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.
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