“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 25 November 2018

November, 1918: starving but free POW Sam plods westwards… in a deserted village he encounters two British nurses who take him in and feed him… The Last German bids him a gracious goodbye… finally he tiptoes the wrong way through a German minefield into a French trench… and a welcome meal nearly kills him!

Sam’s Memoir(1) – paperback and e-book – and the e-excerpts from it are now available in their third and final editions with added Endnotes and, in the Memoir, added documentation.
      
For details of how to buy the Memoir or Gallipoli Somme & Arras 1918/POW etc mini-e-books click here plus see reader reviews here and here  and reviews from the Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association here. For AUDIO excerpts click Here  Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook Here

It’s war’s end at last – but Sam’s blog, Facebook page and tweets will continue until his Memoir concludes with the Centenary of the July 19, 1919, Peace parade in London…

All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s Memoir will always go to the British Red Cross – and the current running donations total at November 1 is £3,644.84 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!)

Dear all

A hundred years ago this week, in the aftermath of the Armistice… the chess pieces of Europe moved from square to square at quite a pace.
    The French occupied Strasbourg, Alsace (November 25), with Allied commander Marshall Foch leading the troops – significant because the city and region had been annexed by Germany in the 1870-1 Franco-Prussian War, so this shifted a pre-1914 frontier. The following day saw the French Army cross into Germany while the last German troops in Belgium marched back into their homeland. Then British and American forces entered Germany (December 1), the former on the border between Oudler and Eupen, in Belgium, the latter at Trier, near the Luxembourg border in the Rhineland-Palatinate state.
    Meanwhile, Germany began its own attempt to sort out governance with a conference of states in Berlin (November 25 onwards) and Kaiser Wilhelm finally signing the abdication announced three weeks earlier (28).
    Around Russia, the Allied naval ships reached Sevastopol on the Black Sea and took over both the German-controlled Russian Black Sea fleet and a number of U-boats (November 26). But the Russian Bolshevik government asserted itself by recovering from the Germans Dvinsk in Latvia, Pskov in Russia near the Estonian border (both 26), and Narva in lately independent Estonia (28).
    In the Balkans, US troops entered the much-disputed free state of Fiume (November 26; it’s now Rijeka and part of Croatia). But the big political rearrangements focussed on Romania which grew and grew as the General Congress of Bukovina (28) and a conference of former Hungarian areas including Transylvania and Banat voted to merge with their neighbour (December 1; the same day the Rumanian Army reoccupied Bucharest). Also on that day, the Kingdoms Of The Serbs, Croats And Slovenes formed a union under that name – more handily dubbed “Yugoslavia” from the outset.
    At Abercorn, Rhodesia (now Mbala, Zambia), the tiny remnant of Germany’s imperial army from East Africa completed their long, peripatetic and “undefeated” flight from assorted British, South African and Portuguese forces when General von Lettow-Vorbeck formalised the post-Armistice ceasefire by surrendering (November 25).

[Memoir background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London, 16-year-old underage volunteer in September, 1914, fought at Gallipoli with the 2/1st Royal Fusiliers (Blogs September 20, 2015, to January 3, 2016), then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons (Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)… until officialdom spotted his real age – 18, legally too young for the battlefield. They told him he could take a break from the fighting until he turned 19. He accepted, though with an enduring sense of guilt. December, 1916, saw him posted to Harrogate, Yorkshire, and re-allocated to the Essex Regiment 2/7th Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations (he spent his 19th birthday, July 6, 1917, in a Sheffield hospital). That summer, his CO offered him training for a commission, but Sam detested ordering men around so he refused. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival (I don’t know why, but it would have pleased him) – and dogsbodied for Brigade HQ in Arras and at the nearby Front. In mid-March, he ran into his own Essex Battalion; they moved into the trenches near Fampoux, about six miles east of Arras just in time for the German Spring Offensive. A last stand by the Battalion on March 28, 1918, left 80 alive and “fit” out of the 520 who started the day – the 440 in between being dead, wounded or, like Sam, “missing” and, in his case, a POW (Blog March 25, 2018). For several months he wandered occupied France in randomly-assembled half-starved POW groups, ending up in southern Germany between the Rhine and the Black Forest near a village called Hügelheim. There they settled into a slightly less filthy camp for the summer, tending sick German war horses, before moving on yet again, westwards to a village in Lorraine where they remained until Armistice… ]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
November 13, 1918, on the road west from German-occupied Lorraine to the French front line: my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe, after eight months of slow starvation and much brutality as a POW, last week described how, the day after Armistice was announced to them by gleefully retreating German soldiers, he and his comrades departed their small prison “camp” (a village hall) – overseen, to their alarm, by the one remaining guard who could still muster hatred for the “enemy”.
    This guard – whom Sam dubbed “Haybag” – forced them at rifle-point to pass close to a burning ammunition dump before he got fed up with tormenting people and returned eastwards. After that, Sam, physically weaker than his comrades because of the length of time he’d been a prisoner, became separated from his comrades, and plodded on alone, feeling “like the last man on Earth”…
    [An explanation of upcoming chronology here: while most of these blogs are roughly aligned with what was happening to my father “100 years ago this week”, the previous blog and this one cover only November 12-15 because those days were so eventful and, accordingly, he wrote in detail and at length.]

