tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-85452751432402441012024-03-11T21:53:31.697-07:00FootSoldierSamA blog dedicated to the World War 1 memoir written by Sam Sutcliffe, an ordinary soldier who fought at Gallipoli, the Somme and Arras. He wrote Nobody Of Any Importance - his title - in his 70s from his remarkable near-total-recall memory. Book and blog edited by his son, Phil.FootSoldierSamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01449820798842961719noreply@blogger.comBlogger262125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545275143240244101.post-33259944804723683462019-07-14T00:30:00.042-07:002024-03-02T11:56:47.253-08:00July 19, 1919: Good heavens… five years on it’s Sam’s last blog. He and older brother Ted, a fellow Somme survivor, see the war off at the July 19 Peace Parade. Happy onlookers, they see the King… and fall out of their tree!<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "cambria"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">Dear Visitor, This is the FootSoldierSam blog – the whole of my father Private Sam Sutcliffe’s personal Great War story, Nobody Of Any Importance: A Foot Soldier’s Memoir Of World War I. It runs for 262 episodes (2014-2019), covering his 1914-1919 experience from enlistment at 16, through training, Gallipoli, the Somme, the Spring Offensive, and eight months as a POW to his return home and, eventually, the London Peace Parade – all originally scheduled, rather approximately, 100 years on from the week in which the events actually occurred. Please have a read. If you’d care to buy a Memoir paperback or e-book or one of the battle excerpts the details are below. All proceeds will always go to the British Red Cross who saved his life a couple of times…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial";">Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial";">Memoir(1) <i>– 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 </i>Memoir<i>, added documentation.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">For details of how to buy the <i>Memoir </i>or </span><span lang="EN-US">Gallipoli <span style="color: purple;"></span><span style="color: #161616;">& </span>Somme <span style="color: #8b5200;">&</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">Arras 1918/POW </span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">etc </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">mini-e-books click </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=4897427382137035394;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=4;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">plus see reader reviews </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=6753328261534245137;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=1;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">and </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=8857004925280018109;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=2;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;"> and reviews from the Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=7620675943831341074;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=0;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">. </span><span lang="EN-US"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">For AUDIO excerpts click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/footsoldiersam" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #7c4000;"> Join FootSoldierSam on Facebook </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nobody-Of-Any-Importance-A-Foot-Soldiers-Memoir-of-WW1/300782296758247" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">The war’s over – and this week, bar the occasional blurt no doubt, so are my father FootSoldierSam Sutcliffe’s blogs, Facebook posts and tweets – it’s the Centenary of the July 19, 1919, Peace parade in London which he attended with fellow veteran brother Ted: “Thus, we reckoned, we had </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">completed our long connection with the forces of war</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">…”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial";">See information on Sam’s son Phil’s readings from the Memoir <a href="https://footsoldiersam.blogspot.com/p/readings.html" style="color: purple;">here</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">Memoir <i>will always go to the British Red Cross – and the current <u>running donations total as of Mar 2, 2024, is £10,846.83</u> (The edit function on the "donations" box at the end of this page has vanished so I can't update it to the current figure.)</i></span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">Dear all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">A hundred years ago this week, in the aftermath of the Armistice… The Paris Peace Conference process moved another stage with the presentation of the Treaty Of St Germain to the Austrian Government. Continuing in the spirit of retribution rather than reconciliation begun by the more famous Treaty Of Versailles with Germany, it stripped the former Habsburg Empire of territories including Hungary, Poland, Croatia/Serbia/Slovenia and parts of northern Italy it previously held – and the Treaty imposed reparations to be paid to the Allies for the next 30 years (which didn’t work out).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;"> The UK staged its great Peace Parade on July 19 in London with the King, Queen, Generals and 15,000 soldiers – plus, amid the crowds gathered from all over the country, two former Tommies in my father, FootSoldierSam, and his brother, Ted (see below)…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;"> The day after the celebration, ex-servicemen in Luton rioted and burnt down the Town Hall (July 20). And over in America, the Washington Race Riot (July 19-24), the latest in a volatile US summer, saw the rumour of a black man being arrested for rape – actually the complainant said she was “jostled” – trigger a white vigilante onslaught soon to be countered by strong, often armed, black resistance. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;"> For the rest no major events are reported, but the Russian Civil War (1918-21) continued with the Bolsheviks starting to gain the upper hand… so did the Greco-Turkish War (1919-22)… and the Third Anglo-Afghan War (May 6-Aug 8)…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">[</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Memoir <i>background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe </i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">from Edmonton, north London, </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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), </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">… until </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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 Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverted to Private by then, I don’t really know why – and dogsbodied around Arras until mid-March when he ran into his own Essex </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">2/7th </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Battalion. They moved into the trenches near Fampoux 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 doing hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany and finally moving westwards to Lorraine – whence, the day after Armistice, his long trek towards the French Front began. He reached safety after tiptoeing through a German minefield (November 15 probably). Then began his recovery from chronic near-starvation – and a brief emotional breakdown – until, finally, on December 10, 1918, he returned to England and another few days in hospital before reuniting with parents and siblings, especially brother Ted, home on a week’s leave but suffering badly from gas damage. Civilian life offered Sam a warm welcome… until, in February, 1919, the Army called him back - though only to a “Dad’s Army” unit. Meaning, at first, a few weeks </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">de facto<i>holiday in Brighton. But then, something completely different… through the spring, Sam and others ex-POWs guard German POWs at a camp in Sussex, while making various attempts to get back to “normal” life until at last… demob – and now it’s the Peace Parade!]</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS (100 years on and for the last time)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">July 19, 1919, Hyde Park. Last week, in May, my father, Private Sam Sutcliffe – formerly Lance Corporal Signaller, but reverted to the PBI rank he signed up to on September 10, 1914 – did the demob formalities after a medical verdict that he’d become “unfit for service” via the alimentary consequences of malnourishment in the trenches and then, much worse, in his travelling POW band, which had him (temporarily) wasting away and often in pain.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;"> With the back pay he was owed, he ate and drank, lazed about a good deal – and bought himself a nice civvy suit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;"> Now though, it’s the grand goodbye to all that. Sam and fellow Western Front veteran, older brother Ted (then 22) join the massed audience for the post-Versailles-signing Peace Parade in London:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘With peace declared and signed for(2), my brother and I went up West to view the great procession of all the victorious Armies and associated bigwigs – spectators, we, watching the men who won the war(3).<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6FTFWZaaQo9YtXKtH0-bAIO55-eLfbB8OF78nUAfrvbOv0sX1kQHkdD0rGNKk5dBjGUUilcL9iLLRzIvOOZwl5RRwTNBqLroml8-rCQ5MZfle_0b0pm-gk-qHm-zpbqcMZw3cy3qcToU/s1600/Peace+parade+July+19+1919+Gurkhas+on+the+Mall%252C+indian+Army%252C+by+Crance+Arthur%252C+courtesy+IWM.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="562" data-original-width="800" height="448" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6FTFWZaaQo9YtXKtH0-bAIO55-eLfbB8OF78nUAfrvbOv0sX1kQHkdD0rGNKk5dBjGUUilcL9iLLRzIvOOZwl5RRwTNBqLroml8-rCQ5MZfle_0b0pm-gk-qHm-zpbqcMZw3cy3qcToU/s640/Peace+parade+July+19+1919+Gurkhas+on+the+Mall%252C+indian+Army%252C+by+Crance+Arthur%252C+courtesy+IWM.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gurkhas of the Indian Army on the Mall, 19/7/19. Pic by Arthur Crane,<br />
courtesy of IWM.</td></tr>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> </span><i style="font-family: "cambria";"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Barmy as kids, at one point, in Hyde Park, to get a good view we climbed a tree. We sat on a bough, high and happy. Below us and slightly to one side, an elderly couple picnicked. The bands played gloriously and the marchers’ feet crunched on the sanded road – it was great.</span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Then the bough broke and down we came. Thankfully, the old couple were unhurt, only scared, as the grandpa proved via his shouted opinion that our parents had conceived us in sin.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> We dashed from place to place to catch up with different parts of the show – we saw Queen Alexandra(4) close-up and confirmed what we had read about her beautiful make-up – and generally had a fine old time.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Thus, we reckoned, we had completed our long connection with the forces of war and could now consider ourselves personally at peace.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ1FTTsy2jHrxXt2Mg40n969u_YJFp-PwQvPtrdj8GztPapbrhZuW2nQ-v7MIM6AoEosmanqoyutuT8yQ-isx55DAKKZ5x3ZRn8xqq4YijHbbP9_MbpBfbqImBw2InkYQI2IaD16RBfcs/s1600/Peace+Parade+July+19+1919+King+George+V%252C+Q+Mary+plus+at+saluting+base+courtesy+IWM+US+Official+photog.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="800" height="464" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ1FTTsy2jHrxXt2Mg40n969u_YJFp-PwQvPtrdj8GztPapbrhZuW2nQ-v7MIM6AoEosmanqoyutuT8yQ-isx55DAKKZ5x3ZRn8xqq4YijHbbP9_MbpBfbqImBw2InkYQI2IaD16RBfcs/s640/Peace+Parade+July+19+1919+King+George+V%252C+Q+Mary+plus+at+saluting+base+courtesy+IWM+US+Official+photog.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">King George V (left of centre, bearded), Queen Mary (second from right?, Queen Alexandra (right?) at the saluting base, 19/7/19 by a US official photographer,<br />
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;">At a stroke, my brother had already translated himself from a war-stained, mentioned-in-despatches-Military-Medal-you’ve-done-your-bit-thankyou-very-much-goodbye ex-soldier into a City gent. Now, on work days, garbed in a blue, pin-striped, well-cut suit with plenty of shirt cuff showing below the fashionable, rather short sleeves, fawn spats, and a dark, fur Homburg hat, he carried a light, knobbly cane or, if the papers forecast rain, a rolled umbrella.</span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Somehow, Ted had avoided contact with Army doctors, and so left the Service with what I knew to be a serious lung condition caused by a lengthy exposure to war gas; his breathing remained quicker and shallower than it should have been… He still made nothing of it, though, and, as his work demanded no physical effort, he could cover up his disability(5).<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Above all, he wanted no further connection with anything military. Mass murder to no observable purpose had sickened and saddened him. So he threw himself into his business activities.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Unskilled me had no highfalutin’ notions as to my prospects, but I was convinced that one method of turning an honest penny would eventually provide me with the price of a crust and a cuppa – to wit, buying something cheaply, adding a modest margin to its cost price, and flogging it(6). Many days, many failures, and a lot of physical distress were to come my way, but youth was on my side.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> It seems such a shame that one must cut loose from boyhood, but the years of adolescence had been consumed in playing at being a soldier and a man. And now it was all finished, I really had attained the official status of manhood.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I was just 21.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(2) Following six months of negotiation at the Paris Peace Conference, the Treaty of Versailles ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied powers on June 28, 1919 – not coincidentally the fifth anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the event which triggered the war. The UK ratified the Treaty two days after the Peace Parade.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(3) “The Peace March For The Glorious Dead” took place on Saturday, July 19, 1919 (Sam had his 21st on July 6). The great event’s title was arrived at after PM Lloyd George opposed the initial proposal of a “Victory Parade” and insisted that it be couched as a tribute to the dead. Architect Sir Edward Lutyens (1869-1944) designed a temporary wood-and-plaster version of the present “Cenotaph” memorial which was erected in Whitehall for the occasion (“The Glorious Dead” being the phrase carved into the permanent version later). Field Marshall Douglas Haig, Commander-In-Chief of the British Army, and soon to be ennobled as an Earl, led 15,000 troops on the march – sources include <a href="http://www.forces-war-records.co.uk/blog/2013/07/19/on-this-day-19th-july-1919-peace-day-when-the-boys-came-home" style="color: purple;">http://www.forces-war-records.co.uk/blog/2013/07/19/on-this-day-19th-july-1919-peace-day-when-the-boys-came-home</a>(you may have to paste this address into a search engine). Various events and entertainments followed in the Central London parks. In Hyde Park, where my father and his brother Ted ended up, an “Imperial Choir“ of 10,000 voices sang, accompanied by the massed bands of the Brigade Of Guards and “The King and Queen paid a surprise visit” (George V and Queen Mary). Naturally, while the nation generally enjoyed the celebration, many demurred or even protested, with ex-Servicemen often taking the lead according to a web source no longer available.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Field Marshall Haig (whom my father and uncle detested – though it wasn't high on his agenda of worries during WW1) salutes the royals 19/7/19 by US official photographer, courtesy of IWM.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(4) Queen Alexandra of Denmark, then 74, mother of George V and Consort to Edward VII, who had died in 1910.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(5) Philip Broughton Sutcliffe, nicknamed “Ted” (from “Tid” from “Tiddler” as a kid), born October 15, 1896, in Broughton, Salford, died on January 26, 1922, aged 25. Cause of death, tuberculosis, no doubt abetted by the severe lung damage he suffered from being gassed on the Western Front in 1918. When I was born in 1947, my father named me after his beloved long-lost brother, my uncle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(6) That’s what my father did. Specifically, he worked as a barrow boy in Edmonton market – a draper – in partnership with his younger brother, Alf. The two had a stall there between the wars, then moved into a small corner shop, still selling cloth, which they ran with one assistant until the early ‘60s. During WW2 both my father and my mother, Mona (20 years his junior), worked as Civil Defence first-aiders and ambulance drivers throughout the Blitz.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">All the best</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">– <i>FSS</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">Next week: There is no next week… war’s over, relish the peace... remember them...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote <i>Nobody Of Any Importance</i>, a <i>Memoir </i>of his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
FootSoldierSamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01449820798842961719noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545275143240244101.post-45179077181323040972019-07-07T00:30:00.000-07:002019-07-07T00:30:00.889-07:001919: As Sam’s military career concludes at the “cold and impersonal” Essex Regiment HQ he fondly recalls the boys of his first Battalion… and wonders what the hell he’s going to do next… The penultimate episode of FootSoldierSam’s five-year WW1 blog epic!<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir(1) <i>– 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 </i>Memoir<i>, added documentation.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">For details of how to buy the <i>Memoir </i>or </span><span lang="EN-US">Gallipoli <span style="color: purple;"></span><span style="color: #161616;">& </span>Somme <span style="color: #8b5200;">&</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">Arras 1918/POW </span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">etc </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">mini-e-books click </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=4897427382137035394;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=4;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">plus see reader reviews </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=6753328261534245137;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=1;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">and </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=8857004925280018109;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=2;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;"> and reviews from the Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=7620675943831341074;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=0;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">. </span><span lang="EN-US"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">For AUDIO excerpts click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/footsoldiersam" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #7c4000;"> Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nobody-Of-Any-Importance-A-Foot-Soldiers-Memoir-of-WW1/300782296758247" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">The war’s over at last – but Sam’s blog, Facebook page and tweets will continue until his </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir <i>concludes (next week!) with the Centenary of the July 19, 1919, Peace parade in London…<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">Memoir <i>will always go to the British Red Cross – and the current running donations total as of July 2, 2019, is £4,329.44 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!).</i></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Dear all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">A hundred years ago this week, in the aftermath of the Armistice… Germany finally ratified the Treaty Of Versailles (July 8), but only after new Chancellor Gustav Bauer, President Friedrich Ebert and Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg seriously discussed resuming hostilities. That is, they believed the Allies’ threat of immediate invasion if they didn’t accept the Treaty and the politicians asked Hindenburg whether the Army could mount effective resistance. Reluctantly, he said no.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> So they recommended acceptance to the Weimar National Assembly who agreed 237-138, then wired acceptance to French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau in time to beat the Allies’ deadline, before bringing it back to the Assembly for ratification. Thus, by common consent, the seeds of WW2 were sown, fed and watered… although the Allies did at last lift the Navy blockade on Germany (July 12) which had brought the population to the brink of starvation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> In the USA, however, when President Woodrow Wilson personally presented the Treaty to the Senate he met unbending and enduring resistance from those who opposed the Treaty entirely and others who wanted amendments. His pet Treaty project, the League Of Nations did become reality six months later, but his own country never joined it…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Elsewhere, the Greco-Turkish War (1919-22) proceeded from its small beginning in Anatolia; General Kemal, later Atatürk, had been mustering forces there, but then found himself dismissed by Sultan Mohammed VI (July 8). In Russia, Bolshevik counterattacks interrupted the southern White Army of General Denikin’s Advance On Moscow (July 3-November 18) and the northern White forces’ Siberian leader Admiral Kolchak involved American troops in a minor sequence of actions on the east coast fighting Bolsheviks in the Suchan Valley Campaign, defending the railway (throughout July).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Otherwise, an array of uproars continued internationally, triggered by WWI’s end to varying degrees, including the demobilisation of millions of servicemen. The Moroccan Insurrection against Spanish rule began (July 11) – marking the start of an Arab resistance movement against colonial powers. In America, the latest in a “Red Summer” of race riots flared up in Longview, Texas (July 10-12). Whites attacked the black part of town in the wake of lynching a black man for having an affair with a white woman. After a lot of shooting and one further black fatality, National Guard troops and Texas Rangers restored order. Many from both sides were charged and nobody prosecuted. The (all-white) local enquiry into the whole event reached one interesting conclusion – that black people should not be allowed to write about white people in the newspapers (a story had appeared in the northern black newspaper <i>The Chicago Defender</i>).