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Dear
all
A hundred
years ago… occurred a week of battles coming to an end (usually not a
conclusion) as winter closed in, with a lot of counting of the dead and wounded
ensuing. On the Western Front, the Loos-Artois Offensive closed down with
nothing much gained on either side (November 4, British casualties 61,000,
French 48,000, German 51,000), and the Battle of Champagne concluded with the
French gaining about four kilometres (Nov 6, their casualties 145,000, German
72,000).
On the Eastern, one account says
Russo-German Battle Of Dvinsk ended on November 1, but other reports have it
continuing through the week, largely to the Russian Army’s advantage.
Further south, the
German/Austro-Hungarian/Bulgarian conquest of Serbia proceeded, with some weeks
to go before completion, but the Third Battle Of The Isonzo halted with modest
Italian gains (Nov 4, Italian Casualties 67,000, Austria-Hungary 40,000). In
lesser skirmishes, Russia occupied Kasvin (Nov 2, West Persia) and the British
captured Banyo, in Cameroon, then a German colony.
Meanwhile, at Gallipoli the Anzacs repulsed
a Turkish attack on November 4 and that same day Lord Kitchener sailed from
England to meet the campaign’s high command… and a month or so into their stint
at Suvla Bay, the thousand men of the 2/1st
City Of London Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, including my
father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from
Edmonton, north London (still underage at 17) and a couple of his pals, continued
their struggle with the Turks… but more particularly with the debilitating grind
of poor food, disease, the constant endeavour to keep fear in check…
FOOTSOLDIERSAM
SPEAKS
Last week, after
recovering from the incident of the poisonous centipede bite (blog 67, Oct 25),
My father found himself deployed to a hole (“trench” sounds too neat) on a
hilltop overlooking the Turkish lines. He shared the hilltop with a veteran and
very sussed Essex Regiment machine-gun crew and the hole with one fellow
Signaller (nice fellow who consoled him with talk of family and home). But they
were on duty round the clock 7-days-a-week for what turned out to be weeks on
end.
They tried every on-off shift system imaginable and found that
nothing offset the growing fatigue “reducing us to shadows of ourselves” – even
when they slept it proved fitful, wrapped in a groundsheet in a corner of their
hole, with the Turks and the Essex machine guns not offering much in the way of
library hush.
And then there was the Gallipoli food. Whereof Sam writes:
‘They sent
our rations up to us every two or three days. As before, our staples remained
plain, hard biscuits, apricot jam, and tea boiled on our methylated-spirit heaters,
corned beef the only meat supplied with any regularity, though occasionally a
few rashers of bacon came our way. Look again at that food list and imagine
yourself trying to live under such conditions and maintain your intelligence or
even your sanity.
Add to this the
occasional shell-burst, the sniper’s bullet if he spotted you moving around,
the bucket in a short trench into which all men on the hill shed their waste
products amid an odour of chloride of lime and shit…
Barely a week had
passed on the hill when my friend turned a nasty shade of yellow and I had to
phone HQ for a replacement. Before he was taken away, he confided that he’d
been smoking cigarettes he’d made out of pipe tobacco and brown paper; he
surmised that these had caused his jaundice.
His replacement
was a jolly fellow, always cheerful, named Bill Jackson. He wore thick lenses
in wire frames – I saw his presence in Gallipoli as one more tribute to the
doctor who had examined us volunteers at the time of our enlistment. The daft,
old medico shouldn’t have approved him for active service. The truth was, if
Jackson lost or damaged his glasses he’d be almost blind. He had a lovely wife
and three children of whom he talked often. Such a loving family as he
described must be missing dad terribly…
For a week or two,
as winter crept in, we managed doing our spells on duty and resting between
stints, but suffering pangs of hunger some days and showing signs of debility
all the time. One night, as we sat in chilly darkness and thoughts once more
turned homewards, the futility of what we were doing became very apparent to
me. “Bill,” I said. “Why are you here? A wife and kids thousands of miles away,
you stuck here in a hole in the ground. What’s the use?” He had no sensible
answer to that one, so I told him I had a plan aimed at getting him away from
this rotten country.
It was simple, his
part being to remove his spectacles when next taking his rest. Should he happen
to lay them on the groundsheet anywhere near me I would not be able to see
them. If I happened to kneel on them they would be crushed on that hard ground
and he would be unable to see where he was going, let alone write down
messages.
He demurred about
all this. But later, in complete darkness, just such an accident did occur, and
when daylight came I had to give Brigade HQ a detailed account of the strange
occurrence and they sent up two men, one to replace Bill, the other to guide
him down to the beach and a hospital ship, no doubt.’
Sam’s
accident passed off unchallenged and, by chance, a few weeks later he was able
to confirm the happy outcome for Bill (see mid-December when we get there).
However, his successor proved less congenial:
‘To replace Bill, they sent me up a sad, little man called
Harry Green. His arrival coincided with a brief period of wonderful luck with
our food. The machine gunners nearest to my hole in the ground belonged to a
regular Battalion of the Essex Regiment; country lads, very shrewd – and tired,
as we all were, of the poor and monotonous diet, they secured an officer’s
permission for two of them to make a foraging trip to the beach. A lighter had
unloaded a cargo of fresh meat, we’d heard – very likely this had happened many
times previously, yet our lot had never had a mouthful of it, not the rankers
anyway.
These two
resourceful men returned with – would you believe it? – a whole leg of beef.
Whether they stated that they represented a large group of men I don’t know,
but they got hold of it, and they carried it, each taking turns, a long way
across open country, risking shells from field guns and bullets from snipers
until they got down into a communication trench leading uphill to our position.
When I saw this huge piece of meat I marvelled that two men could have hauled
it such a distance.
Generosity to
comrades was part of the faith of these Essex farm men, so they included me and
my dour helper in their feastings. They gathered old planks and anything that
grew nearby. At dusk, they partially covered over a disused trench with
sawn-off branches and started burning small quantities of our scavenged wood,
restricting the flames carefully to avoid inviting a shell. Gradually, they
built up a big heap of glowing embers whereon we laid our mess-tin lids with
their folding handles to cook thin slices of the beef. The smoke filtered away
through the branches and the night air grew rich with the smell of meat
roasting.
Then, during
daylight hours, we filled our bellies with beef stewed in a couple of large
dixies left overnight on the smouldering mound – small additions to it being
made at intervals by those whose duties kept them up and about. Large tins of
dried potato shreds had been issued and we all added our shares to the cook
pots to thicken the liquor. Into one dixie, went a quantity of curry powder for
those who liked their stew really hot – and had no fear of possible
consequences.
This feasting
continued for several days and I felt my strength building up and youth’s
natural cheerfulness returning. We could smile again; such a change from the
dejected hangdog expressions with which we had all been depressing each other.
Even my fellow
Signaller, Green, a gloomster to the depths of his nature, permitted himself to
speak of his home life and his girl. She I pitied though, for the prospect of
sad, little Private Green for a husband, even in his happier moods, was
daunting. I knew I was a mug to put up with his moanings instead of telling him
what a miserable devil he really was.’
All
the best – FSS
Next week: Sam and comrades on the receiving
end of a festive Turkish bombardment featuring weird “big, black bangers”; on a
sortie to HQ he negotiates better rations; and, awestruck, observes the real
professional soldiers of the Royal Scots go about their business…
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