In the next village not a soul did I see and when a door banged I jumped from fright. Tottering onwards, resting, losing track of time, I eventually entered a town of sorts… and there I had a strange life-saving experience. Moving along a deserted street, I heard hurrying footsteps behind me, turned and saw a woman in nurse’s uniform. Not the usual hospital outfit, but everything white, and a small Red Cross(2) on the headdress.
     Hazy though recollection of that rambling journey is, I remember she took me to a house not far away. There another nurse awaited us. The first nurse had spoken to me in French, but reverted to English after I had, in mylimited French, asked if she could speak my language. My faded, ragged uniform had no doubt puzzled her, as it didn’t belong to any known Army…
     They gave me some sort of milky soup and several square, thick, white biscuits with soft cheese – later I realised how careful and wise they had been to give me only light food. When I had eaten, they led me to an upstairs room where they left me with a pail of warm water, a piece of yellow soap, a piece of white cloth and a rough towel. For the first time in many days I removed all my clothes and had the great pleasure of washing my face and my body, finally sitting in a chair and soaking and cleaning each foot in turn.
     In vest and pants, I slept that night through on a mattress on the floor with the two blankets provided keeping me wonderfully warm, while a cushion under my head completed my luxurious bed(3). To be clean and not to lie on hard boards was beautiful comfort and I slept till a nurse awakened me.
     The two nurses gave me coffee made almost white by a powder of milky flavour, and more of the thick white biscuits spread with the soft cheese. While I ate, we talked. I told them everything about myself, but must have learned little about them for only one clear detail remains in my memory; although they both had lived in France for some considerable time, they were British and one of them had originally lived in Kensington. How they came to this small, almost deserted town, which must have been in German hands till, probably, three days earlier, I can’t say – I remember them with much gratitude, but it’s remained a rare mystery to me over all the years. Perhaps they didn’t tell me, and I certainly hadn’t the nerve to question those wonderful, kindly women.
     Those good nurses had known where best they could serve those who needed them. They would have plenty of wanderers to care for during that strange period when war organisations were grinding to a halt… For who would know what to do next until those who made the top decisions fully appreciated the new situation?
     They could not offer me continued shelter, so they set me off on the straight road out of the town. Once more on my own, garbed in my ragged clothes, my rolled blanket across my chest, mess-can full of sweet coffee, I headed west again – in that direction, they reassured me, I would eventually meet the French Army.
     I saw no one at all on the streets, but when the buildings petered out, in a large open space around a crossroads, I encountered a cluster of men and women. As I neared and passed them, I said several times “Bonjour, mesdames, messieurs”, and they quietly returned the greeting, but said nothing else, all gazing fixedly westwards. Free at last, probably short of food – the little they had possessed would have been stolen by retreating Germans – they simply waited for the French Army to come to their aid. That was their preoccupation: help would come from the west. Patience, patience…
     Looking back from time to time, I was struck by their stillness; I could well have gone back and perhaps waited with them, for loneliness already assailed me and they were the only human beings in sight. But eventually my view of their now tiny figures was obscured. Once more the lonely trudge. At my slow pace I went on for what was probably several hours, resting only briefly, when I must.

In a deep sunken lane, THE LAST GERMAN(4) passed me. I can see him now, heading my way: an officer, riding a fine horse, galloping, sabre in hand, a Uhlan(5) if ever there was one. I stood still as he drew near, a bit scared because I feared he might ride me down as a final act of revenge for his Army’s defeat. But he was in a happy and friendly mood. He smiled as he rode past, waved and called out in English, “Goodbye, goodbye!”
     I was always a poor hater and that farewell cancelled memory of many a cruel experience caused by lesser men than that fine officer.

I lay down that night in a concrete structure at a crossroads(6). It smelt sour, but it kept off wind and night chill. I had some food and water left. 
     Certainty, not merely hope, now sustained me and that afternoon a wrecked village set my pulse racing. Its former inhabitants would have thought my reaction cruel, but to me the damage indicated I was drawing closer to the battlefield and to our French Army friends. No curiosity delayed my progress through and out of the ruins, down a shell-hole-pocked hill – and there I saw the beginning of a trench system.
     Old battlefield memories returned, along with caution and watchfulness. A misplaced foot and all my endurance of recent trials would have been wasted. I stayed on top and moved forward very slowly, examining the ground ahead for signs of trip-wires, booby-traps, and small, disturbed places which might suggest the presence of mines.
     A wide, deep, support trench had to be crossed. I wondered whether to go down into it or use a narrow footbridge nearby. I had just decided to feel my way down and climb up the other side, taking care to place my feet in existing footprints… when my mind suddenly started to function clearly and it dawned on me that traps would not be set for men coming from behind the German lines, but t’other way round, to delay the French Army when they commenced their advance towards Deutschland.
     I found a gap in the barbed wire and entered No Man’s Land, that space between the fighters… the men of the opposing forces who bore the brunt of bloody warfare while others thought they were important and pinned medals ad nauseam on each other’s breasts, and used every ploy in the book to avoid front-line duty…
     And there I began to see small warning signs the Jerries had placed, recently by the look of them – thin, wooden strips, 18 inches long, black letters on a white background, secured to the ground by metal pegs. They faced me, but would have been invisible to advancing French soldiers. “Vornung vor dem Bombe”, they read… After all these years I feel sure I have correctly remembered those words, for they were so tremendously important to me at that time(7).
     As I progressed, the warnings became more numerous. I hoped that, by choosing a path halfway between them, I might avoid being blown up. Slowly and now tense almost to the point of panic, I placed one foot in front of the other…
     Through all the war years, I had never heard of a man ending up in quite such a predicament. Suppose, among the rough earth and long grass, a trip-wire stretched in my direction from one of those warning signs? All right, hardly likely, unless a German had been careless, but…
     I could see a ridge of humps about a hundred yards ahead. Probably the forward line of the French trench system. Practically no barbed wire in front of it…
     When several heads appeared above the humps, I knew that I had as good as made it. But they just watched and said nothing. My ragged uniform of no recognisable Army may have puzzled them…
     I finally slid into the trench at some distance from those onlookers and my first happy contact was with a French officer who happened to be showing a nurse round the trenches. I had stated who and what I was and, in perfect English, he bade me welcome. Then, together, he and the nurse led me through the trenches and back a short distance to a village where I was questioned briefly.
     Then a small lorry conveyed me to a place farther behind the lines. In a barn, I joined other returned prisoners, strangers to me, and was told to rest on a mattress. Soon I was given one of those long French loaves and a mug of hot, sweet cocoa. Replete and secure at last, I slept(8)… until, at some time later, I awoke, scarce able to breath.
     My belly had swollen, awful pain and discomfort assailed me. Movement did get rid of a vast accumulation of wind, but then the inevitable enteritis and diarrhoea took over and had to be dealt with.
     A tummy too long deprived of normal nourishment simply could not tolerate the rich, sweet chocolate drink. So, both then and later, I suffered as kind people plied me generously with food which would, of course, have been good, plain fare to fit men.’
(2) This encounter is one of several reasons why all proceeds from my father’s writings go to the British Red Cross.
(3) The night of November 13, probably.
(4) My father’s capital letters here!
(5) Uhlan”: the Polish spelling, says Wikipedia – it’s “Ulan” in German – it referred to light cavalry armed with lances, sabres and pistols and sporting a uniform with a black, double-breasted jacket adorned at the front by a coloured panel called a “plastron”; French and British troops in World War I tended to describe all German cavalry as “Uhlans”; but they did comprise 26 Regiments, two of them from the then state of Württemberg, east of Lorraine, so my father may well have been right about this man being a Uhlan/Ulan.
(6) The night of November 14, probably.
(7) Vornung vor dem Bombe”: my father’s memory probably did let him down slightly here re spelling and grammatical gender – the signs are likely to have read “Warnung vor der Bombe”, “Warning/beware of the bomb”.
(8) The night of November 15, probably. My father didn’t remember the name of this town or village and, guessing his route from the unnamed Lorraine village (where he was last imprisoned) west to the French front line, I can only guess again that it may have been Belfort (in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region) or somewhere smaller in that vicinity. Belfort is 25.2 miles (40.6 kilometres) west of Mühlhausen/Mulhouse (probably the town closest to Sam’s final prison camp), the sort of distance my father’s enfeebled plod might have covered in four days.