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Also, among a sequence of post-war travel breakthroughs the US Army sent a convoy from Washington D.C. westwards to see if they could drive all the way to the Pacific – it took months, but instigated the massive highway-building programme of the 1920s which featured Route 66, established on November 11(?), 1926… whether or not with commemorative intent I don’t know.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">[</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Memoir <i>background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe </i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">from Edmonton, north London, </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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), </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">… until </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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 Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied around Arras until mid-March when he ran into his own Essex </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">2/7th </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Battalion. They moved into the trenches near Fampoux 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 doing hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany and finally moving westwards to Lorraine – whence, the day after Armistice, his long trek towards the French Front began. He reached safety after tiptoeing through a German minefield (November 15 probably). Then began his recovery from chronic near-starvation – and a brief emotional breakdown – until, finally, on December 10, 1918, he returned to England and another few days in hospital before reuniting with parents and siblings, especially brother Ted, home on a week’s leave but suffering badly from gas damage. Civilian life offered Sam a warm welcome… until, in February, 1919, the Army called him back - though only to a “Dad’s Army” unit. Meaning, at first, a few weeks </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">de facto<i>holiday in Brighton. But then, something completely different… through the spring, Sam and others ex-POWs guard German POWs at a camp in Sussex, while making various attempts to get back to “normal” life… and now it’s really here: demob!]</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">May, 1919, Essex and home to Edmonton: my father, Private Sam Sutcliffe – formerly Lance Corporal Signaller, but reverted to the rank he signed up to on September 10, 1914 – has spent the spring quite enjoying life as a Royal Defence Corps POW camp guard in East Preston, near Arundel, Sussex. He cast aside hatred and made friends with the former enemies, fellow frontline veterans…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> But come April health problems assailed him: a resurgence of the gastric uproar and pain he’d experienced in the aftermath of Gallipoli and the Somme, then again as a malnourished POW in France and Germany for eight months of 1918 – until he apparently recovered in various hospitals post-Armistice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Last week, a doctor recommended his release from the Army “having become physically impaired”…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘I had to go to Warley in Essex to get my discharge from the Essex Regiment, that being the last one of the several in which I had served(2). The place was cold and impersonal, the people too – particularly the signing-off officer, who might well have had his mind on his post-war problems. So many officers had briefly enjoyed a degree of power which would not be theirs in the keenly competitive civilian market…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> In truth, the only feelings of comradeship still remaining with me after all those seemingly endless years of war were for the brotherly boys of my first volunteer Battalion(3). Months of hard, slogging training in the Mediterranean sunshine(4), living under canvas before and after the inglorious campaign on that scruffy Turkish peninsula… Our total effort, both in Egypt and later in France(5), near Rouen, to so build up our efficiency that the authorities must augment our numbers and restore our depleted strength to that of a Battalion… One knew affection and friendly consideration for one’s mates in that mob, but not in any other(6).<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Still, my discharge yielded quite a bit of money from back-pay, the war gratuity, Corporal’s pay credited to me but never paid over more than two years(7), and a ten shillings a week pension, plus a book of coupons, each worth 29 shillings, which I could cash at the rate of one per week until I started doing some sort of work.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> So I dressed in a fine, new, wool, grey suit. I felt cool and prosperous. Not a clue, at that moment, as to what I might do for a living, but free and able to pay for my keep, and even for the occasional bottle of port wine which some of us favoured in those far-off days – a large bottle, of good quality, cost about three shillings.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(2) Warley: a military town since the 18th century and HQ barracks to the Essex Regiment from its founding in 1881 until 1960 </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><a href="http://www.forces-war-records.co.uk/unit-info/253/" style="color: purple;">http://www.forces-war-records.co.uk/unit-info/253/</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(may prove hyperlink-resistant; if so, copy and paste into a search engine and it will work!).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 21.33333396911621px; text-align: start;">Amid the host of scrawled info on this page including various ‘Warley’ references, look at the lower left half under ‘[Dis]embodied on demobilisation” where it records the date he appeared at Essex Regiment HQ in Warley ‘6.5.19’. To the right of that is the official reckoning of his war’s landmark dates – as regular readers will know, not all of them correct by my reckoning, having correlated my father’s account, war diaries and other sources.</span></td></tr>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(3) The 2/1 Royal Fusiliers, London Regiment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(4) From February to August in Malta, a place Sam loved the moment he saw it, despite the marches with 90 pounds on his back (normal pack plus Signaller’s gear) – see Blogs February 22, 2015 to August 16, 2015.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(5) From January to late April in Egypt, then maybe three weeks in Rouen before their CO told them they would be disbanded rather than reinforced and restored – see Blogs January 10, 2016, to May 1, 2016.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(6) As editor, I would just add here that my father generalised this overall feeling he had, resulting from the bitter grief of his Battalion’s demise at the hands of remote Army decision-makers in France. But, despite that, everywhere he served, he did form good, trusting relationships with comrades, notably with Neston at Arras with the 2/7th Essex Regiment – see Blogs December 17, 2017 and then January 1 to March 25, 1918.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(7) The story of my father’s rank during WW1 gets confusing. Here’s a quick zigzag through it. I think of him as “Lance Corporal Signaller Sutcliffe”, which he was from spring, 1915, in Malta – until promoted to Corporal in June 1916, while his new outfit, the Kensingtons were in and out of the front line at Gommecourt on the Somme. Thereafter, ups <i>and</i> downs ensued. During the subsequent battle, through to September, he often served as Acting Sergeant too. But when the Army noticed he was still under-age and sent him back to Blighty. Because he detested holding any rank, en route to his new posting in Harrogate he took one stripe off his arm. So when, in Yorkshire, he was transferred to the Essex he appeared to be a Lance Corporal again… although he wasn’t according to the records. Then, strangely, in mid-summer 1917 his Company CO – whom he loathed – offered him training for a commission (the upper- and middle-classes being drained of officer material by then) – see Blog June 30, 1917. Sam refused and, either as punishment or by (genuine) choice, “reverted” to Private for the duration. Regarding the back pay for his period as a Corporal, I presume that, with it happening on the Somme front, the formal notifications didn’t reach the appropriate clerk. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">All the best</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">– <i>FSS</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Next week: Good heavens… five years on it’s Sam’s last blog. He and older brother Ted, a fellow Somme survivor but bearing the gas damage that would kill him, see the war off by attending the July 19 Peace Parade, happy onlookers applauding “the men who won the war”…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote <i>Nobody Of Any Importance</i>, a <i>Memoir </i>of his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
FootSoldierSamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01449820798842961719noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545275143240244101.post-10047985910996171452019-06-30T00:30:00.000-07:002019-06-30T00:30:00.248-07:001919: Sam, still a POW camp guard in lovely Sussex, suffers post-POW sickness and general war aftermath/pre-demob depression … so now he’s saying fond farewells to all his new German friends!<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir(1) <i>– 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 </i>Memoir<i>, added documentation.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">For details of how to buy the <i>Memoir </i>or </span><span lang="EN-US">Gallipoli <span style="color: purple;"></span><span style="color: #161616;">& </span>Somme<span style="color: #8b5200;">&</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">Arras 1918/POW </span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">etc </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">mini-e-books click </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=4897427382137035394;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=4;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">plus see reader reviews </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=6753328261534245137;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=1;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">and </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=8857004925280018109;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=2;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;"> and reviews from the Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=7620675943831341074;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=0;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">.</span><span lang="EN-US"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">For AUDIO excerpts click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/footsoldiersam" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #7c4000;"> Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nobody-Of-Any-Importance-A-Foot-Soldiers-Memoir-of-WW1/300782296758247" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">The war’s over at last – but Sam’s blog, Facebook page and tweets will continue until his </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir <i>concludes with the Centenary of the July 19, 1919, Peace parade in London…<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">Memoir <i>will always go to the British Red Cross – and the current running donations total as of June 1, 2019, is £4,228.17 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!).</i></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Dear all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">A hundred years ago this week, in the aftermath of the Armistice… The Treaty Of Versailles led to widespread celebration in Europe and much anger from those who thought it sowed the seeds of future conflict by being too hard or too soft (really!) on Germany.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> In fact, French Marshall Foch opined, with apparent prescience: “</span><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">This [treaty] is not peace. It is an armistice for twenty years". But he said that believing it left Germany with far too much territory and power – he’d wanted the Rhineland annexed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> One of the earliest adverse reactions to the conquering Allies’ carve-up came from Syria. Amid internal conflict, political and religious, the national congress, which had lately replaced a monarchy, rejected the French Mandate awarded under the treaty and declared they wanted full independence (July 2) – or a British or American Mandate. (The Franco-Syrian War ensued the following year.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> In Turkish Anatolia, the developing Greco-Turkish War saw the Battle Of Aydin conclude (July 4) when the Greeks reoccupied Aydin, destroying most of what was left of the city – even though 40 per cent of the populace was Greek (and they were acting in contravention of Versailles agreements regarding Smyrna and the surrounding territory).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Meanwhile, the Russian Civil War took a turn against the Bolsheviks as the White Russian leader in the south, General Anton Denikin, issued a directive to launch the Advance On Moscow (July 3-November 18). It began successfully because the Bolshevik Red Terror had turned the region against them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> And in the USA, Arizona’s Bisbee Riots (July 3) forewarned of more to follow in what became known as the Red Summer. The combatants were returning black Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th Cavalry and that small town’s police force, following a controversial arrest.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> But the UK had more to celebrate than peace: when the R-34 airship touched down(?) in New York it became the first to cross the Atlantic. The flight took 106 hours…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">[</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Memoir <i>background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe </i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">from Edmonton, north London, </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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), </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">… until </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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 Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied around Arras until mid-March when he ran into his own Essex </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">2/7th </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Battalion. They moved into the trenches near Fampoux 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 doing hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany and finally moving westwards to Lorraine – whence, the day after Armistice, his long trek towards the French Front began. He reached safety after tiptoeing through a German minefield (November 15 probably). Then began his recovery from chronic near-starvation – and a brief emotional breakdown – until, finally, on December 10, 1918, he returned to England and another few days in hospital before reuniting with parents and siblings, especially brother Ted, home on a week’s leave but suffering badly from gas damage. Civilian life offered Sam a warm welcome… until, in February, 1919, the Army called him back - though only to a “Dad’s Army” unit. Meaning, at first, a few weeks </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">de facto<i>holiday in Brighton. But then, something completely different… through the spring, Sam and others ex-POWs guard German POWs at a camp in Sussex, while making various attempts to get back to “normal” life…]</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Back to April-May, 1919, Sussex: we left Sam quite enjoying life as a Royal Defence Corps POW camp (but really a country house) guard in East Preston, five miles southeast of Arundel. He’d cast aside residual hatred from his own spell as a prisoner of the Germans, decided fraternising with the enemy was the way forward, and befriended many of his charges, mostly former front-line men themselves.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> With the war over, though waiting on the final treaties, they all worked together amiably enough as the Germans did their hard labour reinforcing the banks of the River Arun. On his days off he had one of his series of inept flings with a local woman and then ended it in confusion and embarrassment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> But now health problems, which had assailed him from time to time because of his war’s assorted severe privations, have returned:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘In Sussex, the fat – even a burgeoning dewlap – which happiness and good living had prematurely bestowed on me in the months after my return to England gradually disappeared. In fact, my face partially reverted to its prisoner-of-war gauntness; food had seemed so wonderful after previous deprivations, but in time my voracious appetite waned, abdominal pains returned and irked me and, despite my efforts to bear in mind all the blessings now available, a dullness settled like a blight upon me.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I resisted it constantly, pressed it down inside me. I attempted normal conversation and persevered with laughter, but it was all difficult. The officer who regularly inspected the prisoners and premises, granted my request for an interview and was understanding when I told him about these things. He sent me to see an RAMC doctor at the local Headquarters and the results of his tests led to an appointment with a Medical Board. Doctors there probed my abdomen thoroughly and somewhat painfully, then recommended my release from the Service “having become physically impaired”.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I told George(2) everything I knew about Lotty the hotty(3) and suggested that he might enjoy brief dalliance with her. To help things along I prepared a careful letter of introduction to her. George said he would have a go at the proposition and that concluded my mild affair.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I had a fortnight’s leave due before demob, during which I was to attend a further Medical Board in Chelsea, for examination and assessment relating to pension rights(4). </span></i></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt; text-align: start;">While the handwriting is hard to read, you can see that he was diagnosed with gastritis and, less technically, “stomach trouble” – blamed on his POW time in Germany, starting “28.3.18”. In fact, he’d had intermittent gut problems (hospitalised for a month in Sheffield in 1917) since his long stints in the trenches months of Gallipoli and the Somme – probably caused by both ill-nourishment and stress.</span></td></tr>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> So, before setting off for home, I called on my several German friends(5) to bid them farewell, starting with the </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Unteroffizier <i>in his little room upstairs. The rather lonely chap was touched that I had taken the trouble and showed it; although aware that his formerly great country had fallen into horrible disarray, he spoke of his yearning to get back to the Fatherland.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> A formal handshake and heel click reflected little of our mutual understanding that uncertain futures awaited both of us. He had valuable skills, I had none. There again, he had known people of position and influence, but where were they now? Revolutions destroy such connections, and he had frankly admitted that he might need good fortune to survive what would be a period of bloody conflict between the Old Guard and those who intended to grasp control of their defeated country.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I had described to him what I had seen around my prison camp near the Black Forest: the overnight disappearances of all commissioned officers, the substitution of black and white Iron Cross decorations and traditional Regimental cap badges with red ribbons and buttons, the red flags adorning every military vehicle(6). Like me, he doubted the turnabout was genuine. It could have been an instinctive and desperate attempt to kid the Allies that the German nation had not really wished to conquer Europe, it was just that wicked </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Kaiser <i>and those terrible Prussians. Maybe, but my friend would have to find out the hard way. No “</i>Auf wiedersehen<i>” for us, not a chance of ever meeting again.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Farewell to “</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Wie heisst du<i>?” Hans… who, I recall, had told me I was wrong in thinking that Karl was the German equivalent of my first name, Charles(7). Farewell to smiling Willi. And farewell to short, fat, rosy-cheeked “Mitzi”, the cook, so nicknamed by me because that was his cat’s name and he was always calling out for her. Then, quick handshakes with other Jerries who had been nice to me and a general wave to our chaps who happened to be around – handshaking was not our custom, the casual touch suited us better.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Our boozy-faced Sergeant nearly managed a smile as I made a point of calling “Goodbye” to him. So well-loved was he that I’d heard one man leave him with a promise he’d “fuckin’ do for him now I’m free”, but I had no feeling of ill will towards him. Finally a hearty handshake with George. I told him I felt I’d known him for years and waited to hear him at last remember that we had indeed known each other in pre-war days, but his very friendly smile and good wishes had to suffice.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Forever after, Sussex remained my favourite English county, having been such a warm and pleasant place in which to resume living, after some very hard times in the Great War.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(2) George turns up in the Blog dated April 14, 2019. Sam had known him before the war when both were teenaged juniors working as dogsbodies for tin industry companies near Liverpool Street. He roomed with Sam and never recognised him and, for his own quirky reasons, Sam never reminded him of their previous acquaintance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(3) Lotty: the first time he’s named her, hotty or otherwise – this is the lovely lady from Littlehampton he had a walking-out with for some weeks – remaining virginal the while, despite her best efforts. She appears in Blogs dated April 14 and May 5, 2019<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(4) Various documents found for me by Western Front Association Ox & Bucks stalwart (and kind researcher for passing guest speakers it turned out) Nigel Crompton </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><span lang="EN-US">include the information that Sam’s date of “Disembodiment” was May 6,1919 (see Medical History Of doc below – which doesn’t record his 1917 hospital stays; the odd term is much discussed in WW1 circles – e.g. <a href="https://www.greatwarforum.org/topic/106981-discharged-or-disembodied/" style="color: purple;">https://www.greatwarforum.org/topic/106981-discharged-or-disembodied/</a>– but most think it meant the end of war service for a Territorial, which Sam had been in his three different Battalions). Then his final date of discharge was May 26. But… since these administrative matters seem to require their element of confusion I’ll add that </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">the Essex Regiment Museum’s Ian Hook (who answered my queries before he left in 2017) found that my father’s full discharge from the Army came through on March 12, 1920, which suggests that, like his brother Ted, he may have been registered to Z Reserve for those final months i.e. still liable to recall in an emergency.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(5) The German POWs Sam says personal goodbyes to are introduced and described in Blogs dated March 24 and April 21, 2019. Sam gave Hans his “<i>Wie heisst du</i>?” nickname because that was the first thing the affable POW said to him and Sam had picked up enough German to respond “<i>Ich heisse Sam</i>”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(6) See Blog November 11, 2018, for Sam’s account of the day after Armistice at his POW camp in Lorraine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(7) Hans was wrong as far as I can tell, although my father believed him. “Karl” meant “man” in Old Norse, “peasant” in Old English, and thence became the first name “Karl/Carl” in German, then “Charles” in English says <a href="https://www.behindthename.com/name/charles" style="color: purple;">https://www.behindthename.com/name/charles</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">All the best</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">– <i>FSS</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Next week: The penultimate episode of FootSoldierSam’s blog! He goes to the “cold and impersonal” Essex Regiment HQ to conclude his discharge… reminisces about the boys of his first Battalion he loved so much… wonders what the hell he’s going to do next… and, regardless, spends some of his back-pay on a new suit and a bottle of port…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote <i>Nobody Of Any Importance</i>, a <i>Memoir </i>of his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
FootSoldierSamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01449820798842961719noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545275143240244101.post-63123665138020849042019-06-23T00:30:00.000-07:002019-06-23T00:30:04.432-07:00RETRO 7 – Sam, 15-16, studies war via the weekly magazines: Fu Manchu, While England Slept and such. And then the fever grabs him, brother Ted, the whole family, patriotism and fear and “all over by Christmas” complacency all intermingling until he enlists!<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir(1) <i>– 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 </i>Memoir<i>, added documentation.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">For details of how to buy the <i>Memoir</i>or </span><span lang="EN-US">Gallipoli <span style="color: purple;"></span><span style="color: #161616;">& </span>Somme <span style="color: #8b5200;">&</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">Arras 1918/POW </span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">etc </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">mini-e-books click </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=4897427382137035394;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=4;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">plus see reader reviews </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=6753328261534245137;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=1;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">and </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=8857004925280018109;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=2;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;"> and reviews from the Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=7620675943831341074;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=0;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">. </span><span lang="EN-US"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">For AUDIO excerpts click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/footsoldiersam" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #7c4000;"> Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nobody-Of-Any-Importance-A-Foot-Soldiers-Memoir-of-WW1/300782296758247" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">The war’s over at last – but Sam’s blog, Facebook page and tweets will continue until his </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir <i>concludes with the Centenary of the July 19, 1919, Peace parade in London…<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">Memoir <i>will always go to the British Red Cross – and the current running donations total as of June 1, 2019, is £4,228.17 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!).</i></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Dear all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">A hundred years ago this week, in the aftermath of the Armistice… The crunch in terms of the Paris Peace Conference and setting the course of European politics for the next 20 years: with Germany’s latest head of the Weimar government, Gustav Bauer, going against the vote of his assembly and agreeing to draconian Allied terms (June 23), the signature of American President Woodrow Wilson concluded the Treaty Of Versailles formalities (28; fifth anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand which triggered the whole catastrophe).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> While other treaties dealt with the other Central Power, Versailles’s bullet points ended the “state of war” between the Allies and Germany which had still existed post-Armistice; established that Germany and its allies took financial responsibility for all loss and damage caused by WW1 (the “war guilt” clause, the sum assessed in 1921 being £6.6bn = £284bn at 2019 prices – but that figure may underestimate the sum’s value and significance given that it’s “only” about 13 per cent of the UK’s 2,110bn GDP for 2018?); largely disarmed Germany and controlled the numbers in its armed forces, while removing many of its merchant ships and fishing boats; took various German territories and handed them over to neighbouring Allies or made them mandates, especially Alsace-Lorraine, Poznan, Danzig, parts of Upper Silesia and East Prussia, and Germany’s entire African and Pacific Empires; set out the Allied occupation of the Rhineland and the Saar for up to 15 years (costs to be paid by Germany).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Many said this was too harsh – including Maynard Keynes, the great economist who had quit the UK’s Paris delegation in disgust. Some, though, thought it too soft – perhaps typified by French Marshall Foch.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Meanwhile, deadly post-war skirmishing continued. Ukraine’s Galician Army, which had enjoyed initial success with its Chortkiv Offensive attempt to take Eastern Galicia from Poland, met summary defeat when the reinforced Poles counterattacked and drove them out (June 28). Similarly, the Estonian Army concluded a battle which had been going wrong at Cesis (19-23) when the Germans who had been holding them off had to back down and retreat eastwards towards Riga. In the Russian Civil War, Bolshevik forces grinding down the White Russians advanced towards Perm and beyond Ufa (25; in current Bashkortostan, more than 800 miles east of Moscow). And in a much smaller conflict – but a direct Russia v USA face-off – out near Vladivostok, the Battle Of Romanovska (25) saw a Bolshevik raid on an American Army camp beaten back (combined deaths about 80).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> In Anatolia, the developing Greek-Turkish conflict shifted Greece’s way as they won the Battle Of Tellidede (June 25-6; killing Turkish old and infirm who couldn’t evacuate the town) and began the Battle Of Aydin successfully (June 27-July 4; taking and burning much of the town in the first two days – and running amok killing civilians again – before withdrawing on the 29th).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">[</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Memoir <i>background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe </i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">from Edmonton, north London, </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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), </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">… until </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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 Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied around Arras until mid-March when he ran into his own Essex </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">2/7th </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Battalion. They moved into the trenches near Fampoux 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 doing hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany and finally moving westwards to Lorraine – whence, the day after Armistice, his long trek towards the French Front began. He reached safety after tiptoeing through a German minefield (November 15 probably). Then began his recovery from chronic near-starvation – and a brief emotional breakdown – until, finally, on December 10, 1918, he returned to England and another few days in hospital before reuniting with parents and siblings, especially brother Ted, home on a week’s leave but suffering badly from gas damage. Civilian life offered Sam a warm welcome… until, in February, 1919, the Army called him back - though only to a “Dad’s Army” unit. Meaning, at first, a few weeks </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">de facto<i>holiday in Brighton. But then, something completely different… through the spring, Sam and others ex-POWs guard German POWs at a camp in Sussex, while making various attempts to get back to “normal” life… At which point, for the time being, the story breaks off as explained below…]</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">RETRO 7: My father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe’s a-century-ago-this-week(ish) story has reached the last week of its break – which happened because he just didn’t write enough about his late spring/early summer period of 1919. So, for the final time, I’m revisiting the (in-hindsight) theme of his <i>Memoir</i>’s opening chapters about his childhood and teens: that is, The Making Of Foot Soldier Sam, the young Tommy who got through Gallipoli, the Somme, the Spring Offensive and eight months as a POW… <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> So, skip these paragraphs if you don’t want a recap, but these Retros so far covered: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">1) his wealthy toddlerhood in Manchester for just a couple of years after his birth (on July 6, 1898) and then, after the collapse of the family tile business, real, hungry poverty in London <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">2) his developing immersion in the tumultuous life of 1900s Edmonton, a suburb then on the northern edge of London – streets full of horses, cattle and sheep, roads thrusting out into the surrounding countryside and a market place steaming with humanity, tooth and claw <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">3) his schooldays, including a gradual discovery of his own talents, despite relentlessly daunting comparisons with his older brother Ted’s sparky brilliance, and the frustration of both boys when they had to leave education at 14 because the family couldn’t afford to pay for more <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">4) the many ways in which Edmonton’s “tin church” missions to the poor and then the main parish church itself developed and influenced Sam’s life from the time he was five, and onwards to WW1 – not so much the religious side of churchgoing per se as how he and his parents gathered self-respect via involvement in entertaining and/or useful activity like organising a fete to raise funds for a new church hall<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">5) how recreational life for poor people like Sam who lived on the (then) outskirts of London embraced the (free) great outdoors: hiking, chiefly in Epping Forest, whether as a family group or as a church or Boy Scouts activity – the last very much Sam’s saviour as the new organisation also presented him with a whole range of fun and skills he could never have experienced otherwise, including sports and camping but also the more fringe-preparation-for-war training such as shooting, first aid and signalling. In addition, last week’s blog covered Sam’s Big Fight against school bully Hoy whom he defeated heroically/with a lucky punch…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">6) The last two years before World War 1 when he worked as an office boy at a tin-mining company’s HQ near Liverpool Street station – making that eternal transition from school into the working life, discovering the vast working men’s caffs of central London, learning old-fashioned office skills involving ledgers and such, plus, via bilious tutorials from his immediate boss, the old Commissionaire “Sergeant” and his own observation, acquiring a sense of what office politics and social class more generally were all about – while on the side taking occasional advantage of the rich man’s table by scoffing posh nosh when he clearied up after business lunches.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> We left him in summer 1914 feeling “stale and played out” and “condemned to a life of hopelessness and frustration”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Now this week’s final Making Of excerpts are drawn largely from the last 12 months before and immediately after the declaration of war when Sam, at 15/16 – his birthday on July 6 – faced the choice of remaining a boy (the truth, legally and in many other senses) or deciding to be “a man”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> But these stories and snippets begin with the Memoir’s very first mention of war, quoted last week too, probably from 1913, with the old Sergeant holding forth to the office boys. (NB: My father wrote the early chapters in the third person, calling himself “the boy” or “Tommy”, while he temporarily aliased brother Ted as “George”)</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">:</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘Sergeant told the boys under his supervision they would have to learn to do all the jobs he did, because he didn’t intend to remain there. He was perfectly sure a big war was coming up shortly and, in the natural order of things, he would go to the War Office to take a job which had been waiting for him in that event.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">But most of “Tommy”/Sam’s early imaginings about any forthcoming war drew their inspiration from fiction:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘Because of long hours taken up by work, travel, evening classes, and Scout meetings, after leaving school Tommy’s reading tended to comprise an occasional glance at the family newspaper and a brief browse through one of the many weekly magazines, which cost only a penny or two, such as </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">Yes Or No<i>. It contained some quite good short stories – early Edgar Wallace</i>(2), <i>for instance, and efforts by others who later became well-known.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> The infamous “Dr Fu Manchu” was first heard of in a monthly magazine, quite bulky and costing only fourpence halfpenny, called </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">The Story-Teller(3).<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Meanwhile, </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">Pearson’s Weekly(4) <i>was running a series called “While England Slept”. Week after week, it described the invasion of Great Britain by German Forces, detailing the Channel crossing, landings on the beaches, battles through Kent and Sussex villages and their eventual approach to London.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Ordinary people had for some while generally accepted that war with Germany was inevitable and they read this carefully constructed story of a surprise attack with excitement and, perhaps, concealed fear. Tommy and others of his generation could not see what would prevent the Germans from achieving their objective if they landed along the low-lying coasts. No great mountain ranges between there and the capital </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(5<i>)</i>…<i>’<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(2) </span><span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">Edgar Wallace, 1875-1932, creator of <i>Sanders Of The River, King Kong, The Four Just Men</i>; he also became the first British radio sports reporter when he commentated on the 1923 Derby for the then British Broadcasting Company.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(3)<i>The Story-Teller </i>ran from 1907-1936. Sax Rohmer, 1983-1959, who created Fu Manchu – serialised in <i>The Storyteller </i>October, 1912-June, 1913 – was born Arthur Ward in Birmingham, UK, and died in White Plains, New York (of Asian flu!).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(4) </span><i><span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">Pearson’s Weekly</span></i><span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">, 1890-1939, serialised Rider Haggard and H.G. Wells. Founded by Sir Cyril Pearson, 1866-1921, a Liberal Party supporter and philanthropist who later launched the <i>Daily Express</i>, and – being a friend of Baden-Powell – published <i>The Scout</i>. I can’t find any reference to <i>Pearson’s </i>running “While England Slept” (a 1909 novel by Captain Henry Curties, 1860-1928), so my father may not be right about the publication. Do tell me if you know for sure!</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(5) </span><span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">Harry Wood’s “Island Mentalities” article at https://invasionscares.wordpress.com notes a genre of “invasion fiction” developing since 1890, including William Le Queux’s <i>The Invasion Of 1910 </i>(1906, a “phenomenal bestseller” says Wikipedia), P.G. Wodehouse’s <i>The Swoop! Or How Clarence Saved England: A Tale Of The Great Invasion </i>(1909), and Saki’s <i>When William Came </i>(1913) – not insignificantly, in Wodehouse’s satire, Clarence Chugwater is a Boy Scout – Baden-Powell initiated the Scouts in 1907 – and Wood’s “Island Mentalities” says (reproduced with Harry’s kind permission) Saki “</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">saw Scouting as a potential force for national redemption, defying enemies where the older generation had entirely failed”. (A sniper’s bullet killed Saki/Royal Fusiliers 22nd Battalion Lance Sergeant Hector Hugh Munro near Beaumont-Hamel, during the Battle Of The Ancre, in 1916, aged 45 – he’d enlisted over-age at 43. The story goes that his poignant last words were, “Put that bloody cigarette out!”)</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">In the June 9 Making Of blog about Sam’s Scouting days, he noted how taking courses in signalling (semaphore, Morse), first aid (they “paid a good deal of attention to treating wounds”), and shooting at the Saturday afternoon rifle club, prepared him willynilly for some aspects of soldiering, despite the Scoutmaster/Vicar Mr Frusher’s apparent lack of any interest in military matters. But still “Tommy”/Sam obviously felt some connection: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘… he soon discovered that Scouts were not alone in camping out on the edge of London. Walking by himself one Sunday, Tommy came to a wide open space beside one of the main routes from London to the North</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(6<i>) and he saw with great excitement that this usually uninspiring area had become a town of tents; soldiers with rifles on their shoulders, men filling bowls with water from tanks on wheels, then holding the bowls for one another to help with shaving and washing. They emptied the used water into a large hole dug for waste disposal.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Tommy watched it all, for an hour or more. In another area, men were cooking a meal in large containers heated by open fires in shallow trenches. They fried bacon, boiled water for tea. When the bugle sounded, the soldiers lined up in orderly fashion until the cooks forked and ladled good helpings of bacon and tea into their mess tins (the lid, with a folding handle, held solid foods or acted as a frying pan, the larger bottom part contained all liquids). Soon afterwards, the clatter of eating changed to the noises of an Army striking camp, taking down tents and packing them and generally getting ready for departure, their work accompanied by much banter and laughter…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Tommy, while savouring the excitement and deep interest he felt when observing the soldiers’ encampment, felt no desire to join them. As far as he knew, drummer boy was the only Army job he might be eligible for.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(6) </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">Probably the Great Cambridge Road, aka the Old North Road, now the A10.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">If war still seemed remote to him personally, everyone he knew talked of little else:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘Although the routine of living continued for Tommy, his family, and all around him, excitement mounted daily as events abroad, culminating in the assassination of a royal person, led many to believe that a war in which Britain would be involved was imminent</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(7<i>).<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">The morning paper, which Pa bought on his way to the station with two of his sons </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">[“George”/Ted and “Tommy”/Sam]<i>, was eagerly read by their mother and the other children(8) in the evening.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">On the train to work men loudly and strongly expressed opinions about events and prospects and Tommy listened. At the office, the Sergeant really let himself go on this one; he believed the prospective enemy, the Germans, had always intended to attack England, but that our well-trained Army would soon finish them off once the two forces were face to face…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Meanwhile, brother George, sunburnt and lusty after a fortnight at a camp for assistant Scoutmasters, frequently talked about England going to war and what part he might play in it. He encouraged Tommy to join him and two friends of his own age, Len Winns and Harold Mellow, in long walks at the weekends. Then, when they stopped to rest and eat their sandwiches, a pack of cards would be produced and they’d play their favourite game, solo whist. But discussions of war always cropped up. Exciting speculations on how long it would last might vary between a few months and several years.