being described as “light”).
    Accordingly, the French Army supporting the Serbs pulled back into Greek Salonika (December 2) where fresh British troops joined them (December 4).
    Meanwhile, in Gallipoli, at Suvla Bay, the remnants of the 2/1st City Of London Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, including my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London (still under-age at 17), gradually recovered from their sufferings in the November blizzard…

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
Last week, my father was still in that Suvla hilltop Signalling post/hole, working his two-man, 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week rotation of duty and sleep. In the wake of the Gallipoli blizzard/floods, with no water available from HQ, he revealed the blas̩ bravado which, in the battlefield, can overcome the cautious inhibitions of the most circumspect character Рwhich he had generally been through childhood and early teens Рwhen he dodged sniper bullets to fetch buckets of snow from a neighbouring trench.
    Then he experienced the horror of realising he had, inadvertently, led a lad even younger than himself to his death; the boy dashed for water without emulating Sam’s stop-start tricks and took an almost certainly fatal shot through a lung.
    Still, battlefield realities and comradeship did not encourage dwelling or brooding, especially in the company of his old Malta-days friend Peter Nieter (who’d replaced poor, frostbitten Harry Green):

Returning confidence due to better feeding, certainty that the campaign was fizzling out, and the buoyant nature of my newly arrived mate, resulted in moments I could only describe as merry.
     When the Navy suddenly opened up a noisy bombardment of Turk positions one day, Nieter and I actually cheered and sang A Life On The Ocean Waves. Another time, we two idiots decided to serenade the enemy by tum-te-tumming a tune favoured by brass bands at that time entitled The Turkish Patrol. The barmy thing about this effort was our pretended assumption that the Turks would recognise the tune because of its title.
     I had been feeling that the small number of people of my Battalion who still remained after the blizzard* must have forgotten my existence, but a week or so after Nieter’s arrival I had pleasant proof that this was not so. A replacement for me suddenly appeared at our hole on the hilltop and I received instructions to join the Signals Section at 88th Brigade Headquarters until further orders.
     Sorry to leave Nieter, but flattered and excited, I made my way to the ravine which sheltered HQ. There, they had built small but comfortable offices for administration and communication. Low, wooden buildings with earth-covered roofs on which the local weeds and grasses grew. Hopes that I would live in one of them quickly died the death when I was conducted to a nearby hole covered by a groundsheet roof, and told I could set up house there.
     Thankfully, it was dry, but it was sited beside the junction of two footpaths, and I quickly discovered that the position had been honoured by an enemy sniper. He had one of those tripod-rifles fixed on the point where the paths met; at intervals, a bullet smacked into the ground about a foot from one end of my hole**. As the new boy, the privilege of avoiding sudden death by a sniper’s bullet automatically became mine. But the pleasure of working in a warm, covered structure, properly seated, with cooked food and big helpings of hot tea, more than compensated for the sniper targeting my sleeping quarters.
     Some days we had steak and onions for dinner; it seemed incredible after the hard tack and occasional bully beef which had usually been my lot. Bacon for breakfast was not unknown, cheese and bread in the evening common. If the pecking order worked that way, the lucky devils at Divisional HQ probably got breakfast, a meat lunch, afternoon tea, and dinner in the evening. It all passed through too many hands before the ranker’s turn came, God help him.
     Meanwhile, I felt the benefit of this luxury, my spirits rose again, I smiled, even laughed occasionally. Fully occupied on duty, when not working I hung about in one or other of the small HQ buildings as long as possible. Then, in my hole, I could sometimes remove my tunic, shirt and vest and destroy all the body lice I could find, replace these garments then take off my trousers. With candle ends scrounged from the office, I could burn off the filthy things infesting the inside seams of my trousers, crush the devils in my long pants and have a couple of days free of the continual biting.’

Given a few days of “luxury” in his new hole, my father heard more and more stories of what had befallen the rest of the Battalion, down at beach level, during the blizzard:

‘Well into December, the weather generally remained pleasant. That awful blizzard now seemed like a sad dream although I had my funny-feeling feet and brown toenails to remind me – as did the stories recounted by survivors who had fared much worse than I.
     A sight I’d missed in my rather isolated position on the machine-gun hill was large numbers of men in various stages of illness, many with layers of socks and rags over their frost-bitten feet, heading hopefully for the beach. How could such a suffering multitude be dealt with properly?
     The beach people must also have been rained on, then snowed on, then frozen and tortured by that Siberian blast if they dared to venture into the open. Then the sorry throng, with their frostbitten feet and hands, some already gangrenous, all of them short of food, descended on them and they just had to cope. What a commandeering of lighters and small steamboats there must have been. I, with my two biscuits and a handful of tea***, had seen almost nothing of these larger events.
     Suddenly, my brief, beautiful life at HQ ended with an order to rejoin Nieter on the hill; his helper – my substitute – had gone down with a high temperature and no one else could be found to replace him. Before I left the kindly men at 88th Brigade Signals, they gave me bread, some cold meat, bacon and a useful bag of tea.
     This eased my return to the more Spartan existence up above and ensured a warm welcome from my sturdy Swiss Cockney. I found anyway that he had not fared too badly, having been authorised to draw rations from the resourceful regulars of the 2nd Battalion Essex Regiment.
     I also took back to Nieter a rumour, whispered to me as I left Brigade HQ, suggesting that our days on that foreign shore were numbered. The promise of release from our deprivation and danger, so useless, so purposeless, cheered us up considerably.
     Messages of instruction to various Companies around us passed through our hands and these confirmed our opinion that the end of the failed campaign drew near. Groups of men quietly withdrew, and those remaining had instructions to appear busy and show themselves more – but with reasonable care – to enemy observers. I heard that members of the Engineers Corps were working in the forward trenches, fixing fuses connected to detonators along the parapets.
     The Turks still lobbed over the occasional shell, their lazy snipers with their apparently fixed rifles still squeezed their triggers, perhaps from force of habit, but the earlier war-like spirit had departed.’
* One list of casualties for the original 1000-strong Battalion at the end of November shows 22 killed, 57 wounded, 445 sick (mainly dysentery, jaundice and frostbite). My father several times wrote that by the time they finally evacuated from Gallipoli they were down to 200 men or fewer.
** For a fuller explanation of the Turkish tripod snipers methods see Blog 66 11/10/15.
*** See Blog 71 15/11/15 for the story of how he’d had to beg these provisions “to feed two men for an indefinite period”.

All the best – FSS

Next week: A General visits Sam’s “hole”! And bellows at him for standing to attention! But to their great relief the Battalion is told to get ready for evacuation – in time for Christmas...

Sunday 22 November 2015

Sam in the Gallipoli blizzard’s aftermath; through awful misfortune, his sniper-dodging tricks lead to tragedy when an even younger boy tries to copy him…

For details of how to buy Sams full Memoir in paperback or e-book & new excerpted Gallipoli episode mini-e-book & reader reviews
All proceeds to British Red Cross

For AUDIO excerpts click Here  Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook Here

Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… maybe the kind of phase that originated that not irony-free phrase “all quiet on the Western Front”. The summaries note only a German Army attack north of Artois repulsed (November 27) – not to say that men weren’t dying daily on both sides. In the East, the Russian Army continued its winter turnaround with a series of victories over the German at Tzaremunde (Latvia, 23), Yanopol (Ukraine, 24) and Pinsk (Belarus, 28). They succeeded much further south too, defeating Turkish and Kurdish forces at Karaj and Yengi Iman in Persia (26).
    The 4th Battle Of The Isonzo between Italy and Austria continued, but the Italian Army took Rovereto (in Trentino, 23) from Austria – which promptly called for German assistance.
    But the greatest events took place in less-remembered parts of the conflict.
    On November 25, the Serbian Army, assailed by a combination of Bulgarian, German and Austro-Hungarian Regiments since October 7, finally cracked and fled in full retreat through Albania, sustaining terrible casualties because of the weather more than the fighting – the Siberian blizzard that swept Gallipoli afflicted the Balkans too.
    And in Mesopotamia (Iraq), after a series of British Indian Army victories over the Ottoman along the Tigris, a sudden reversal saw the previously disregarded Colonel Nureddin lead his men to hold back a fresh attack at Ctesiphon, 16 miles south-east of Baghdad and then chase their foes 100 miles back to Kut.
    Meanwhile, in Gallipoli, at Suvla Bay, the 2/1st City Of London Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, including my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London (still under-age at 17), had to concentrate above all on dealing with the weather… as did the Turks, no doubt. For a time, only snipers persisted in “fighting”…

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
Last week, in his Memoir my father wrote about his own experience of the great Gallipoli blizzard of late November, 1915 (in the rhythm of the Memoir I had to start covering it a week early); venturing down from his two-man 24-hour hilltop Signals post to seek food from Battalion HQ when he and gloomy colleague Harry Green “looked like dying quite soon”; discovering his 2/1st comrades huddled together in the open –forced out of their trenches by floods of melted snow and.
    Reluctantly accepting the Quartermaster’s best offer of two biscuits and a handful of tea to last him and Green “for an indefinite period”, he returned to the hilltop and found Harry had foolishly taken his boots off and was “a right mess” – he soon fell into delirium. Sam phoned Brigade HQ for a replacement, reused the tea repeatedly (dodging snipers to fetch melted snow from a nearby disused trench), and handled Signalling duties solo for the next 48 hours until stretcher-bearers and a replacement reached them:

‘My feet felt uncomfortable, but I didn’t remove my boots then, nor for a week or more afterwards. Later, back in Egypt, my already brown toenails turned gradually darker and at intervals fell out, but sound new ones grew in their place.
     A gradual thaw set in and, as moving around became easier, I learnt more of the tragedy the smaller number of us now remaining in that benighted place had survived. Many men had drowned in flooded trenches from which they could not escape quickly enough or had fallen into when they took a step in the wrong direction in the dark. Others died of the cold – a few had laid hands on jars of rum sent up for distribution as tots for all, then drunk themselves insensible and perished in the freezing winds.*’

Even so, up on the hill, life reverted to “normal” – except for one terrible incident:

‘The sun shone briefly most days, growing warmth dried out our heavy coats, and life became far more bearable to me. Especially because my new companion on the hill turned out to be that shortish man of Swiss origin I have previously described**, he who was more patriotic than most British-born soldiers – and after all our tribulations, he still felt the same about his dad’s adopted country. He even made excuses for the failed author/poet who had, by some accident, become the Commander-in-Chief of that unfortunate Army*** and composed lyrical dispatches for home consumption in his comfortable cabin way out at sea.
     After that wasteful Ramadan**** bombardment I had no further fears that the enemy would ever launch a big attack on us, and now I felt convinced that our depleted force would never have a go at him… so all one had to do was be careful to stay alive, until someone told us to get the hell out of the wretched place.
     Attached once more to the regular Essex***** boys for rations, we fared well. And I had my disused trench for water – it remained several feet deep for some time. However, fetching it became risky because a sniper had spotted my movements as I darted hither and thither to fox his aim.
     I carried a can to which I had tied a length of string to lower it into the trench. I would climb out of our trench and dash several yards, freeze there for a moment while I pictured John Turk taking aim at me, then make another short dash while the bullet smacked somewhere behind me. One more pause, then run to the trench, lower and raise the can, and return via another pause or two before a final, fearful charge back to and into our trench, having retained as much water in the can as possible. The bullets always seemed to arrive at the spot near where I had last paused. But I was careful to operate in poor light, morning and evening, because I had rightly assumed that the sniper was a good shot…
     So you can imagine my sorrow when two Essex men laid a boy on a firing step just opposite my hole, pointed to a wound in his chest, and told me the lad had attempted to copy my water-getting dash in broad daylight. Probably he didn’t bother about foxing the sniper either. He belonged to the Hampshire Regiment, but an Essex man had watched his progress, seen him wounded, and with a pal had risked death to drag him in.
     I phoned Brigade HQ for stretcher-bearers, but doubted if the lad would live – the bullet had pierced a lung. We fixed his field dressing over the entry wound, but I dared not move him to search for the exit, which may well have been a gaping hole. As I tried to keep him warm and give him support such as I could in response to those frightened eyes, I felt quite old in spite of my mere 17 years. He – the first wounded man I’d had to deal with – was even younger than I.
     The stretcher-bearers were gentle with him; I knew only too well they would have to climb out of trenches in several places where a stretcher could not be accommodated; in full view of the Turk, they would have to rely on his clemency.
     Thereafter, I stayed away from the watery trench and made do with such water as the machine gunners could spare for me.’
* Strong For Service, H Montgomery Hyde’s biography of the 2/1st’s then commanding officer Major Harry Nathan (later a lord and an Attlee Government Minister) says 280 men “drowned” in the mud produced by thawing snow and rain at Gallipoli.
** Peter Nieter from my father’s trainee Signallers group on Malta (see blog 45, 17-05-15) – except that, first time round, he called him “Miter”; given my father’s fondness for aliases, I don’t know whether either version of the name is “real”.
*** He means General Sir Ian Hamilton.
**** HQ informed British troops that Ramadan triggered this bombardment and my father had no reason to know otherwise, but it was entirely the wrong time of year, as noted in blog 70, 8-11-15.
***** The Essex Regiment machine-gun team they shared the hilltop with.

All the best – FSS

Next week: Sam and Peter’s final onslaught on the Turks – through the medium of song; Sam, suddenly summoned to Divisional HQ, finds himself luxuriating on steak and onions for a few days! And the hilltop Signalling duo get a surprise, eccentric visit from General Beauvoir De Lisle himself!