All the best– FSS

Next week: Sam’s back among the Entente Allies at last – but his body can’t break free of the war… a sweet encounter with a kind old Frenchwoman… nearly killed by the gastronomic generosity of an over-enthusiastic American officer… collapsed on the pavement, he’s picked up by two veteran poilus who carry him to a French military hospital where, briefly, he has his breakdown… “shaking, trembling, sudden showers of tears…”

(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote Nobody Of Any Importance, a Memoir of his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.

Sunday 18 November 2018

November 12, 1918: free-at-last POW Sam’s long walk westwards begins… hate-filled guard forces them past a blazing ammunition dump… a fellow starving POW dies at the roadside… and before the day is out Sam is on his own: “I felt like the last man on Earth”

Sam’s Memoir(1) – paperback and e-book – and the e-excerpts from it are now available in their third and final editions with added Endnotes and, in the Memoir, added documentation.
       For details of how to buy the Memoir (1) or Gallipoli Somme& Arras 1918/POW etc mini-e-books click here plus see reader reviews here and here and reviews from the Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association here.
For AUDIO excerpts click here  Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook here

It’s war’s end at last – but Sam’s blog, Facebook page and tweets will continue until his Memoir concludes with the Centenary of the July, 1919, Peace parade in London…

All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s Memoir will always go to the British Red Cross - and the current running donations total at November 1 is £3,644.84 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!)

Dear all

A hundred years ago this week, in the immediate aftermath of the Armistice… military manoeuvres – mingled with a bit of politics – proceeded apace. As the last German troops left French soil (November 18), the Belgians reoccupied Brussels (18; lost to Germany on August 20, 1914) and Antwerp (19; with their more than ceremonial military leader, King Albert). US troops began a move into northern Lorraine (18; German since 1871), and Luxemburg (20; invaded August 2, 1914) which the German Army then evacuated (22), and the French Army entered Metz (19). Then British and American forces reached the German frontier (24) at the same time as the new German Soldiers’ And Workers’ Council declared a republic with Hamburg as its capital (24; the Kaiser had abdicated on the 9th).
    This Council had taken control of the Navy too and, following negotiation with the British in the Forth Of Firth the previous week, the High Seas Fleet reached Rosyth en route to planned internment at Scapa Flow (November 21). Further south, the Germans progressively surrendered their U-boats at Harwich, Essex – 20 of them on the 20th, 39 the next day, 28 more on the 24th.
    In Russia, Admiral Alexander Kolchak, a White Russian leader politically backed by the British, took (allegedly reluctant) leadership of the anti-Bolsheviks and was declared Dictator Of All Russia (November 18) – something of an exaggeration as his base in Omsk, Siberia, was 1,680 miles due east of Moscow.
    In the Balkans, the Yugo-Slav National Council’s strivings for regional co-operation saw them form a union with Serbia and Montenegro (November 23), then the next day declare an alliance with Greece and Romania – at which Bukovina sought union with Romania (24). Further down the Black Sea, with Turkey and the Ottoman Empire signed up to Armistice too, French troops landed at Constantinople.