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(7) </span><span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to Austria-Hungary (which included Galicia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina), and his wife Sophie, in Sarajevo, Bosnia, on June 28, 1914; following Serbia’s military annexation of Macedonia and Kosovo from the Ottoman Empire in 1912-13, Princip and fellow plotters wanted Greater Serbia to become independent of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(8) “Other children”? By 1914 that would mean sister Ciss (born 1894) and brother Alf (1903). Brother Sydney had died of diphtheria, aged 12 in 1912, and sister Edie was only two ergo not yet a newspaper reader.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">At this stage, in Sam’s view, excitement overruled apprehension for most people:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘In particular, hope burgeoned among many small businessmen. War creates shortages and speculation can yield enormous profits. But among employed people too flourished a fine flush of patriotic fervour. </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">For instance, a common boast – notably among older men quite sure they would not be called up – claimed that one trained British soldier was worth any five foreigners.</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">Without thinking too deeply, one could become part of this emotion and go about one’s daily activities lightened and illumined by a self-righteous glow. </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">Probably the nation had smarted under the German threat hanging over their heads for some years. </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">Tommy and his like caught the infection. To the enthusiastic, people who behaved and talked rationally or, at least, just as they had always done, seemed selfish, perhaps even scared.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> This national surge flowed through the millions of men who were more emotional than thoughtful. They pulsated, they were invigorated, and sustained. For many, this overexcitement would later be replaced by grim determination, perhaps directed towards helping one’s country while trying to preserve one’s life – or towards making money out of it and having a good time wherever possible. But Tommy’s generation was experiencing the last of the great patriotic upsurges in this country. Wonderful while it lasted.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">Now, on the train, father would join his contemporaries to discuss the threatened Armageddon – the word applied by a journalist and taken up everywhere</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(9). <i>Imaginings of war with Germany centred on the imposing figure of Kaiser Wilhelm, as portrayed in photographs and cartoons – that waxed moustache the ends of which were screwed into points and pointed upwards, a spiked helmet on his head, mounted on his horse, a fierce warrior. But people began to call up images of the huge German Army too; the infantry, they thought, would comprise rather big men wearing long, blue-grey overcoats, who travelled at great speeds too with their mechanical transport. The new thing was the lorry; one looked in vain on the roads of this country for great convoys transporting large numbers of soldiers, a sight quite commonplace in the Kaiser’s country</i>(10)<i>, we gathered.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Soon, historic events overtook speculation. On August 4, 1914, Germany attacked Belgium, at which an old treaty impelled the British Prime Minister to declare war on Germany</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(11)<i>.’<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(9) </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">“Armageddon” appears in The Bible, Revelation 16:16; in various branches of Christianity it’s the war preceding the Second Coming, where Satan’s armies gather and are defeated; oddly, one of the last battles of WW1, the Battle Of Megiddo, took place on the “Plain Of Armageddon” (aka Sharon), now in Israel, September 19-25, 1918, resulting in an Allied victory over Turkish forces led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk who subsequently fought to overthrow the Ottoman Empire, moving Turkey towards democracy and independence – achieved in 1923 – and serving as President 1923-38.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(10) In Germany, Daimler built the first motor truck in 1896. An online dictionary notes the first recorded use of the word “lorry” in English as in 1911.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(11) The Treaty Of London, 1839, between Great Britain and Prussia, but confirmed by the German Empire, guaranteed Belgium’s neutrality. Via a concatenation of treaties and other considerations, between the June 28 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and August 25, many nations declared war on one another: Austria-Hungary on Serbia, Russia on Austria-Hungary, Germany on Russia and Serbia, France on “The Central Powers” (Germany and the Ottoman Empire), Germany on France, Germany on Belgium, Great Britain on Germany (August 4), Austria-Hungary on Russia, Japan on Germany, Japan on Austria-Hungary.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">But in his neighbourhood, “Tommy”/Sam saw strange and disconcerting changes occur with no explanation:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘Workers went on with their jobs, but it was obvious their thoughts were on other things. Each day, the younger men either moved nearer to volunteering for military service or worried about the possibility of being conscripted as soon as a law to make service compulsory passed through Parliament. However, that did not, as one might have expected, happen immediately</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(12).<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Company Secretary F.C. Bull, with knowledge to back his forecast, made no attempt to conceal his pessimism with regard to those companies owning property in Africa and Asia whose affairs he handled. German submarines would cripple our sea transportation, said he, sagely.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Most people thought it would be a short war, “all over by Christmas”. The minority, like F.C. Bull, who read and listened to those with some real knowledge of the situation, knew the struggle would probably be long and difficult. Pessimists even gave reasons why, if we weren’t careful, we might lose this war. They reminded one that the royal family bore the German name Guelph, their origins Hanoverian</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(13). </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"></span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">And they would argue sarcastically that the Army was all ready to fight… the Boer War again! Such opinions, of course, offended the loquacious patriots – “Treasonable,” said some.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">Meanwhile, the newspapers talked bogeyman stories – suspicious characters, spies and so on. The </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">propaganda had its effect; Tommy saw with regret one day that someone had completely smashed the windows of Mr Schultz’s butcher’s shop. No more luscious faggots and pease pudden, thought the lad. Mr Schultz left for Wales, Tommy heard, as did another branch of his family who lived in the neighbourhood.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> A schoolmate called Charlie Schmidt whom Tommy talked with occasionally also disappeared. A round, ruddy face he had, but serious, with an incomplete smile – it never quite made it. His family left with no farewells, no fuss and no destination that anybody local knew of.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Another three or four German men often provided street music, playing merry Viennese waltzes on cornets, euphoniums and basses. But they all went, never to reappear. Spies, said folks. Didn’t you notice how they use to play beside the gates of the gasworks and listen to what the workers were saying?<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> A local family of house decorators, including several young men in their teens and early twenties also departed without a word – they’d offered low prices for their low-paid customers, useful members of the community and much liked. Napper their name was. Surely not Germans. Or were they?</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(14)<i>’</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(12) </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">The Government did not introduce conscription until January, 1916; in January, 1914, the British Army numbered 710,000, only 80,000 of them regulars. Before January, 1916, 2.67 million volunteered, and subsequently 2.3 million were conscripted.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(13) </span><span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">King </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">George V, 1910-36, grandson of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and first cousin of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia And Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany became the first monarch of the “House of Windsor” in 1917, by renaming the House of Saxe-Coburg And Gotha because of public feeling – the family name of monarchs since the early 18th century was Guelph, also spelt Welf, and George V replaced that too with “Windsor”.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(14) </span><span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">Answering a question of mine, my father noted that Alexandra Palace Internment Camp – “prison” he called it – was the one “only a few miles away” from where he lived in Edmonton; the conversion from entertainment centre took place soon after the war started. There, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">3,000 internees slept on plank beds in three large halls</span><span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">. I</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">nmates organised a football team, gardening plots, concerts and a theatrical society. About 80 per cent of interned Germans returned to their homeland after the war, although many had lived in Great Britain for years beforehand.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Despite his regret at seeing German friends and pillars of the community vanishing, “Tommy”/Sam admitted to absorbing the base influence of Horatio Bottomley’s <i>John Bull </i>weekly (1892-1960):<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘Tommy often read this weekly paper when his father had finished with it. The fiery patriotism impressed him, the condemnation of the foul enemy with whom we were at war, the constant watchfulness the editor and his staff maintained to discover and expose traitors in high places. He, and thousands of others, began to believe that this man could be the leader and saviour of Britain and the Empire. Men in large or small groups and organisations always search for and hope to find the ideal leader, the good man, the honest man, who combines these virtues with vast knowledge and statesmanlike skill. Men will follow such a person to the death…’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">After the war Bottomley’s fraudulent “war charity” was exposed and he spent some years in jail. But while the pre-war fever held sway, his propaganda – oratorical or written – changed the lives of thousands, and the communities and families they came from:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘Meetings such as those organised by Bottomley encouraged men to join the Forces and large numbers made up their minds on the spot. At this, they would be marched away to some depot where a cursory medical examination preceded the signing of an Attestation Paper swearing the oath of allegiance – and, thus, sudden severance from their normal life and their usual associations. Others who had served in the Forces before, perhaps in the Boer War, and then joined the reserve list, would suddenly appear in their communities wearing the khaki uniform of war. But they too soon vanished, gone to their Regimental depots, it was assumed.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> On the train each morning, the four lads discussed the latest news, telling each other about chaps who had either been recalled to their units or had volunteered to go. They talked with both excitement and unease. Confused emotions pervaded them and everybody around them… [gaps] in the ranks at the office only increased that sense of unease, </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">that something was wrong somewhere</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Not all the war news was good. The sudden advance of the British Army across France, sweeping the Germans back into their own country, hadn’t occurred yet. And the General in charge inspired no faith. Inevitably, because s</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">eniority and maybe a little influence decided who should be at the top</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">, he was an elderly man</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(15). </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">Nor did the Government, Liberal at the time, reassure ordinary people who generally thought the Prime Minister an adequate man, but nothing more</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(16<i>).</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(15) </span><span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">Field Marshall John French, 1852-1925, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">Commander-In-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force, 1914-16; Field Marshall Lord Kitchener was Secretary Of State For War.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(16) </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">Herbert Asquith, 1852-1928, Prime Minister 1908-16, nicknamed “Squiffy” for obvious reasons; actress Helena Bonham-Carter is his great granddaughter.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">“Tommy”/Sam, his brother and friends discussed the war as an issue, but behind the debate they all knew that a decision awaited them, each of them individually:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">Summer slipped into September, good weather still, a beautiful autumn. But it was not being enjoyed at home. Mother began to worry about the possibility of food shortages. Already some of the cheap items she bought had become scarce or completely unavailable.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Meanwhile, an enthusiasm built up among ordinary men. “Stand by your country,” “Be prepared to defend it,” and similar remarks abounded. Accordingly, more and more were actually joining up. Often fearing their civilian jobs would peter out, they felt, even so, they had done the right thing by their families, their country and, of course, themselves.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Around September 8, Tommy recalls, the four pals – although their junior by several years, he tried to think himself into being one of them – went off on their usual train. But when they reached Liverpool Street, the elder three were talking quietly, leaving Tommy on the outside of the conversation. In the end, brother Ted said to him: “We’re not going to our offices today. We three are going to join up.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Perhaps you can imagine the sinking feeling in Tommy when he heard this. Was he going to be left on his own with the diminishing number on the train journey to an office where all was gloom? Was he going to do that? No thinking required. “I’m coming with you,” he said.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">In fact, they made a false start. Their attempt to sign up with the Royal Field Artillery stalled as a recruiting Sergeant took down a lot of their details and said if they came back tomorrow they could complete the process. But when they returned, he apologised and said he’d been ordered not to enlist anyone just yet. At least “Tommy”/Sam and “George”/Ted (still underage at 18 when 19 was the lower limit) had practiced their necessary lies about birthdates and so on…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘Our four found themselves in some trouble, they reckoned. Their employers had a right to an explanation. But, after much discussion, they agreed to persist in their intention to enlist. They would return home by the trains they normally used, say nothing to their families about their actions during this unlucky day, and set off to the usual train tomorrow morning.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Here’s Sam’s recollection of that evening and the following day:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘Tomorrow’s events would decide where his future lay. If the Army would not have him then a humdrum life lay ahead. His job, humble though it was, would surely end soon. Necessity would force him to try something different. In wartime, who could say what would turn up?<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Meanwhile, he meant to stick with his brother and the others if possible – although a glance in the mirror convinced him that he looked almost childish compared to them. Far removed from chaps who needed to wield cutthroat razors in order to look presentable. “I’m going to be left behind. They’ll be off and away without me,” he feared.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Without giving the subject really deep thought, he became obsessed with the need to go where Len, Harold and Ted went. There’s safety in numbers was what he really felt no doubt. Before he had been allowed to join the three, he had gone his own way, unattached to any specific group, just keeping company with one or two friends. But suddenly those schoolmates had drifted into the background, unconnected with the present.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> … next morning they set off to join the other two in fairly cheerful mood, Tommy less happy than his brother because he had greater doubts. Len and Harold met them at the station and immediately said they had heard of a depot where recruitment had been in progress for several days. Although it entailed a lengthy walk from Liverpool Street to Bloomsbury, they had no reason to hurry because their early train landed them in the City before 8 o’clock and they reckoned 9am would be quite early enough to present themselves at the depot…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> They stopped beside a large building which occupied the whole of one side of a short street</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(17)<i>. They approached a pair of very large, closed, green doors to one side of which stood a noticeboard headed by a badge, rather intricate in design and roughly triangular in shape. With mounting excitement they noted the words “Battery” and “Field Artillery”.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Nobody was about, so they pushed at a swing door set in one of the large ones and stepped through into an open, paved area. Further along a substantial group of men shuffled about, waiting it seemed. So the four decided to join them at what they concluded must surely be the Artillery’s recruiting entrance – marked, apparently, by a smallish soldier in khaki uniform, a crown over three stripes on each arm, who stood a few feet from the men with his back to an open door into the building.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Tommy looked at him intently, standing on his toes to see over the heads in front of him. The man had a clean, spruce appearance, a moustache with long, waxed points, an unattractive face – small eyes, the mouth downturned at the corners. No colour at all in the cheeks. A short cane held by the left hand was tucked under the armpit.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Somebody inside called out a message to him. This caused some excited movement among the waiting men, who bumped into one another and stumbled forward. “Keep back there, keep well back!” shouted the Company Quartermaster Sergeant – for such was his rank, according to one of the would-be recruits. He pointed with his cane at man after man, “You, you, you”, and the selected ones hastened through the door, about six of them. This procedure he repeated time after time during the next three hours, then the Sergeant called out, “We now break for lunch, back at two!”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> So off into a small, nearby park went the lads and ate sandwiches and talked… “I’ve got a feeling [that Sergeant will] rumble my age – anyway he looks the type who would enjoy making a kid look foolish.” Tommy now felt really up against it and he had already determined what he would do if only he could get into about the third row of the crowd…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">By one o’clock they got back to the depot – Len, Ted and Harold in the front row and Tommy, intentionally, in the fourth row. The Sergeant resumed his routine, looking as though he’d had a couple, as one man suggested, but still far from jovial.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> His first after-lunch selections took in Len, Harold, and Ted, but as they moved forward Tommy bent double till his right shoulder was level with the backside of the man in front of him. Annoyed, the man behind Tommy yelled at him and shoved hard against him. With that unexpected extra push to boost his own violent surge forward, Tommy’s ruse succeeded. The men in front of him staggered and one of them collided with the Sergeant who shouted at him while the man apologised – and Tommy squeezed round this little melee, behind the Sergeant and on through the door in the wake of his pals. “Down those stairs,” directed a uniformed man inside. Tommy descended and joined a queue…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Thereafter, he kept strictly in line, his head down, hoping that, if anybody searched for the chap who’d broken through, he would not be recognised. But nobody troubled him and the line of men slowly inched forward until Tommy, in his turn, came face to face with the doctor. An elderly man, thin and not far from unkempt, he worked under great pressure and at speed. “Open your mouth.” He looked in. He pulled down the lower lids of Tommy’s eyes. Glanced into his ears. Put a stethoscope to his chest. He held Tommy’s scrotum in one hand and said “Cough”. Again he applied the stethoscope to his chest, then said “You’ll do”.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Tommy moved across to where a two-stripe man weighed him and measured him – 5 feet 7½ inches. Onwards to a long table where several uniformed clerks were filling in Attestation forms, asking for all the usual details, including age. “19,” said Tommy. Here came the catch. “Date of birth?” Tommy had that worked out. “July 6, 1895.” “Any birth marks?” Then the clerk read to him a declaration that all these things were true and said, “Sign here!” All that completed, he was told to go upstairs and wait.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> He found himself in a large hall where, amid the crowd, he felt reasonably safe. Rightly or wrongly, he thought some men looked surprised when they noticed him. The serious face he wore – or tried to – would, he hoped, conceal his inward wavering. Useless to show uncertainty. From now on he was a man among men and would have to march long distances and carry heavy equipment and a rifle and ammunition. All this, he knew for sure, would tax his boyish strength, but he remained determined to go ahead. Pleasure at seeing the other three in the hall rid him immediately of forebodings and he listened to their accounts of the medicals and so on and shared their joy in having at last achieved their intention of becoming soldiers.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> “Artillerymen you mean,” said Tommy.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> “No, just infantrymen,” Len told him. “The footsloggers. No riding lovely horses for us. We made a right mess of things in that respect. Didn’t you read the top part of your form when you signed it? We’re in the Royal Fusiliers – the Royal Field Artillery where we were yesterday is next door, apparently. RFA, RF, we didn’t notice the difference.”’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(17) </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">Handel Street, WC1. The building, Yeomanry House/Artillery House, is still there.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Naturally, a series of firsts for “Tommy”/Sam soon followed. Here, his first sight of an officer:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘Time passed until some sort of fuss around the street entrance announced the appearance of the first commissioned officer Tommy had seen – a man immaculate in a new uniform obviously tailored to his trim figure. He wore his stiff-peaked military cap straight, no tilt to sides or back; each epaulette bore three bright stars (designating a Captain, as Tommy soon learnt); his leather belt and the strap worn over the right shoulder, which joined the belt at the left hip, were glossily polished, as were his brown boots; at the hip hung a sword in its scabbard.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Tommy never forgot his first impression of an officer and a gentleman – the popular perception of a man holding the King’s Commission. He certainly never saw a more handsome and correct representative of that class. The Captain’s face did credit to his rank. Firm chin, small, neat moustache, quite kindly eyes.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Then, more mundane, yet satisfactory in its own way – that very afternoon, his first pay:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘… the soldiers quickly set up tables and chairs at equal distances along the clear side of the hall, and guided the recruits into single lines, one to each table. Each recruit gave his name which was entered on a sheet together with the amount paid under the two separate headings – King’s shilling, part-day subsistence. In due course, all the recruits had received their first soldier’s pay.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">But just when the euphoria of it all had swept over them, “Tommy”/Sam and Ted had to think about telling their parents what they’d done:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘“You do realise,” said Ted, </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">“</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">we have signed a solemn declaration that the information about ourselves we gave was all true?” “Yes,” said Tommy eagerly, “and I can tell Ma that if anyone informs the Army that I’ve lied I shall probably be sent to prison.”</span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> When they went indoors she commented that they were home earlier than usual. Then out poured their news and not, to Tommy’s surprise, in any apologetic way but with something like pride. Watching mother’s face the boys saw various emotions aroused. She and father being politically of a Conservative persuasion and quite firmly patriotic people, she did not immediately protest or reprimand. She did point out that Tommy was much too young to think of being a soldier. That concluded it, though; before any decision was made, she would have to talk with father.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Later that evening, when father returned from work and mother told him the news, the brothers awaited the outcome of their discussion. Eventually, their parents called them together and told them they could agree to Ted staying in the Army, but they would have to get Tommy out. At this, Tommy played his trump card. He said he knew, strictly speaking, he’d done a very dishonest thing, but pointed out that his motives weren’t bad – and, finally, that he didn’t know what prison sentence would be inflicted on him for making a false declaration regarding his age… In conclusion, he pleaded with his parents for permission to carry on as a soldier for a time, at any rate, and prove he could do the job for which he had volunteered.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Father talked of the physical strain a boy could suffer in trying to do the tasks expected of full-grown men. Still Tommy begged to be allowed to try. Then, perhaps, he won the day by explaining that in all, while living at home, he would be paid 21/- a week, a guinea. That is, 1/- a day soldier’s pay, plus 2/- a day subsistence money. That rate, though temporary, matched what many full-grown men earned – a very good wage, in fact, for unskilled work. Eventually, they agreed that Tommy should, for the moment, carry on soldiering.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Soon, inevitably, the novice Battalion began marching – to nowhere in particular, just around town, trying to keep in step… and “Tommy”/Sam found himself startled to receive displays of respect from those who’d normally expect to be the objects of <i>his</i>deference:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘Every man wished that he should do well and that his comrades should do well… and that perhaps some famous General might be watching unseen, later to issue a full report full of praise for the volunteer soldiers… who reminded him of the Guards…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> If Tommy dreamed thus, we may assume others did too. But he did notice, at first with incredulity, that some men on the pavement – invariably smart well-dressed types – raised their hats on sighting the column. One such, coming down the steps of a large house, reached the pavement as Tommy drew level. He raised his bowler hat, and as his eyes rested momentarily on Tommy’s the boy felt himself blushing. “Ridiculous,” he told himself. “The gentleman was saluting the volunteers, not a lad who had lied to get in. There’ll never be another march like this one.”’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">However, he felt sure that not everyone observing them would be in hat-tipping mood. In the grounds of the Foundlings Hospital, near the RF’s Handel Street depot, they began their initial inept drill exercises – still wearing their ill-assorted ragtag civvies (“Tommy”/Sam’s, for instance, comprised the City office boy’s “skintight trousers and short, bum-freezer jacket, topped off with the square, bowler hard hat”):<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘Tommy surmised that residents, and others, passing by the railings and big iron gates might speculate as to how all this was helping the troops already fighting and being wounded or killed</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(18)<i>. How about giving each man a rifle and showing him how to fire it, how to use a bayonet? Many people were saying that would have been better preparation for war. Tommy agreed. But we hadn’t the uniforms or the arms apparently… And Tommy and many thousands of other early volunteers may have owed their survival to that lack of war materials.’<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(18) </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">The British Expeditionary Force (BEF), the standing Army, suffered huge casualties during autumn, 1914, in battles both won and lost alongside the French Army, including Mons (August 23 onwards, </span><span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">origin of the enduring Cockney phrase “the biggest cock-up since Mons”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">), Le Cateau (August 26), Marne (September 5-12), Aisne (September 13-28), and Ypres (October 19-November 22); the BEF were colloquially known as “the Old Contemptibles” because of an alleged written order from Kaiser Wilhelm: “Exterminate… the treacherous English and walk over General French’s contemptible little Army”. On their side, German soldiers called Ypres “the slaughter of the innocents” because their commanders were already throwing in Divisions of young, inexperienced troops.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">“Tommy”/Sam’s 2/1st Royal Fusiliers didn’t get their hands on rifles until March/April, 1915, in Malta. But, six or seven weeks after they’d enlisted, uniforms did finally arrive and provide their activities with a new sense of dignity:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘However, came the day when all doubt and disappointment vanished: an announcement that, from the last Monday in October, the two Companies who, each day, took their turn to occupy the Battalion Headquarters would be solely occupied with the long-anticipated distribution of uniforms: greatcoats</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(19)<i>, tunics, trousers, socks, boots, puttees, undervests, shirts, pants, all crowned by a military cap with a Regimental badge. Much mirth ensued from the announcement that each man would be issued with a housewife, but this turned out to be nothing more sexy than a roll-up cloth pouch holding needles, cotton, buttons and so on.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> The recruits were expected to buy tins of a paste called Soldier’s Friend, also a small brush and a peculiar six-inch piece of metal with a lengthwise slot – called a button stick, for reasons soon revealed. An instructor demonstrated the art of accurately directing a shot of spittle to the centre of the paste, scooping some buttons into the slot on the stick, dabbing the brush into the paste, scrubbing the buttons, and finally polishing them.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Then the NCOs showed them how to convert their greatcoats into long slim rolls, the ends of the rolls to be brought together and secured with a cord or strap, the loop then passed over the head to rest on the right shoulder diagonally across the body. In fine weather, the welcome order to listen out for was “Greatcoats will be worn en banderole”</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(20). <i>Was this expression borrowed from Napoleon’s Army, Tommy wondered. Nobody enlightened him and he never heard the phrase used by officers of any other Army unit. He assumed the Foreign Legion and his Royal Fusiliers had at least those two words in common.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> On receiving his kit he couldn’t get home fast enough.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">His family showed great interest in the quality of the clothing, touching the uniform and rubbing it between thumbs and forefingers like so many tailors. All good stuff, they agreed: vest and long pants of wool, warm, heavy garments; socks too would obviously stand much hard wear and ensure warm feet in he coldest weather. The name Schneider in the cap struck them all as being rather strange. “What,” asked Dad, “is the British Army doing with headgear of apparently German manufacture?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Hastily, Tommy changed into the uniform. He found all the garments fitted him well, except that the boots were too big, albeit the smallest in stock as the Quartermaster had explained when issuing them. So, for his early months in the Army, Tommy had to wear two pairs of grey socks to fill out the heavy boots. He would have to buy two pairs of socks as near to the official ones in colour and weight as possible so he could rotate two pairs on and two in the wash.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> He’d put on everything but the puttees. He began his first attempt to wind these bandages round his calves, starting with a turns around the ankle… spacing each turn evenly a requirement not easy to satisfy. However, after a few awkward failures, he came close to achieving the correct outcome. Then he stood up straight and still, eyes looking straight ahead at their own level, chin in, shoulders back, chest out, stomach in, knees back, heels together, toes apart at an angle of 90 degrees — all as per instructions, the very figure of a soldier, he hoped.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Mother studied him, tears in her eyes… and she laughed and laughed and laughed. This puzzled and disappointed the self-conscious lad. He searched her face to discover if the mirth was a derisory reaction. As he watched her, understanding came to him and he also laughed and laughed. “That’s it,” she said. “You can see it all as I do. I’m not sneering at the boy soldier, but to see one of my children dressed as a fighting man for the first time, standing stiff as a ramrod and so serious with it. Well, it’s just too much.” The laughter petered out with some quickly concealed tears.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(19) </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">Greatcoats: wool coats, reaching below the knee, with a cape attachment around the shoulders.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(20) “Greatcoats en banderole” meant rolling them up intricately and wearing them – the ends tied together – in a loop over the right shoulder and under the left arm.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">While the emotions of the occasion evaded concealment, “Tommy”/Sam later reflected on the wider, harder significance of wearing that uniform:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘Later in the war he sometimes recalled that day. He didn’t realise its importance at the time, none of them did as far as he knew. Quite light-heartedly, he wished to throw off the clothes of a mere civilian and be seen as a soldier – after weeks of trying to be one while still dressed in his boyish suit and bowler. But, in truth, he was shedding the garb of freedom, doing so eagerly, divesting himself of clothing which entitled him to go almost anywhere in Great Britain without let or hindrance and putting on the uniform of service or maybe of serfdom. From then on, if called upon to do so by Military Police or gentlemen holding His Majesty’s Commission, he would have to account for his presence in any location.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">At this point we leave Foot Soldier Sam, a boy in uniform, and a Made Man – not in the Mafia sense, but as far as it was going to happen to a poor working lad from north London before the Army and the war took over his life for five years including Gallipoli, the Somme, the Spring Offensive battle and eight months as a POW.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">All the best</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">– <i>FSS</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Next week: Not Retro, but back to 100 years ago this week (approx) – Sam, still a POW camp guard in lovely Sussex, suffers the return of his post-POW gut pains and a general aftermath depression pre-demob… so one of his key moments of severance from warlike matters is sayings his farewells to all his new German friends!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote <i>Nobody Of Any Importance</i>, a <i>Memoir </i>of his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
FootSoldierSamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01449820798842961719noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545275143240244101.post-60036412461849701282019-06-16T00:30:00.000-07:002019-06-16T00:30:00.233-07:00RETRO 6 – Sam, 14 in 1912, leaves school for lack of money and joins the world of work, discovers great working-men’s caffs and snaffles crumbs (and cigars… and gin) from the rich men’s table, and finds himself looking down the barrel of a working lad’s wasted life existential blues until… 1914 looms…<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir(1) <i>– 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 </i>Memoir<i>, added documentation.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">For details of how to buy the <i>Memoir </i>or </span><span lang="EN-US">Gallipoli <span style="color: purple;"></span><span style="color: #161616;">& </span>Somme <span style="color: #8b5200;">&</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">Arras 1918/POW </span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">etc </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">mini-e-books click </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=4897427382137035394;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=4;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">plus see reader reviews </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=6753328261534245137;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=1;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">and </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=8857004925280018109;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=2;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;"> and reviews from the Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=7620675943831341074;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=0;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">. </span><span lang="EN-US"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">For AUDIO excerpts click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/footsoldiersam" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #7c4000;"> Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nobody-Of-Any-Importance-A-Foot-Soldiers-Memoir-of-WW1/300782296758247" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">The war’s over at last – but Sam’s blog, Facebook page and tweets will continue until his </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir <i>concludes with the Centenary of the July 19, 1919, Peace parade in London…<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">Memoir <i>will always go to the British Red Cross – and the current running donations total as of June 1, 2019, is £4,228.17 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!).</i></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Dear all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">A hundred years ago this week, in the aftermath of the Armistice… In Paris the Peace Conference approached conclusion with an exchange of unpleasantries between the Allies and Weimar Germany. First the combined victors issued an ultimatum (June 16), namely that Chancellor Philipp Scheidemann must accept the draft peace treaty within five days. He resigned and his successor Gustav Bauer said he’d sign if certain changes were made in the draft (22). The Allies refused and told him that, if he didn’t, their forces would cross the Rhine and invade in 24 hours. Bauer signed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Still the German Navy waved a last two fingers by scuttling the fleet parked at Scapa Flow in the Orkneys. Well planned by Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, the mass plug-pulling put 52 of 74 ships on the bottom, including 15 battleships. British rescue ships stopped the other 22 from sinking, but also evacuated 1,774 German sailors and shot another nine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Elsewhere, bloody after-battled continued. In Russia, anti-Bolshevik White forces retreated on the Eastern Front (June 16), but overthrew the Crimean Socialist Soviet government and occupied the capital Simferopol. The Ukrainian Army maintained its early success in attempting to take Eastern Galicia from Poland with a victory at Berezhany (21). Hungarian troops took control of the Slovak Soviet Republic (16). And at the Battle Of Cesis (19-23), Estonian and Latvian Regiments attacked the occupying German <i>Baltische Landwehr, </i>who had installed a puppet government a couple of months earlier, but were beaten back at first.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Further south, in Anatolia, the Greek/Turkey to and fro proceeded violently after the Greeks massacred 200 Turkish soldiers at Menemen (June 17) and then recovered Bergama (20) – 60 miles north of their base in Smyrna – whence they’d been driven five days earlier. A hundred thousand terrified civilians fled the town. But then Turkish irregulars defeated their raids on Erkili and Erbeyli (21-2).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> And back in the UK a little local difficulty occurred in Epsom when 400 Canadian soldiers awaiting demob attacked the police station to bust one of their number out. One bobby ended up dead and four Canadians were convicted, but sent home instead of serving jail time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">[</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Memoir <i>background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe </i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">from Edmonton, north London, </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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), </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">… until </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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 Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied around Arras until mid-March when he ran into his own Essex </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">2/7th </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Battalion. They moved into the trenches near Fampoux 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 doing hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany and finally moving westwards to Lorraine – whence, the day after Armistice, his long trek towards the French Front began. He reached safety after tiptoeing through a German minefield (November 15 probably). Then began his recovery from chronic near-starvation – and a brief emotional breakdown – until, finally, on December 10, 1918, he returned to England and another few days in hospital before reuniting with parents and siblings, especially brother Ted, home on a week’s leave but suffering badly from gas damage. Civilian life offered Sam a warm welcome… until, in February, 1919, the Army called him back - though only to a “Dad’s Army” unit. Meaning, at first, a few weeks </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">de facto<i>holiday in Brighton. But then, something completely different… through the spring, Sam and others ex-POWs guard German POWs at a camp in Sussex, while making various attempts to get back to “normal” life… At which point, for the time being, the story breaks off as explained below…]</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">RETRO 6: With my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe’s a-century-ago-this-week(ish) story taking a break – because he just didn’t write enough about his late spring/early summer period of 1919 – I’m revisiting the (in-hindsight) theme of his <i>Memoir</i>’s opening chapters about his childhood and teens: that is, The Making Of Foot Soldier Sam, the young Tommy who got through Gallipoli, the Somme, the Spring Offensive and eight months as a POW… <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> So, Retros so far covered <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">1) his wealthy toddlerhood in Manchester for just a couple of years after his birth (on July 6, 1898) and then, after the collapse of the family tile business, real hungry poverty in London <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">2) his developing immersion in the tumultuous life of 1900s Edmonton, a suburb then on the northern edge of London – streets full of horses, cattle and sheep, roads thrusting out into the surrounding countryside and a market place steaming with humanity, tooth and claw <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">3) his schooldays, including a gradual discovery of his own talents, despite relentlessly daunting comparisons with his older brother Ted’s sparky brilliance, and the frustration of both boys when they had to leave education at 14 because the family couldn’t afford to pay for more <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">4) the many ways in which Edmonton’s “tin church” missions to the poor and then the main parish church itself developed and influenced Sam’s life from the time he was five, and onwards to WW1 – not so much the religious side of churchgoing per se as how he and his parents gathered self-respect via involvement in entertaining and/or useful activity like organising a fete to raise funds for a new church hall<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">5) how recreational life for poor people like Sam who lived on the (then) outskirts of London embraced the (free) great outdoors: hiking, chiefly in Epping Forest, whether as a family group or as a church or Boy Scouts activity – the last very much Sam’s saviour as the new organisation also presented him with a whole range of fun and skills he could never have experienced otherwise, including sports and camping but also the more fringe-preparation-for-war training such as shooting, first aid and signalling. In addition, last week’s blog covered Sam’s Big Fight against school bully Hoy whom he defeated heroically/with a lucky punch…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Now The Making Of moves on to the last two years before World War 1 when he had to go out to work. So here’s Sam’s transition into the working life and, one way and another, his introduction to a sense of what social class was all about – something which, of course, the British Army still reflected and enforced via the specifics of rank in an even more upfront way than civilian customs and mores ever could.