[Memoir background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London,16-year-old underage volunteer in September, 1914, fought at Gallipoli with the 2/1st Royal Fusiliers (Blogs September 20, 2015, to January 3, 2016), then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons (Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)… until officialdom spotted his real age – 18, legally too young for the battlefield. So they told him he could take a break from the fighting until he turned 19. He accepted, though with an enduring sense of guilt. December, 1916, saw him posted to Harrogate, Yorkshire, and re-allocated to the Essex Regiment 2/7th Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations (he spent his 19th birthday, July 6, 1917, in a Sheffield hospital). That summer, his CO offered him training for a commission, but Sam detested ordering men around so he refused; he may have requested his subsequent “reversion” to Private, or perhaps it was a “punishment”, I don’t know. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France and dogsbodied for Brigade HQ in Arras and at the nearby Front until, in mid-March, he ran into his own Essex Battalion; they moved into the trenches near Fampoux, about six miles east of Arras… just in time for the German Spring Offensive. A last stand by the Battalion on March 28 left 80 alive and “fit” out of the 520 who started the day – the 440 in between being dead, wounded or, like Sam, “missing” and, in his case, a POW (Blog March 25, 2018). For several months he wandered occupied France in randomly-assembled half-starved POW groups, until a train took his latest band down to a rural area between the Rhine and the Black Forest near a village called Hügelheim. There they settled into a slightly less filthy camp for the summer, tending sick German war horses, before moving on yet again, westwards to a village in Lorraine where they remained until Armistice… ]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
November 12, 1918, in occupied Lorraine: my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe, after enduring eight months of slow starvation and much brutality as a POW, last week described how Armistice Day came to him and his comrades at a small “camp” – actually a village hall – in Lorraine.
    German soldiers hurrying eastwards, away from the Front, announced it often and enthusiastically throughout the day. Still, their guards remained, albeit puzzled about what to do next rather than maintaining diligent oversight. The Tommies spent the day singing hymns and other ditties while awaiting freedom… surely…
    Came the morrow and, to Sam’s chagrin, the guard he detested most took control of his fate, along with that of his pals and scrounged-food syndicate partners, Wally and George…
    [An explanation of upcoming chronology here: while most of these blogs are roughly aligned with what was happening to my father “100 years ago this week”, this one and the next cover only November 12-15 because he wrote so much about those days for reasons which will become obvious.]

Next morning, Haybag(2), of all people, strode into the hall and ordered us to come outside; Wally, George and I complied quickly, being impatient to get moving, rather than lounge about when we might be spotting some opportunity to slip away towards the west(3). We rolled our blankets and slung them over our shoulders then tied across the chest. I had my mess-can – filled with water the night before – on a string round my waist and the remainder of the cabbage in my under-tunic sack. When Haybag counted off the first 20 of us and gave the order “Marsche!”, indicating a westerly direction. We set off willingly, an unusually high-spirited Platoon of skin-and-bone, bent shufflers.
     After half an hour, some distance ahead a huge, black cloud of smoke appeared. As we drew nearer, we started to hear explosions, big and small, and soon we saw that a large ammunition store was on fire – some bullets, but mostly shells, blowing up at random. Looking ahead with some concern, we reckoned that, if we followed the road, we should not have to pass the conflagration at close range. But when we reached the nearest point on the road, Haybag ordered us along a path which cut off the bend in the road and took us very close to the dump – and put us in much greater danger, of course. To prove he meant it, he drew back his rifle bolt, rammed a bullet into the chamber and took aim at us.
     “Let’s go!” someone yelled and we did – feeling, it seemed, first, that we hadn’t much to lose anyway, and second, that we’d show that ruddy Haybag we weren’t scared of a few hundred whizz-bangs.
     So, as Haybag went round the bend – literally, I mean – covering us most of the time with his rifle, we took the pathway and felt the heat of that fire. For several minutes, flying shrapnel and such made the scene very similar to a battlefield and we all felt some temptation to break into a gallop. But we simply couldn’t, so we proceeded at our usual crawl, just hoping we’d be lucky… Which we were, no casualties, and we duly rejoined Haybag on the road, feeling we were better men than him. I hoped he didn’t realise we hadn’t run because of physical weakness rather than bravery, and that he felt suitably ashamed of his dirty trick. He must have hoped that some or all of us would be blown up, leaving him free to go home, if such a miserable devil had a home.
     Later, when we passed a farm, many of us dived into a heap of swedes left by the roadside – we’d not eaten much that day and here was food indeed. But Haybag raised his rifle and this time pulled the trigger. The bullet went just over our heads and, as he reloaded, he told us to put down the swedes. Probably, the farmer was French and intended us to help ourselves, other freed prisoners having passed that way, no doubt. But our relentless Prussian reckoned to play his miserable role to the bitter end. And I’d bet his end was awful.

Now, more groups of German troops passed by, heading east. They carried things obviously pillaged, such as chickens, ducks, sacks full of food. Occasionally they drove one or more cows, or a goat, or led a horse. The road became thick with men, all going the opposite way to us. Then a column of Daimler lorries, each with its large, red flag and load of red-decorated men(4), hurried by as if trying to put as great a distance as possible between themselves and the Allied Army.
     We felt tired and hungry and Haybag surprised us by allowing a rest stop. Those fortunates who had picked up anything edible ate it. Wally, George and I chewed heart of cabbage(5), drank some water, and talked about what might be our eventual fate amid this rabble of retreating enemy troops now bent on wholesale looting.
     One man near us opened a can of some blackened foodstuff, I’m not sure what, but I noticed before he did it that the top was swollen. We discussed that, but he ate some of the contents regardless. However, an hour or so later when we rose to resume the journey, he sat looking at the half-empty can and made no attempt to rise… Up to him, he could please himself.
     But, looking around for Haybag to give his usual harsh command, I was amazed to see him walking off eastwards with several of his compatriots and, at last, displaying no further interest in us.
     “We’re free! We can do as we please… Come on, boys, let’s go and get back to our people!” and many such excitable cries were heard. At once, we fell into a far brisker rate of progress, in spite of the tide of Germans flowing towards us.
     However, because of hunger, weakness and general ill health, this more strenuous pace made me feel light in the head. I responded to the odd remark from Wally, but felt increasingly detached from everything and everybody around me. Worse, with great alarm, I suddenly realised I had left my rolled blanket at our stopping place. I must have turned around and, without a word to anybody, tottered back along the road.
     I recognised the place, all right, for lying in the middle of the road was the man who had eaten that black stuff out of the can. His face had a bluish look and he did not appear to be alive. I searched for my blanket and found it, then felt the chap’s wrist for any sign of life before resuming the hopeful homeward journey – on my own now.

I came to a village… empty, it seemed, apart from a few retreating Germans. I sat down for a while… soon no more Germans either. I felt like the last man left on Earth.
     But when I moved on – shuffled on, that is – near the village’s further boundary I heard voices and traced them to a cottage. I peered in through a window and was amazed to see the Preacher and two companions sitting at a table bearing hunks of bread and a large, open can of something evidently edible. Busy talking and eating, they didn’t notice me standing there, and feeling indignant because the food on the table was more than six prisoners would have received for a day’s rations and they clearly had more in bags I could see.
     So the ranting Christian had been stealing food which should have been shared out(6). No wonder he looked so much fitter than the rest of us. His mates were no skeletons either.
     I slunk away, thinking about how they must have left the prison hall before my Haybag group – and they probably quit leaving other men in the hall who expected the Preacher to return and lead them homewards. Maybe they were still waiting.
     I did not enter any of the deserted houses. Their owners would return one day and I did not wish to loot, supposing the Germans had left anything worth taking. (In our Army, it was forbidden to move even a brick from a wrecked building, all being the property of our French allies(7).)
     Slowly onwards… over the next several hours I saw only two Germans, driving a cow before them.
     By a farmyard well stood a bucket on a rope. Someone had left it full of water, so I drank from it and refilled my mess-can. I found a turnip and a potato among the surrounding farmyard muck, washed them in the bucket and ate them. The door of a nearby shed stood open. I went inside, laid down, wrapped my blanket around my body and slept(8). When I awoke it was dark. I lay there, dozing occasionally, till daylight.’
(2) My father gave a vivid pen-portrait of this detested guard in the October 28 blog: “This martinet, who wore a look of undying anger, cultivated a Kaiser Wilhelm moustache, the ends pointed upwards at an angle of 90 degrees to the transverse portions. Always strictly on duty, he never allowed a smile to sully his face. On every occasion when it had been my misfortune to be accompanied by his nibs on marches to places of work, he had managed to create an atmosphere of oppressive misery, pushing a Gefangene [“prisoner”] here, prodding another with his rifle butt there, unfailingly turning a sunny day into one overhung with gloom.” “Haybag” was still a non-specific and non-obscene insult when I was a kid in the 1950s. I can’t find the origin of its derogatory meaning, but I’d say it was on a par with “pillock” or “twozzer” (though maybe I imagined the latter?).
(3) His objective, the French front line. I can’t get an accurate estimate on how far that would be. The prison camp village Sam couldn’t recall the name of and I can’t tell whereabouts he eventually did reach the trench lines. But considering his debilitated physical condition, it may be that he covered only five to ten miles a day. 
(4) “Red-decorated” meaning the revolutionary ribbons which Sam noted last week had replaced Iron Crosses on the chests of every German retreating from the Front.
(5) On behalf of the food-co-op triumvirate, Sam had stolen the cabbage from a garden adjacent to the prison camp on the night of November 10-11.
(6) The Preacher appears in the October 28 and November 11 blogs; he worked in the cookhouse and maintained a well-fed appearance while preaching the endurance of suffering to others. Of course, you might note that Sam, Wally and George kept food to themselves, but I think his POW morality reckoned found or stolen items private property which could be shared with mates only, whereas cookhouse victuals were intended for all.
(7) In another example of POW morality, Sam is here clearly reckoning Lorraine villages and homes as French, even though the region had been annexed by Prussia as a result of the 1870-1 war which also triggered German unification (January 18, 1871).
(8) The night of November 12.

All the best– FSS

Next week: Sam plods on… in a deserted village, he encounters two British nurses who take him in, feed him, maybe save his life… and on into day three and The Last German, day four and creeping the wrong way through a German minefield into a French trench and a welcome meal… which nearly kills him!

(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote Nobody Of Any Importance, a Memoir of his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.

Sunday 11 November 2018

’”There is an Armistice!” one Soldat bellowed…’ Sam’s November 11: the real Armistice Day as experienced by a Tommy in a German POW camp…

Sam’s Memoir – paperback and e-book – and the e-excerpts from it are now available in their third and final editions with added Endnotes and, in the Memoir, added documentation.

It’s war’s end at last – but Sam’s blog, Facebook page and tweets will continue until his Memoir concludes with the Centenary of the July, 1919, Peace parade in London…

For details of how to buy Sams full Memoir(1) in paperback or e-book & excerpted Gallipoli Somme& Arras 1918/POW etc mini-e-books & reader reviews see right-hand column
For AUDIO excerpts click Here  Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook Here

All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s Memoir will always go to the British Red Cross - and the current running donations total at November 1 is £3,644.84 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!)

Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… Henry Nicholas John Gunther found a sad place in history as the averred “last soldier killed” in World War 1: at 10.59am on November 11, one minute before the legendary “11th hour”; this German-American, aged 23, a Private following demotion from Sergeant because an intercepted letter home criticised front-line conditions, was said to be trying to prove himself and regain his rank when he bayonet-charged a German machine-gun post, fired some shots despite the “enemy” soldiers trying to indicate it was all over and was killed. This happened at Chaumont-devant-Damvillers in Lorraine (the German-occupied province where, that day, my father was still a POW – see below)
    On Monday, November 11, at 5am, Allied Commander Marshall Foch signed the Armistice on a train at Rethondes station in the Compiègne forest. Bar British troops’ dawn retaking of Mons, Belgium (notoriously lost on August 24 1914), and the Allies subsequent unopposed advance into Germany (from November 16) and the German Army’s exit from France (complete by the 18th) that was more or less it for military action. But the diplomatic and political wires were buzzing.
    In Germany a clutch of dukes and kings followed the Kaiser in abdicating (November 11 and later that week), while the German Navy’s surrender was negotiated in the Firth Of Forth aboard the cruiser Königsbergby representatives of the Workmen’s And Soldiers Council Of The Fleet (15 onwards; this body had emerged from the wave of German Naval mutinies). The Emperor Of Austria abdicated and a German-Austrian Republic was proclaimed instead (13) – it promptly requested union with Germany. Then the Hungarian government concluded a separate Armistice in Belgrade (15) and declared itself independent the following day.
    Around eastern Europe, in the immediate aftermath a new national Government formed in Estonia (11), Jan Masaryk became first President of the still-hyphenated Czecho-Slovak republic (14), and Poland declared independence with Jozef Pilsudski Head Of State (16 – and a revolt began in Ukraine (15).
    Down in Africa, among the last to hear of the Armistice was General Von Lettow-Vorbeck who led his former East Africa force, which had fought for months on the run from the former German colony, to the Zambesi in then Rhodesia before the news reached him (November 14) and he surrendered the next day.

[Memoir background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London, 16-year-old underage volunteer in September, 1914, fought at Gallipoli with the 2/1st Royal Fusiliers (Blogs September 20, 2015, to January 3, 2016), then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons (Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)… until officialdom spotted his real age – 18, legally too young for the battlefield. So they told him he could take a break from the fighting until he turned 19. He accepted, though with an enduring sense of guilt. December, 1916, saw him posted to Harrogate, Yorkshire, and re-allocated to the Essex Regiment 2/7th Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations (he spent his 19th birthday, July 6, 1917, in a Sheffield hospital). That summer, his Company Officer offered him training for a commission, but Sam detested ordering men around so he refused; he may have requested his subsequent “reversion” to Private, or perhaps it was a “punishment”, I don’t know. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France and dogsbodied for Brigade HQ in Arras and at the nearby Front until, in mid-March, he ran into his own Essex Battalion; they moved into the trenches near Fampoux, about six miles east of Arras…  just in time for the German Spring Offensive. A last stand by the Battalion on March 28 left 80 alive and “fit” out of the 520 who started the day – the 440 in between being dead, wounded or, like Sam, “missing” and, in his case, a POW (Blog March 25, 2018). For several months he wandered occupied France in randomly-assembled half-starved POW groups, until a train took his latest band down to a rural area between the Rhine and the Black Forest near a village called Hügelheim. There they settled into a slightly less filthy camp for the summer, tending sick German war horses, before moving on yet again, westwards to a village in Lorraine… ]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
November 11, 1918, Armistice Day in occupied Lorraine: my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe, now eight months a slowly starving POW – of late in an improvised “camp” which is actually a village hall – last week stayed practical as rumours of war’s imminent end abounded by stealing a cabbage. This he shared with his Tommy pals Wally and George, partners in a snaffled-food syndicate which had helped keep them alive of late.
    Now it’s the morning of that historic day – not that, as yet, the POWs knew for sure what was going on, much less what day it was…

‘When dawn came, however, so did the Soldaten(2). But with differences. Gone were the black-and-white Iron Cross(3)ribbons, worn on the breast – decorations for bravery won by every man in their Army, it seemed to me. These they had replaced with bright red decorations, and Regimental buttons worn on their caps had given way to red ones.
     We saw no more German officers, not at any time after that sudden move to the political left. If this was the revolution – and it looked like it – then it must, we decided, be the most peaceful ever.
     The guards gave us the usual piece of bread and litre of acorn juice(4). Then we awaited events. Lorries hurried past, each displaying a large, red flag and filled with shouting troops. They all went one way – eastwards. “Fertig(5),” occurred frequently among the excited words they called out to our guards, and even the dimmest among us knew that meant “finished”.
     “There is an Armistice!” one Soldat bellowed at us as he passed by, driving a pair of horses pulling a haywain covered with rope netting under which sat many chickens. That evoked a cheer from those of us who heard the thrilling bit of news.
     Wally, George, and I found ourselves in a state of intense, excited joy, though unable to tell each other of the relief from the worry, doubt and general misery which, since becoming prisoners, had defeated most of our efforts to remain normally hopeful. Although Wally had managed to smile sometimes, I felt sure that in happier times he would have been just the cheery chappie everyone loved to have around. Now the grin, which I and my parents were to find so pleasing at a later date, began to illuminate his somewhat Punchish face – his nose was not quite so big nor quite so hookish as Punch’s, but his mug nicely suggested the puppet’s profile.
     I certainly had benefitted from my association with that young man, whose fair dealing and lack of wile and guile put new life into my ability to trust my fellow men – which had faded because of the deplorable overall standard of behaviour and of honour among those with whom I had dwelt recently. The discomforts, food shortages and absence of any of life’s pleasures had so quickly reduced them to the level of wild animals with all their snarling and violent grabbing of anything edible…
     Not so, Wally, though he was nobody’s fool and capable of protecting his own. His word, given to me and to George, really was his bond and he expected and got the same from me. From George – older, married with children, and therefore “been through the hoop” – Wally asked slightly less, reckoning George couldn’t be expected to contribute quite as much as we youngsters. That seemed reasonable to me, even gave me a feeling of some slight superiority, walking ragbag, skeleton-with-a-skin-covering though I was. Stinking pride, as my mother used to call it, can be a morale-booster at times.’