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">(NB: My father wrote the early chapters in the third person, calling himself “the boy” or “Tommy”, while he temporarily aliased brother Ted as “George”)</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘Suddenly, what had been a school day was a working day. But nothing to do. A sense of urgency soon built up and the necessity for finding work and earning money became quite oppressive. Tommy felt he was not doing his bit.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">The first job he landed was as a junior warehouseman, the only oddity about it being that his employer, Howell’s, based in Old Street, sold just one thing – walking sticks:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘But some sticks in the more expensive grades of wood had to be made to order. In that case, the man in charge wrote a specification in accordance with the customer’s wishes. This the boy took through the works to the bench of the craftsman who would shape that stick. Tommy noted the tools of the trade: a heated tank of water, usually boiling, a flame of the Bunsen burner type, clamps – the craftsman would have to know all the various types of cane and wood and be able to select them and bend them into the required shape, perhaps having first turned them in a lathe. A skilful job.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> In short order, Tommy too had to learn about the materials used, high and low grade, their colour, graining and finish – and the correct names for them: natural canes such as Nilgiri and Malacca, whose names indicated their countries of origin(2)*; others with a manufactured colour and finish. In addition, either the craftsman or the production line might ornament them with genuine silver and gold bands, or complete handles finely chased, or with cheap imitations of the precious metals. So Tommy learned how to polish the gold and silver parts using a fine rouge powder with a buffing stick – a piece of wood with leather wound round it.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Howell’s made swordsticks too – still popular in those days. Tommy never heard of anybody drawing his sword from his stick and jabbing it into anyone, but perhaps it did occur in some remote part of the British Empire…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> The job and its location made for a longish day. Tommy left home at about 6 in the morning, caught the train at 6.20(3) and hung about near the works until 8 when they opened, then he worked through to 12, an hour for lunch, and on till 6 with the train journey of about an hour to come.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(2) </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">The Nilgiri mountains in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, Southern India; Malacca, now one of the southern states of Malaysia.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(3) From Edmonton Green to Old Street, still a 50-minute journey.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">He immediately realised that a crucial aspect of the working man’s day was lunch and where to eat it – cheap cafés were very heaven:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘You can imagine how delighted he was when he found that his old pal from choirboy days, Reg Curtis, worked near him. They could meet at lunchtimes and Reggie knew of one or two places to sit and listen to music and singing for half an hour. He also knew the places where, for a penny, you could get a large cup of tea – one, part of a chain called Lockharts (bless the promoter of them), where just buying a mug of tea entitled you to sit there and eat the sandwich lunch mother had prepared for you. Rest and refreshment for a penny…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Another place Reg introduced Tommy to was known as the Alexandra Trust, where hundreds of people went for cheap food. And it was cheap too – apart from the tea, a large, toasted teacake cost a penny(4)*.</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(4) </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">The Alexandra Trust Dining Rooms: built in 1898 by philanthropist tea mogul Sir Thomas Lipton, 1848-1931, close to the tram and bus junction at Old Street. In three halls, capacity 500 each, it offered cheap meals to the working classes; six boilers heated 500 gallons of hot soup, “steam chests” boiled a ton and a half of potatoes an hour, and, in 1898, fourpence-halfpenny bought a three-course meal comprising “soup, a choice at will of a large steak-pudding, roast pork, roast or boiled beef, roast or boiled mutton, Irish stew, boiled pickled pork, stewed steak, or liver and bacon [<i>with</i>] two vegetables and bread, and a choice between pastry, or a mug of tea, coffee, or cocoa”. Some 100 waitresses could serve up to 12,000 meals a day – details quoted from Arthur H Beavan’s <i>Imperial London</i>, 1901. An 1898 £1 with inflation would be worth £1,288.99 in 2019, so fourpence-halfpenny in 240d to the £ old money would now be… have you got a calculator?</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">He was doing OK, but then he had an accident, fell off a high ladder in the warehouse, and after two weeks recuperation told his father he didn’t want to go back, Cue more worries about “doing his bit” for the family, but fortunately…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">… to his relief, he got another job, in the City of London, at a company quite near the place where his brother George worked. Even better, his work didn’t start until 9am so he could take a later train, 7.15 rather than 6.20 – although that meant he still ended up in the City almost an hour before he had to start. Still, often he could travel in with both his brother and his father; Liverpool Street happened to be the nearest station to all of their workplaces. So, arriving early, together they would go to one of the little squares in the area and, if it was a light morning, look at the paper or just sit and talk if it was dark. Tommy could meet George at lunchtime too, another advantage.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> A job of a different nature – only the office boy this time – but he quickly realised he had much to learn. It would be up to him as to how he progressed. The firm, Lake & Currie, had large interests centred on the tin-mining and smelting industry and scattered around the world: in various parts of Nigeria, in Penang(5), New Zealand and, at home, in Cornwall at Helston and Redruth.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Promptly at 9, Tommy’s routine commenced under the supervision of the commissionaire, whom everyone called “Sergeant” – the day’s first task the opening of all incoming mail and sorting it into piles, department by department, except that addressed personally to one of the partners, or to the Secretary Of Companies, which Tommy would place in their individual in-trays. He dealt with mail deliveries throughout the day too. And once the directors, the Company Secretary, and the rest of the staff entered their offices, the product of their thought and labours would soon start emerging. A very varied correspondence it made too, Tommy discovered – by reading most of it because, as office boy, he had to make copies of every letter that came in or went out.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Sergeant taught him their old-fashioned method of copying letters and signatures into a large book: place each letter on a blank page of its very fine, soft paper; cover it with a damp cloth and a waterproof oilboard (to prevent the moisture spoiling the previous copy); then put the book in a heavy, iron press. A clear facsimile resulted, complete with signature. Tommy completed the job by filing the typed carbon duplicate supplied by the typist in the book alongside this copy…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> The Sergeant taught Tommy… how to operate the company’s small telephone switchboard, which directed calls to every department in the building. In fact, Sergeant told the boys under his supervision they would have to learn to do all the jobs he did, because he didn’t intend to remain there. He was perfectly sure a big war was coming up shortly and, in the natural order of things, he would go to the War Office to take a job which had been waiting for him in that event.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(5) </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">Penang: then one of the Straits Settlements, a British territory, now a state in Malaysia.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Apart from the lessons in basic office skills, the Sergeant indirectly taught him a lot about social class. Not that Sam swallowed everything he was told – at least, not in the longer-term, at first he admits he did fall into sucking up to this bitter man who’d become his immediate boss. Still, a lot of Sam’s conclusions derived from what he observed rather than taking the Sergeant’s word as Gospel (his perspective was doubtless affected by the peculiarities of his own background: born into prosperity then descending the social scale to poor working-class):<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘Tommy did come to realise that, in practice, Sergeant fulfilled his role very well in regard to callers of higher status, but often gave short shrift to those, in his view, beneath his own social level… ‘<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">But the office did give “Tommy”/Sam the chance to see power and wealth in action – and note sub-strata even within the layers of power:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘Out and along a short corridor, the Company Secretary, F.C. Bull, FCB as he was known, a truly important man, possessing vast knowledge of company law and of his own company’s subsidiaries around the world. He stood about 5 foot 4, slim, balding, dark, some grey hair, quick in movement, with rather a harsh voice and a middle-class accent, very different from that of the partners; sharp distinctions existed in those days between working-, middle- and upper-class accents.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> … further along, one company director, Mr Currie, a huge Scotsman with a large estate out in Buckinghamshire. On the same side, next door along, the office of the other director, Mr Lake. A big man indeed. The squire of quite a large village up in Norfolk and the possessor of a dwelling in the fashionable Boltons area of Kensington(6) and a flat in one of those small streets at the back of Trafalgar Square.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Tommy soon realised that F.C. Bull occupied a particular and peculiar place in Sergeant’s view of social class and status. Because, despite his eminence within the company, he didn’t come from what the Sergeant called “the upper crust”, Sergeant treated him with respect to his face, then derided him behind his back. Tommy would snigger at these jibes.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> After a while, when Tommy felt more comfortable with the job, a mad mood seized him; a six-verse limerick about FCB resulted. It was libellous and it was untrue, but Tommy asked his brother to get it typed – his wholesale paper firm had offices nearby in Upper Thames Street – and Miss Violet Turner, prim, young secretary to George’s boss, presented it very tastefully on mauve-tinted paper. What a strange thing to do. But George persuaded her, and with some trepidation Tommy showed this script to Sergeant. He laughed heartily and evilly at Tommy’s vile, cheap sarcasm, then furtively passed it around other departments, accounting, shipping, the draftsmen.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Some members of staff stopped to congratulate Tommy and he progressed through fear of dismissal at perpetrating this crime to a swelled head because of the kudos he had gained. Only later did he realise, guiltily, how far he had let himself become Sergeant’s lickspittle. F.C. Bull was a man who deserved better of his underlings.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> … Gradually, Tommy became aware of the complications in these relationships Sergeant fostered. He learned that, to obtain this uniformed but civilian job, Sergeant had deposited a sum of money with the Corps Of Commissionaires(7), by way of security – in case of exactly what eventualities Tommy wasn’t entirely clear.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> More valuable than the deposit was his apparent integrity. Men like him knew and maintained an expected code of conduct – although, curiously, they had, and they showed, contempt for anyone of their own class who attempted to improve their status by study and hard work. Yet these old and trusted servants also felt they were themselves aping the gentry and becoming traitors to their kind thereby – if one can follow that line of thought.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Many a tirade on these matters assaulted Tommy’s ears. Sergeant in his lunchtime strode the office floor: a bite of his sandwich, a champing of the jaw muscles, a long swig from a tankard of beer, and out flowed the bitter words. FCB, and Sampson, head of accounts, and Otley, the top draftsman, all came in for it, the last classed as a “homo” as well as an upstart.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> But the upper classes, equally, could bring on a rant. The very men with whom Sergeant shared a number of confidences on a servant-and-master basis, who trusted him – rightly so – were, apart from business considerations, enemies of his class. Wont to growl, “God bless the Squire and his relations/Long may they keep us in our stations”(8) – probably the only couplet of verse he knew – he repeated it endlessly in the course of his lunchtimes orations. </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">The boy listened, but kept his own council.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> … </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">Let’s have a look at Sergeant and Tommy for a moment. The old boy’s train home went from Liverpool Street too so Tommy, the most junior boy in the office at that stage, was permitted to walk with him. Probably 5 foot 2 then, at 14, to Sergeant’s 5 foot 9, he strode out to keep step. Comical he must have looked in his skintight trousers and short, bum-freezer jacket, topped off with the square, bowler hard hat. The gentry favoured a different bowler with the brim curled up at the sides and a half-spherical crown. Thus one could easily distinguish the officers from the other ranks – though a closer look would further reveal jackets of fine-quality cloth, more fully cut too, and trousers more fully shaped from the top to the narrow bottom (permanent turn-ups had not been heard of; a man turned up the bottoms of his working trousers only if they were too long for him).’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(6) </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">The Boltons: the name referred to a street and the surrounding area; it’s still “fashionable” in a sense – houses fetching £55m upwards!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(7) Corps Of Commissionaires: founded 1859 to offer work to ex-Servicemen; now a not-for-profit private company called Corps Security with the monarch still nominally its “head”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(8) The popular written source of the rhyme seems to be a lesser-known Dickens novel, </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">The Chimes </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(1844). It’s quoted by Lady Bowley, wife of the philanthropist MP who is the butt of the book’s radical social satire. Her version is slightly different to Sergeant’s: </span><span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">“</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">O let us love our occupations,/Bless the Squire and his relations/Live upon our daily rations/And always know our proper stations”.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Part of “Tommy”/Sam’s job enabled him to snaffle rather more than crumbs from the rich man’s table – who could resist?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘The company regularly held meetings with business associates and others, and when the partners considered those attending worth entertaining fairly well, a lunch would be laid on, bought in from nearby caterers. If a small, intimate group were invited, they would gather in the senior partner’s office. A day or so beforehand, Tommy had to visit the supplier to hand over the order – often at a famous restaurant and bar over in Cheapside called Sweetings(9), where he observed really prosperous City businessmen, bosses all, who wouldn’t even spare the time to sit down to have their lunch. These toffs, as Cockneys called them, clad in fine morning suits, lined the long counter, munching and drinking their ale or whatever they favoured. The smell of all these delicious foods pleased Tommy; he loved to stand there and look and breathe it in. White-hatted waiters dressed up as chefs carved succulent slices of beef or ham.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> When the customers finished eating, they would just throw down some silver on the counter and walk out – no question of bills or talking about the cost. As Tommy came to understand, much company business was based on trust, confidence. A word, perhaps a handshake, even a nod, would seal a bargain. City men expected all their associates to deal with them in this way. And all the people who served them, who wined and beered them you might say, came out very well from that sort of arrangement. They were never let down.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> In addition to the special drinks and foods the restaurant supplied, Tommy had to buy certain cheeses and a special type of coffee. This task took him to a shop of the old style where soft cream cheeses hung from the ceiling in muslin bags… Fortunately, in due course, Tommy would get the chance to do more than look at all this enticing provender.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> When one of these feasts had concluded, the bosses would take their guests to a club, maybe to continue the discussion or just enjoy good company. Often, when they left Mr Lake’s office – the temporary dining room – Tommy went in to clear up before the caterers came to collect any utensils and crockery they had provided. But he’d pause to inhale the fumes of cigars and cigarettes, the aroma of all this good food – and of an appetising cocktail they regularly took called gin cup(10) which they drank from small, silver tankards, a sprig of a small mauve flower with a yellow centre floating in each one.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> And, until the men from Sweetings arrived, Tommy could eat and drink anything left over – often quite a lot. Quickly as he could, he’d run through the menu. The lovely cream cheese, the crisp little rolls, some meat, ham or tongue or beef, a little salad, and then, of course, the gin cups had not always been emptied so he sampled them as well. It was very good. And one further pleasure he would save for later; some of the senior partner’s Turkish cigarettes – made for him by a chap in Burlington Arcade(11) – would be left lying on the table and Tommy, who sometimes collected parcels of them from the tobacconist, felt free to take some of them if he wished. For a brief while, the boy would think of himself as a man. And fare like a lord.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(9) Sweetings, in Queen Victoria Street, near the Lord Mayor of London’s official residence, The Mansion House, opened in 1889 and, as of 2019, serves lunch (only) to the same kind of clientele, though as a specialist fish restaurant; one review notes, “many customers first went to dine there before they even started at their chosen public school”.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(10) Gin cup: gin with mint, sugar and lemon juice.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(11) Burlington Arcade: in Mayfair, off Piccadilly.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">“Tommy”/Sam’s teenaged struggles with the “know your place” ethos even had a bearing on his deciding he had to break up with a girl called Bessie Dibbs whom he liked and had known off and on for years in Edmonton:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘On his next homeward train journey sitting with Bessie, Tommy noted the appearance she had of being well-fed, well-clothed – everything right in her world. Then he appraised himself: his home-made grey mac, the cheap suit beneath it, the cheap shoes. Comparing the obvious difference in circumstances between himself and the girl, he knew he would have to break away before he got in too deep. That wasn’t easy for a naturally shy lad who wasn’t too good at expressing his feelings. But he did tell her… that they’d have to discontinue their walking home and talking on the phone.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">In fact, come early 1914, when he was still 15, his wider feelings about “life” and his own life in particular had rather slumped into a slough of despond, a sense that he’d got lost in London’s anonymous mass of workers and that this might well be a permanent condition:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘The walk stationwards took them through several of the City’s narrower streets. With his recent history lessons in mind, Tommy concluded that these deep gulleys between tall buildings must have been laid out before the Great Fire Of London — Wren’s contemporaries would surely never have planned so foolishly after the lessons of so great a disaster(12). As soon as their route crossed in front of the Royal Exchange they became members of a huge, walking army. Across into Broad Street and past the Stock Exchange, the solid, advancing mass filled the pavements and the whole roadway – useless for vehicles to try to move during this great exodus.