So passed Armistice Day, 1918(6), with us prisoners leaderless, but not without our well-nourished Preacher(7) sounding off in loud prayers of thanks for deliverance. Although he and his cohort sang hymns and, later on, sober songs like Will Ye No Come Back Again and Auld Lang Syne, belting them out full-strength, no reproof came from the Germans, who seemed to spend all their time in discussion, while keeping up only the appearance of maintaining a watch over us.
     Late that evening, we got the usual stewed veg dished out, not by the Jerries, but by our Preacher and several of his cronies – a further indication of our guards’ loss of interest in us.’
(2) Soldaten: soldiers.
(3) The Iron Cross: originated in Prussia during the Napoleonic Wars, says Wikipedia, it became degraded by mass awards in World War I, during which the German Army handed out at least 5.4 million, including two to Adolph Hitler.
(4) Acorn juice posed as coffee in times of shortage.
(5) Fertig: finished.
(6) The final steps towards Armistice had begun on September 29, 1918, when General Ludendorff told the Kaiser he could not guarantee holding the line for another 24 hours; he called for an immediate ceasefire, ceding to the demands of President Woodrow Wilson’s “14 Points”, issued in January, 1918. Soon after that, Ludendorff changed his mind about suing for peace, but by then the German Army’s morale had collapsed and the Navy mutiny of October 29-30 (at Wilhelmshaven on the North Sea, then Kiel on the Baltic) incited a revolutionary spirit which rapidly spread across the country. The combatants agreed the Armistice on November 11, the day after the Kaiser’s abdication, and it came into force at 11am Paris time (hence “the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month” of sonorous cliché). The German soldier whom my father heard shouting about it may have got the news a day or so later or perhaps he was echoing a false rumour in advance of the actual signing – although my father’s assumption remained that this was indeed November 11 and he may well have been right, although generally he hadn’t been able to keep track of dates. Having nothing else definite to go on, I’m tentatively dating events from here on as if the German soldier and my father were indeed correct. Under the Armistice terms, Germany agreed to complete demilitarisation and the occupation of the Rhineland by American, Belgian, British and French Armies. The parties did not agree and sign the final Peace Treaty (of Versailles) until June 28, 1919. The establishment of Germany’s Weimar Republic followed in August.
(7) See the October 28 Blog for a characterisation of the Preacher, ostentatious in his religiosity, Sam reckoned, because he had grown modestly fat while others wasted away because he took full advantage of his position as a POW “trusty” in the camp cookhouse.

All the best– FSS

Next week: Sam’s long walk westwards begins… the still hate-filled guard he calls “Haybag” drives the POWs past a blazing ammunition dump… and before the day is out Sam is tottering along on his own… “I felt like the last man on Earth”.

(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote Nobody Of Any Importance, a Memoir of his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.

Sunday 4 November 2018

Sam contemplates “freedom” – with “armed guards still lounging around outside the wire”! While wondering what next, the POWs sing their way through the night… and Sam, too near starving to get lost in euphoria, temporarily escapes to forage for food…

Sam’s Memoir– paperback and e-book – and the e-excerpts from it are now available in their third and final editions with added Endnotes and, in the Memoir, added documentation.

For details of how to buy Sams full Memoir(1) in paperback or e-book & excerpted Gallipoli Somme& Arras 1918/POW etc mini-e-books & reader reviews see right-hand column
For AUDIO excerpts click Here  Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook Here

All proceeds to the British Red Cross - and the current running donations total at November 1 is £3,644.84  (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!)

Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… The Armistice manoeuvres continued… “apace” you might say, except that thousands on the front lines still had to suffer wounds or death in these concluding days. The main steps were: President Wilson sent a note of acceptance of Armistice proposals to Germany (November 5); the Allies’ military leader in France, Marshall Foch told the German delegates to advance towards the French front lines (7); he met them at Rethondes, near Compiègne and told them the Armistice terms, apparently negotiated already, had to be accepted or not by 11am on the 11th (8) – as everyone knows this formality was left until that last minute (next week in terms of this blog).
    Meanwhile, the German Naval mutiny spread to a battleship in Kiel (November 4), a revolution broke out in Berlin (9) and that same day the Kaiser’s imminent abdication was announced, followed by his exit to Holland (10).
    On the Western Front, the one-way, but often still fierce conflict saw the Franco-American Meuse Argonne Offensive (September 26-November 11) drive towards its conclusion as the Advance To The Meuse took Vervins, Rethel and Sedan (6), then Mézières (10). During this long campaign the Americans suffered 122,000 casualties, the French 70,000 and the Germans 70,000.
    Further north, Field Marshall Hague’s British and French Army Group encountered strong resistance at the Battle Of The Sambre and the Second Battle Of Guise, advancing beyond Valenciennes on a 30-mile front towards Maubeuge and Mons (November 4-5) – the battles included the bloody crossing of the Sambre-Oise Canal where poet Wilfred Owen died. The French took Guise and Origny-de-Tiérache (5; Aisnes department), the British Maubeuge, Avesnes and Tournai (8-9;  in the Nord and Pas-de-Calais departments, except that the last is in Belgium).
    Elsewhere, winding-up moves occurred, politically and militarily. Poland assumed control of Galicia from Austria (November 8) and Czech forces declared national independence at Ekaterinburg (9; i.e. a very long way from Czecho-Slovakia because of their extraordinary campaign battling for the Allies along the Trans-Siberian Railway). The Italian Navy mopped up ports and islands along the Montenegran coast and further Balkan activity saw King Peter Of Serbia re-enter Belgrade (6; ousting the Austrians), the Yugo-Slav conference in Geneva decided to form a government (7), and Romania briefly and nominally rejoined the war on the Allied side after rejecting their May, 1918, treaty with Germany and ordering the invaders’ Army to leave their soil.
    However, down in Africa, the wandering German force which had been driven out of German East Africa, pressed on with its invasion of (British colony) Rhodesia, winning a fight at Kasama (9; about 600 miles north of Salisbury/Harare).