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> On Saturdays, for his half-day’s work Tommy had to get up just as early as on weekdays and hurry to catch the 7.18 train. On those days he often felt stale and played out. Leaving the office around 1pm, it seemed that he, his clothes, the big station, and the crowds rushing away from the City, were all dingy, condemned to a life of hopelessness and frustration.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(12) </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">The Great Fire occurred in 1666. On the planning and rebuilding, the Royal Institute Of British Architects website says that Sir Christopher Wren, 1632-1723, submitted a plan for rebuilding the city with “wide, straight streets", but it didn’t happen because "building was financed by private enterprise and the desire was to rebuild quickly", whereas more radical change would have required the Government taking control.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">I should note that his weekend sessions with the Boy Scouts still reliably uplifted him and he had his times of good-fun horsing around like any youngster. But, of course, the big change in his life loomed willy-nilly, as European politics headed inexorably for August, 1914…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">All the best</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">– <i>FSS</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Next week: RETRO 7 – Sam, 15, studies war via the weekly boys’ magazines: Fu Manchu, <i>While England Slept </i>and such. And then the fever grabs him, brother Ted, the whole family, patriotism and fear and “all over by Christmas” complacency all rising – as well as the persecution of German pillars of the Edmonton community, as the great fraud Horatio Bottomley peddles paranoia. And, finally, Sam and pals enlist... and march proudly around town… then have to tell their parents… but then the uniforms come through…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote <i>Nobody Of Any Importance</i>, a <i>Memoir </i>of his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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FootSoldierSamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01449820798842961719noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545275143240244101.post-90904527709547512752019-06-09T00:30:00.000-07:002019-06-09T00:30:01.344-07:00RETRO 5 – Young Sam and a 1900s city boy’s outdoor life. The poverty-ground family find they’re happy when they’re hiking out in the nearby woods… then he joins the Scouts and it’s all dibdib camping and dobdob… signalling and shooting(!). Also Sam has a Big Fight with the school bully… and meets the costermongers and their backslang; top o’ reeb anyone?<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir(1) <i>– 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 </i>Memoir<i>, added documentation.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">For details of how to buy the <i>Memoir </i>or </span><span lang="EN-US">Gallipoli <span style="color: purple;"></span><span style="color: #161616;">& </span>Somme <span style="color: #8b5200;">&</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">Arras 1918/POW</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">etc </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">mini-e-books click </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=4897427382137035394;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=4;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">plus see reader reviews </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=6753328261534245137;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=1;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">and </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=8857004925280018109;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=2;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;"> and reviews from the Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=7620675943831341074;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=0;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">. </span><span lang="EN-US"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">For AUDIO excerpts click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/footsoldiersam" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #7c4000;"> Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nobody-Of-Any-Importance-A-Foot-Soldiers-Memoir-of-WW1/300782296758247" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">The war’s over at last – but Sam’s blog, Facebook page and tweets will continue until his </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir <i>concludes with the Centenary of the July 19, 1919, Peace parade in London…<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">Memoir <i>will always go to the British Red Cross – and the current running donations total as of June 1, 2019, is £4,228.17 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!).</i></span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Dear all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">A hundred years ago this week, in the aftermath of the Armistice… At the Paris Peace Conference, the Allies performed the ritual dance of notional negotiation with the defeated foe as Austria protested their draft terms (June 10; received June 2) and Germany did likewise (15; received May 7). Meanwhile, in America Senator Philander C. Knox, Pennsylvania’s eminent Republican, called for the Peace Treaty to be separated from the League Of Nations proposal (10), a substantial early indication that President Wilson would have a hard time getting his plans through Congress.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Otherwise, post-war (relative) skirmishing proceeded, directly related to WW1 and not. In the Chortkiv Offensive (June 8-28), Ukraine’s attempt to take Eastern Galicia from Poland continued its early successes with the occupation of Yazlovets (10), Buchach (11), Pidhaitsi, Nyznhiv and Tarnopol (all 14-15). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Down in the Anatolian peninsula, the Battle Of Bergama (June 15-20) saw Turkish troops and irregulars drive the Greek Army out of the city and back to Menemen, 43 miles south. This reversed the Greeks’ incursion from the port of Smyrna, the only Turkish territory granted to them thus far by the Paris wheeler-dealings. Another group of Turkish irregulars conducted the Malgac raid, dynamiting a bridge on the Izmir-Aydin railway.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> More remotely, Pancho Villa and his Mexican rebels instigated the Battle Of Ciudad Juarez (June 15-16) and lost it when American troops in El Paso piled across the border and drove them out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> In the UK, while strikes and riots abounded, often triggered by the failure to rapidly demob servicemen (British, but also Canadians and Australians too long in transit), a bit of good news arose when John Alcock of Manchester and Arthur Brown of Glasgow, both former POWs after being shot down in Turkey and Germany respectively, completed the first non-stop Transatlantic flight (June 14-15; St John’s, Newfoundland, to Connemara, Ireland, in a modified WW1 Vickers Vimy bomber).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">[</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Memoir <i>background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe </i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">from Edmonton, north London, </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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), </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">… until </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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 Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied around Arras until mid-March when he ran into his own Essex </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">2/7th </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Battalion. They moved into the trenches near Fampoux 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 doing hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany and finally moving westwards to Lorraine – whence, the day after Armistice, his long trek towards the French Front began. He reached safety after tiptoeing through a German minefield (November 15 probably). Then began his recovery from chronic near-starvation – and a brief emotional breakdown – until, finally, on December 10, 1918, he returned to England and another few days in hospital before reuniting with parents and siblings, especially brother Ted, home on a week’s leave but suffering badly from gas damage. Civilian life offered Sam a warm welcome… until, in February, 1919, the Army called him back - though only to a “Dad’s Army” unit. Meaning, at first, a few weeks </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">de facto<i>holiday in Brighton. But then, something completely different… through the spring, Sam and others ex-POWs guard German POWs at a camp in Sussex, while making various attempts to get back to “normal” life… At which point, for the time being, the story breaks off as explained below…]</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">RETRO 5: With my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe’s a-century-ago-this-week(ish) story taking a break – because he just didn’t write enough about his late spring/early summer period of 1919 – I’m revisiting the (in-hindsight) theme of his <i>Memoir</i>’s opening chapters about his childhood and teens: that is, The Making Of Foot Soldier Sam, the young Tommy who got through Gallipoli, the Somme, the Spring Offensive and eight months as a POW… to peace and a normal life. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> So, Retros 1 to 4 covered <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">a) his wealthy toddlerhood in Manchester for just a couple of years after his birth (on July 6, 1898) and then, after the collapse of the family tile business, real hungry poverty in London <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">b) his developing immersion in the tumultuous life of 1900s Edmonton, a suburb then on the northern edge of north London – streets full of horses, cattle and sheep, roads thrusting out into the surrounding countryside and a market place steaming with humanity, tooth and claw <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">c) his schooldays, including a gradual discovery of his own talents, despite relentlessly daunting comparisons with his older brother Ted’s sparky brilliance, and the frustration of both boys when they had to leave education at 14 for lack of money to pay for more <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">d) the many ways in which Edmonton’s “tin church” missions to the poor and then the main parish church itself developed and influenced Sam’s life from the time he was five, and onwards to WW1 – not so much the religious side of churchgoing per se as how he and his parents gathered self-respect via involvement in entertaining and/or useful activity like organising a fete to raise funds for a new church hall.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> This week, I’m turning to the family’s outdoor recreational life, perhaps a surprising aspect of life in a down-at-heel 1900s London suburb, but something that, crucially, could be enjoyed for free on the outer edge of the city, as Edmonton was back then – at first, as a family, later via membership of Baden Powell’s all-new Boy Scouts. Here, Sam’s father, morale boosted by getting a job after a long, penniless struggle, leads the way into happy hiking…</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">(NB: My father wrote the early chapters in the third person, calling himself “the boy” and then “Tommy”, while he temporarily aliased brother Ted as “George”, and, when necessary, cunningly(!) switching Sutcliffe to “Norcliffe”)</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘… home life remained variable. Despite recent slight improvements, the trial of all the years since the family’s tile company in Manchester collapsed had sharpened the mother’s temper. Her hand would whip out with a smack at very slight provocation. She frequently recounted the quality and style of their life as it used to be and had ceased to be and the blame for all this, of course, she laid at father’s door. Perhaps he was an easy-going, soft type of chap. She classed him as such. He was working hard doing the best he could in all the circumstances, but got not much credit for anything as far as Tommy could hear.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Even so, about this time the Sunday walks started. The parents would sit back after dinner. Father would look at the paper and have a little doze. But round about 4 he would say, “Well, now we’ll go for a walk”. The children were pleased. Tommy began to learn more and more about the area.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> In the winter as they walked the neighbouring streets, father would talk about any interesting building they passed. In the summertime, they’d set out across the fields. One day, father pointed out a house built at the time of Elizabeth 1 and then another large house standing well back from the fence surrounding it, the garden full of trees. He said it was the So-and-so Hall where Judge Jeffreys used to put up, and told them who he was – “the hanging judge” of “the Bloody Assizes” back in the 17th century(2).<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Walking through the outskirts of town, sometimes they had to pass a very smelly sewage farm. In those days sewage was often disposed of by the simple means of letting it flow into some low-lying open space and dry off in the sun. If you have a township of, say, 40,000 people, and all this waste is allowed to just seep out over the countryside, then there is a hell of a stench.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> There it all depended on the direction of the wind. If it blew towards the town then from morning to night the air would be heavy with this stench. But people were used to this. It must have dated back to the days when all drains were open and life was lived in the perpetual stink of sewage and rotting rubbish… Past that a canal, a busy one with barges pulled by horses constantly passing through the lock. Over the bridge and on to a large area formerly marshes, but now well drained with a natural river on the far side of it, plenty of good fish in it(3).<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> To cross the river you had to use a footbridge and, at an adjacent cottage, pay the penny toll demanded. Well, adults would pay. Boys seldom did. There was an art in approaching this bridge without being seen. No gates barred entry, so small boys – thinking they were getting away with it – crept up, then made a mad dash across to the other side… Although, actually, the owners didn’t bother too much about small boys.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> So across more fields, then… an inn and a huge oak tree outside it – hollow, so it joined the claims of many others to have been the hiding place of King Charles when he was on the run(4).<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Father planned a longer jaunt for them. On one of his own long walks, when he was saving every penny he might have spent on a bus or a train fare, he saw a gap in a fence, went through and found himself in a forest(5)… the excursion was thoroughly prepared. Blessed with a fine, hot day, they set off. Mother pushed the pram, carrying sandwiches and bottles of water as well as the baby </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">[this means Sam’s brother Alf, born 1903]<i>. Father walked alongside her and the three children milled about together, a bit ahead or behind.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> To reach the forest they had to walk about four miles, the last stretch across marshland and a river. They were stopped twice on this stretch of road, first by a dark, swarthy man; he stood beside a gate, which he held shut. He had only one arm. The other terminated at the elbow with a metal hook. He wanted to collect a toll. We had no money to spare and told him so and he let us through. A mile or so further on, the same thing happened. Another gate. A sort of blackmail but, again, nothing to be squeezed out of this family. Father suggested a genuine tollgate may have restricted access to the path at some earlier time and that these men had just taken them over when they ceased to be “official”.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> That day, most of the people of the town seemed to be headed in this direction. A cheery sight. At the end of the walk, at the top of a steep hill with tall, shady trees, the children ran about and gradually ventured further and further away. As he roamed, Tommy suddenly became conscious of the silence in the forest. The rustling of leaves high overhead. A slight breeze. A sensation of loneliness, which he had not experienced before… So he went back to the family. They had settled by some brambles – blackberry bushes, said father. He promised that towards the end of summer they would come again and collect them and have stewed blackberries, perhaps with apple.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> The sun was going down. They packed the remains of the picnic in the pram and moved off downhill until, through the bushes beside the path, one of them saw a small cottage in a clearing. Mother said, “We’ve used up all the water. Let’s go and ask if they will let us fill our bottles.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> The children ran ahead, feeling safe together, and tapped on the door. An old lady in black answered, looking rough, but kind enough for the children to make their request. She said, “I’ll come and speak to your parents”. The two women had a chat and she said, “For 3d I could make you a nice pot of tea. A nice drink for all of you. Could you spare 3d for that?” Mother and father discussed it. It was a lot of money, bearing in mind that tuppence ha’penny would buy a pound of the cheapest breast of mutton. They agreed and the old lady brought them a large pot, which she placed, on a wooden bench. They gathered round and the children thoroughly enjoyed their first bought cup of tea. Somehow the smoke from the wood fire in the cottage had penetrated the water. A new flavour, a new taste. They felt adventurous. They were drinking a cup of tea which father had paid for.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> The long journey home began. They paused at one point on the opposite side of the road to a country inn where a large party of costermongers had gathered. By chance, Tommy had gradually come to know quite a lot about the costermongers because Mr Phillips, the brickmaker next door, was one of them, although he didn’t seem to mix with his fellows very much and he could be friendly enough as a neighbour.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> While not separated from the populace by blood like, say, gypsies, costermongers made themselves a race apart in those days, identifiable by how they dressed when wearing their best. The women had large feathers in their hats, their dresses long, wide, ankle-length, and all black, except possibly a touch of white lace round the neck. The men favoured black as well for the most part: bright-coloured mufflers, but black caps and suits – which they customarily had made to measure when they married – of heavy, good-quality cloth with long jackets not stopping much short of the knee, and trousers narrow at the waist but bell-bottomed, not quite so full as a sailor’s. These suits had to last a lifetime of Sunday walks to the pub, weddings and, particularly, funerals – elaborate affairs for which they would stretch all their resources.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Although formally clad, they really let themselves go, dancing and singing out in the open air in front of the inn. Looking on as they rested Tommy’s family felt very aware of being outsiders. Had they attempted to join in or even talk to the costermongers they would probably have been laughed at, insulted you might say. Costermongers looked down on poor clerks and the like and their pretensions to correct speech, behaviour and dress and would mock them on the street without any direct provocation. That barrier – which seemed to be of distrust on the costers’ side – could never be broken.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> In public, between themselves, they talked incomprehensible backslang – turning words back to front and still speaking at great speed(6).<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Naturally, when working, they didn’t wear their finery, just a jacket with corduroy trousers and a bright neckerchief. Again typically, they would carry cooked meals to work in a basin with a red and white-spotted handkerchief over the top of it. And, when selling their fruit and vegetables from barrows in the street, they could still cajole and charm and persuade the very people they scorned into believing they offered the best bargains available.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(2) Lord Chief Justice George Jeffreys oversaw five judges who, over two months in 1685 at various South of England Assize courts, dealt with 1,400 trials of rebels who fought James II’s forces at the Battle Of Sedgemoor (Somerset). This judicial team issued death sentences to almost everyone convicted, but “only” 300 suffered the standard “hung, drawn and quartered” and the rest were transported to the West Indies as cheap plantation labour. Jeffreys died in the Tower of London four years later after the Glorious Revolution saw James II overthrown by his daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(3) The river is the Lea, probably in the vicinity of what’s now known as Pickett’s Lock; I can’t find the name of the canal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(4) The actual tree – allegedly? – the “Royal Oak”, concealed the future Charles II in 1651 when his army lost the Battle Of Worcester to the Roundheads. The locale didn’t stop myth, legend and boys’ imaginations replanting the tree all over the country, even in a London suburb.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(5) Researcher and FSS reader Stephanie M. McDuff showed me on an old map that this must have been Epping Forest – ancient woodland, but declared “the people’s forest” by Queen Victoria and still “London’s largest open space”. It’s west of Edmonton, but even now not much more than the four miles my father reckoned his family walked to get there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(6) For example, backslang created “yob” by reversing “boy”; “pot of beer” became “top o’ reeb”, “tobacco” ”occabot”; at http://www.victorianweb.org/history/slang2.html researcher Dick Sullivan points out how many words suggest backslang relates to written as well as spoken English, e.g. “talk” is “klat” where, phonetically, it would be “kwat”, “knife” is “efink” rather than “fine”; no absolute rules though – the difficulty of pronouncing an “h” at the end of a word is overcome by pronouncing and writing it “tch”, so “half” is “flatch”, “horse” is “esrotch”, “have” is “vatch”; moreover, backslang retained the phonetics of “th” and “sh” in preference to attempting a pronunciation based on spelling, so “three” is “earth”, fish is “shif” and so on.