[Memoir background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London, 16-year-old underage volunteer in September, 1914, fought at Gallipoli with the 2/1st Royal Fusiliers (Blogs September 20, 2015, to January 3, 2016), then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons (Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)… until officialdom spotted his real age – 18, legally too young for the battlefield. So they told him he could take a break from the fighting until he turned 19. He accepted, though with an enduring sense of guilt. December, 1916, saw him posted to Harrogate, Yorkshire, and re-allocated to the Essex Regiment 2/7th Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations (he spent his 19th birthday, July 6, 1917, in a Sheffield hospital). That summer, his Company Officer offered him training for a commission, but Sam detested ordering men around so he refused; he may have requested his subsequent “reversion” to Private, or perhaps it was a “punishment”, I don’t know. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France and dogsbodied for Brigade HQ in Arras and at the nearby Front until, in mid-March, he ran into his own Essex Battalion; they moved into the trenches near Fampoux, about six miles east of Arras… just in time for the German Spring Offensive. A last stand by the Battalion on March 28 left 80 alive and “fit” out of the 520 who started the day – the 440 in between being dead, wounded or, like Sam, “missing” and, in his case, a POW. For three to four months he wandered occupied France in randomly-assembled half-starved POW groups, until a train took his latest band down to a rural area between the Rhine and the Black Forest near a village called Hügelheim. There they settled into a slightly less filthy camp for the summer, tending sick German war horses, before moving on yet again, westwards to a village in Lorraine… ]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
Early November, 1918, occupied Lorraine: my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe, now seven months a slowly starving POW, of late in an improvised “camp” which is actually a village hall, has been observing signs of war’s impending end – and trying to stay alive in the meantime. To this end he has formed a scrounged-food partnership with fellow POWs Wally and George.
    Last time, a convoy of German soldiers and officers in cars came rolling eastwards past the camp – “Zu Österreich!” yelled one (i.e. Austria). Diligent oversight among the camp guards collapsed and the POWs took to singing – hymns and other, less reverent ditties:

Time on our hands now. Opportunities to compare opinions about what was afoot and to look at possibilities from a new angle: that of free men… What men?… Free men. Who? Us… Us… Free…
     That was a laugh. Armed guards still lounging around outside the wire. Prominent in his devotion to his Kaiser’s heaven-given superiority and rightful demands for the tireless services of his loyal, if hungry, subjects, Haybag(2) now stood out from the ordinary Soldaten. The others relaxed, stood around talking, perhaps walked around the perimeter to consult with a mate. Visibly, they shed their soldierly bearing, yielded to a mixture of hope and fear – victims, playthings of rumour and counter-rumour, like us.
     As the day dragged on, more and more groups of soldiers passed along the nearby road. Frequently, our guards hurried out to question them.
     That night, careless of what our bosses thought of it, our men sang loudly parodies of songs and hymns such as had helped them on many a route march – bawdy, filthy, derogatory to NCOs and officers, and now, to Jerries. If ever our captors were to administer the final bashing to the despised Englander, now was the justification for having a go. But nowt happened.
     Seeking a spell of relief from the noise, I went outside. Total darkness, utter silence. Where was everybody? Where were the guards? A prowled round the wire, not a Jerry to be seen or heard.
     I went in again, found Wally and George, and took them round the confines. We agreed: we had been deserted, at least temporarily, by our very dear friends. Following up a little preparation Wally and I had made in case an opportunity to recce nearby territory occurred, we went into the privy – enclosed, in this case, because of our proximity to the road and some houses. We had quietly loosened the nails on two boards in the tall, outer fence which, for its length, replaced the barbed wire and would give us access to an open field. Nobody, as far as we knew, suspected our work; we even kept it from George.
     As appointed scrounger to our group, when we moved the boards I slipped through the gap, which Wally covered once more. Difficult to describe the feeling of loneliness as I cautiously stepped along, came to the wire, and realised that, if we had made a mistake and some Germans remained on guard duty, I might be shot – particularly if Haybag spotted me. Probably the very situation he’d been praying for. But I didn’t meet him, not just then at any rate.
     In the blackness, I slowly moved away from the prison, trying to walk in a straight line so that I could turn round and return to the same place. I saw nobody, heard nothing unusual… When I came to a fence I carefully climbed over it; it was only a couple of feet high and the dim sight of a cottage ahead told me I was in a back garden. Fearful of raising an alarm, I felt around on the ground nearby, got my hands on a big, hearty cabbage, pulled it, brushed the earth off its root and stuffed it into my waist sack(3).
     The singing, now louder than ever, aided my return to the bog. I guessed it could well continue all night for all our vanished Germans cared. I told my pals I had apparently been free to walk away without hindrance. I produced the cabbage, which delighted them, and, with no means of cooking it, we pulled off the outer leaves and chewed the pale leaves from the heart. A pinch of salt would have embellished the meal, but we weren’t fussy eaters.
     The night being so dark, we all decided to wait till daylight before making any move.’
(2) My father’s nickname for a particularly obnoxious Prussian guard who (see last week) “wore a look of undying anger” and bore an enduring hatred for the prisoners.
(3) Not standard issue! A tubular bag he’d devised early in his POW period to tie around his body under his prisoner’s uniform as a repository for anything handy, especially edibles.

All the best– FSS

Next week: ‘”There is an Armistice!” one Soldat bellowed… Sam’s November 11 in a German POW camp…

(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote Nobody Of Any Importance, a Memoir of his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.