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">I reckon those early family walks happened when Sam was six or seven (1904-5). He didn’t give a date for the momentous occasion, coming up, of his joining the Boy Scouts, but I reckon it must have been in 1909 when he was 11. That comes from relating it to his progress through the school system, but also the nuts and bolts of the Scouts’ foundation; the organisation began in 1908 as the Battersea Boy Scouts, then went national in May, 1909 (Cubs, for 7-12-year-olds, weren’t introduced until 1916). For “Tommy”/Sam it was rather like first-sight love:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘… on one of the very rare occasions when he stayed out after dark, he saw something that thrilled him: simply a boy standing under a lamp-post, with the gas light shining down on him, looking at a book – but wearing a uniform Tommy had never seen before. A hat with three dents in it and a wide brim; a bright-coloured scarf tied around his neck and hanging down the front of his shirt; short trousers held up by a belt; long socks and short boots; and in one hand he carried a staff, a pole. Tommy had to find out who he was, what he belonged to, and why he dressed like that. He couldn’t bring himself to approach the boy and ask him, but he soon found out that he must have been an early member of the Boy Scouts.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> With family fortunes gradually improving, shortly after Tommy had seen his first Scout, his brother joined them, got rigged out in that uniform, and was soon acquiring many skills and the badges that went with them. Tommy looked forward to the day when his parents could afford to buy a uniform for him – and it wasn’t too long in coming.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> He enjoyed everything about it. The pleasure of going to the outfitter’s shop. The smell of the clothing. The khaki shirt, red scarf, blue trousers, black hose with scarlet tops. In addition, he had to buy a lanyard with a whistle, a belt to which he attached a clasp knife, and a staff with three dents in it, like the hat – to remind him of the three main promises he would make on becoming enrolled as a Scout(7). Each patrol had its own flag; Tommy’s bore the head of a buffalo in red. But even when he got used to the uniform, Tommy never felt he looked so eye-catching as that boy standing under the street gas lamp…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Baden Powell, the movement’s founder, had carefully considered the significance of every detail and set out the principles and rules in a book called </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">Scouting For Boys<i>(8). He had organised the first experiment in camp living on Brownsea Island(9) and formed the first Scout Troops shortly after that.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Becoming a member of this movement opened a new phase of living for Tommy. Life had been hard and grim. Now very pleasant pastimes came to occupy many of his out-of-school hours and he began to enjoy the company of other boys under happy conditions, free from the pressures of schoolwork and the overseeing of the form teacher. He experienced more tolerance and kindness from the Scoutmaster and his assistants, this being a voluntary organisation. The object was to give the boys the greatest possible amount of good.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Troop members had a complete gym available to them for one hour every Thursday night, and several hours on Saturday afternoons. Vaulting horses, parallel bars, and rings stood or hung eight feet apart in rows the length of the hall. They could stand on a platform at one end, grasp a ring one-handed and jump and swing through the air and grasp the next ring with the other hand, then work themselves backwards and forwards to gather momentum before swinging on to the next ring and so on. A refinement, known as a half-dislocation, was to swing your body right around clockwise, heels over head, while holding on to a ring one-handed ready to reach out to the next row.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> They worked on climbing ropes too. Up to the top and down again with legs crossed in the approved manner. Tommy’s brother wanted to demonstrate his skill and climbed up faster than anyone else could. Then, to descend, he almost let go and just slid down. The boys thought this was fine. But then they saw the friction had burnt the insides of both legs. He had to have dressings on these abrasions and they took some weeks to heal. Tommy did not try to emulate that trick.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> At the Easter and Whitsun holidays – and sometimes on ordinary Saturdays, as an alternative to gym – the Troop would assemble outside their hut and put together what they called their trek cart. They fitted the wheels on the shaft and loaded up with tents, containers of water, packed lunches, and anything else the leaders thought useful. They formed up and marched off – usually in the direction of that large forest, four or five miles distant. The boys hauled the cart along by means of long ropes attached to the wheel hubs on each side, three boys on each rope – and a couple behind, pushing.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> At the selected place, they set up their tents and a day of fun and games and sports would commence. They practiced running, vaulting with the pole over brooks and other obstacles, tracking in woodland areas – and tying knots, of course. The leaders imparted some knowledge of wildlife and they collected wild flowers to dry and place in a book with its name and details underneath. They fenced, not with swords, but stout sticks. They tried cock-fighting, as it was called, with the pole passed behind the bent knees, the arms underneath the pole, each boy edging up to the other and trying to upset him by swinging the pole round to get him off balance. The older boys took boxing lessons – Tommy did, in due course. And yet they still seemed to have plenty of leisure time when they could wander through the forest by themselves or in groups.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Even from those early days, the Scouts would also take care to show the parents what their sons could do, given the opportunity. Every three months the Troop presented an entertainment in the hall where they held their gym sessions. Some of the mothers volunteered to serve a light meal beforehand with tea, orange drinks and so forth all arranged on a long, trestle table covered with white, cotton cloths. Then, the older boys and the Scoutmasters entertained to the best of their abilities, and a happy afternoon would be had by all…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> The Scouts demanded discipline – particularly self-discipline – of all. Any who rebelled against it, especially more senior boys, found themselves quickly turned out of the Troop. The Scoutmaster, Mr Frusher </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">[see last week’s blog for more detail on the Vicar/choirmaster/Scoutmaster/music teacher and all-round mentor]<i>, believed that an older boy who elected to rebel against accepted rules of conduct would contaminate younger members and must be got rid of.’<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(7) The American <i>Boy Scouts Handbook, </i>1911, the oldest I could find online, listed the promises as: “</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">On my honor I will do my best: 1. To do my duty to God and my country, and to obey the Scout law; 2. To help other people at all times; 3. To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(8) Published 1908.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(9) In Poole Harbour, Dorset, August 1-8, 1907; the National Trust now owns the island.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">What do Scouts do, apart from the high ideals and badges and walking about a lot? They raise funds! By now, we’re in 1910, and “Tommy”/Sam’s 11 or 12:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘… to raise money for the Scout movement, Mr Frusher began to train the lads to sing choruses from the Gilbert and Sullivan light operas – </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">The Mikado, HMS Pinafore<i>, and one or two others. It was work Mr Frusher loved. The time came when the parts had been fairly well mastered and they took to the stage of the local institute opposite the church(10). He had no difficulty in persuading quite good professionals and semi-professionals to come along for one rehearsal and then three productions of the show. Full houses provided useful money to hire tents for the annual Scout camp.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Now old enough to be appointed a Patrol Leader, Tommy had his own group of lads to look after and a certain responsibility at these beautifully organised camps. The lads had the assistance of four or five young men in their late teens or early twenties who would go ahead and set up the tents and make arrangements for the supply of food in quantity. By the time the Troops arrived with their kit bags, everything was prepared.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> The site comprised a hill at the edge of a large farming estate, with the tents set up in a row at the top, their water supply a spring at the bottom. A line of youngsters took it in turns to lower their buckets into the small pool around the spring – very carefully, so as not to disturb the silt at the bottom. The water looked clean and unadulterated, but for safety’s sake they boiled it anyway.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> At 6.30 each morning, a bugle call, reveille! Up and out of those beds and, given fine weather, the Scoutmaster, assistant Scoutmasters, and all of the boys in their pants and vests rushed down to the river and in they went. The water came up to their waists or shoulders. They took their soap, so a cold bath and a quick towelling on the riverbank, then back up the hill to breakfast; large containers of hard-boiled eggs or saveloys(11) – very popular with the lads – and bacon with plenty of bread and butter and boiling tea. Done over campfires, it all went off with the precision of a military camp.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> On the first morning, just after breakfast, the senior assistant dashed into his tent, reappeared with a sports gun and fired at a few ducks flying overhead. No duck for dinner, but it brought a shocked Mr Frusher hurrying from his tent. Shooting was not on the agenda and he didn’t approve. But the same young man took them running across the fields, after which they formed into a square and some exercises did them a power of good.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Nearby lived a family who, from the old, bearded, grandfather down, worked on this huge farm. Tommy learned that the old man earned the princely sum of 18/- a week </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">[not sarcastic, a very big wage at the time](12)<i>. Other family members got proportionate sums, the boys probably 4/- or 5/-. But they had certain perquisites which helped them along; for instance, at the back of the barn behind their house, free-running poultry nested – they ranged over the fields to feed themselves, but the majority came to this row of nest boxes to lay their eggs. The family could take as many as they wished and, no doubt, a cockerel whenever they felt like it.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> They had enough ground to grow all the vegetables they needed too – all this far more valuable than their wages. Lots of rabbits to be trapped, milk from the dairy a mile or so across the field – a gallon for a few coppers. They seemed a remarkably happy family. Full of jokes. They gave the lads a good impression of life on the land. The farmer seldom came round the place. As head of the family, the grandfather took responsibility for organising the work and employing any extra labourers.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> One of the farm girls was a merry lass, 20 or so, considerably older than the boys and her name was Mary Anne. A popular song of the time went, “Mary Anne she’s after me/Full of love she seems to be/My mother says that Mary Anne/Wants me for her young man”. Once or twice groups of the young lads got under Mary Anne’s bedroom window late at night and serenaded her with this beautiful song(13). Mr Frusher was inclined to frown on these efforts, but Mary Anne appeared to be flattered and very well pleased.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> One wet night, rain leaked into some of the tents. The boys were quickly moved into the barn. They threw their camp mattresses down on the floor – covered with hay, fresh and sweet-smelling – wrapped themselves up in their blankets, snug and warm, and spent what was, to them, quite a thrilling night – for the barn had other occupants, owls and bats, who flew in and out, a busy traffic.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> On one occasion in camp, when Tommy got a rather nasty cold he was given a bed in the tent with the four assistant Scoutmasters. He enjoyed that. Waking in the morning he looked at them as they lay there.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> The senior one attracted his attention. His face still, absolutely immobile. Tommy thought, “How different, how young he looks, compared to when I’ve seen him going to the station for work”. Employed by a firm of stockbrokers, on some occasions the Scoutmaster had to wear the uniform of tall, silk hat, cutaway morning coat and striped trousers. Tommy had seen him with his coat tails flying and tightly rolled umbrella, the picture of health and activity. Yet here he slept, almost boyish.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> How could Tommy possibly have known that, soon, this splendid young chap, with many others, would be lying at the bottom of the North Sea after the Battle Of Jutland(14)…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Near him lay a younger man, the soul of kindness. He could not be faulted in his treatment of the lads. He was liked and Tommy admired him. He was shattered on the Somme battlefield(15)…’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(10) Charles Lamb Institute, Church Street, opened 1908 – now a gym apparently. This is the parish church, All Saints, where Mr Frusher presided. Ah, I should mention that “Frusher” is one of my father’s habitual aliases<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(11) English, red, pork sausages.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(12) Time to explain the money for post-decimalisation readers. And old shilling – designated by the /- symbol – was 12 pence when we had 240 pence to a £, but it equals 5p in modern money i.e. that 18 shillings a week translates to 90p… but with inflation since 1910 the modern equivalent would be £105.13.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(13) Mary Anne: written by Fred W. Leigh (1871-1924) and music-hall singer George Bastow (1872-1914), who recorded it in 1911; see lyrics at http://mainlynorfolk.info/folk/songs/maryanne.html <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(14) May 31-June 1, 1916, the biggest naval battle of WW1, a total of 25 British and German ships were sunk and 8,600 seamen killed. The outcome remains disputed but all the statistics suggest a British defeat.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(15) On the Western Front that same summer of 1916 and on through to the early winter – Sam was to fight there for five months.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">And now two anecdotes of the outdoor life, in different senses, one a farcical night “in the wilds” with a bunch of mates (this vaguely reminds me of <i>The Blair Witch Project</i>), the other one of the main events of “Tommy”/Sam’s late schooldays – The Big Fight:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘That summer(15), Tommy sometimes joined a group headed by an Irish lad called Joe Sheahan who was a couple of years older than him and a very enthusiastic outdoors man.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Several of the lads followed Joe on one of his enterprises which was to get up early two or three mornings a week – before breakfast, around 6 o’clock – and run the three or four miles to a nearby town and a lake where swimming was allowed. Although it had an irregular shape, with islands and trees, chains fixed around the outer banks ensured you could always get hold of something to help you out of the water. They would run back home in time to eat and go to school.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> As the summer sun continued until autumn, Joe proposed they go and camp in the forest for a night or two. Tommy’s parents were difficult to persuade, but they agreed and furnished him with a little tea and something to eat. Joe provided two methylated water heaters. Each could boil a pint of water.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> They spent the day in and around the forest and, when it began to get dark, they brewed up. As night came on, the birds ceased their singing and new noises took over: the rustling of the trees, the leaves, odd branches cracking. Unexpected movements around them… in the end, without too much discussion, they grabbed up all their equipment and ran for it to the nearest road. They arrived home about 9 or 10, but in no mind to admit what had made them forsake their intended adventure.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> When he wasn’t off with Joe Sheahan’s group, Tommy often joined his schoolfriends, all aged 13 or so by then, to stage mock battles on the old brickfields. Each kiln had an open space in the middle, so they made good forts. But came the day when a rival gang, led by a boy called Wayland, started a quite vicious and serious attack – because, it seemed, they had a grudge against Tommy.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> This was hard for him to understand. No particular incident had provoked it. But he sensed it may have arisen from his close friendship with Charlie Bolton, the brainiest lad in the school (once Tommy’s brother George had left to go out to work). Within their own group, Charlie insisted on Tommy taking the lead in any activity such as the brickfield battles. Maybe he saw himself as the organiser of strategy and Tommy as the chief when it came to fighting (albeit play-fighting, usually). People did tend to cast Tommy in that role in his later life, for reasons he could never fathom; he always shed the ill-fitting cloak at the earliest possible moment.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> But Tommy had become aware that Wayland’s crowd referred to his group of quieter types who tried their best in class and did quite well as “The Good Boys”. When Tommy considered this, he realised that, while he and his friends pitched into school activities like the bazaar and the waxworks show, Wayland and company did not. Even though Wayland always appeared assured and competent, he spent his time criticising and complaining about teachers or anyone else in authority over the children. After the waxworks show </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">[see last week], <i>particularly, he started to behave towards Tommy as if he hated his guts. He insulted and persecuted him, as children can.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Then came the battle at the brickfield. Tommy and his friends took shelter in the middle of a kiln and returned the shower of bricks and pieces of brick coming their way. It went on for some time quite evenly until Tommy, standing up to look for a possible target, caught a brick on the top of his head. Then the battle stopped. A great deal of blood poured from the wound. The aggressors departed in a hurry and Tommy’s friends saw him home.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Over the following weeks, the one-sided feud took a strange turn. A boy called Hoy, normally a bad-tempered lone wolf who snapped at anybody who dared to disagree with him, seemed to appoint himself Wayland’s deputy. At school, he picked a quarrel with Tommy and a fight started. Tommy’s pals stopped it, but all agreed that the matter needed settling. Between them, they fixed a time and venue: lunch break the following day in the neglected field in front of the school (in a spot concealed from the main road by tall hoardings which Tommy remembered carrying huge pictures of the great John Philip Sousa(16) and his Military Band).<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> They didn’t make the arrangements in any casual way. Both boys appointed seconds – Tommy, naturally, had Charlie – and they asked another boy, Arthur Fowler, to referee because he had nothing to do with the conflict and both sides rated him a “good sport”. Son of a carpenter and joiner, Arthur was considered very affluent because he had a halfpenny a day pocket money compared to Tommy’s penny a week, but he’d often share his sweets with other boys, including Tommy.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> So, at midday, a crowd gathered, the two gangs among them, but keeping well apart as they filed through a gate into the field; fighting on school premises was forbidden but they understood this pre-arranged affair outside the grounds had the approval of AEP himself </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">[teacher AE Page, see blog two weeks ago]. <i>The two sides had agreed that each round should last only a minute, Arthur blowing his Scout whistle to signify start and end, as they didn’t have a bell. Between rounds they rested for two minutes and the bout was to continue for as long as they could keep going. All the “officials” saw that everything went according to the book(17).<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Tommy fell into the boxer’s stance he’d learnt during Boy Scout training and shuffled about. Bigger and stronger, Hoy lashed out frequently, but somewhat blindly. His face evinced murderous malice throughout. Tommy himself found real hatred rising in him as soon as the bout got going. He was being hurt. Yet a certain coolness, fruit of those boxing lessons, kept his emotions in check and helped to compensate for Hoy’s physical superiority.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> While resigned to a beating, Tommy got in the occasional whack. Round after round, the battle raged. Tommy’s mouth and face began to feel like a huge, puffed-up thing, ten times their actual size and, although, clearly, both boys were becoming exhausted, neither capable of landing a knockout blow, Tommy felt sure he was going to lose. How much longer could he hold out?, he wondered. When should they finish? When they sank to their knees? It seemed endless.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> With Hoy’s friends yelling at him to finish his foe off, by an indescribable piece of luck Tommy swung his arm over, missed his target and struck Hoy on the upper right arm. It dropped to his side and he yelled at Arthur, ”I can’t hold it up! It’s paralysed! It’s paralysed!” That finished it. Arthur awarded the win to Tommy, despite the opposition’s protests. Fearing a general attack, Tommy’s friends hurried him away, shouting congratulations and slapping him on the back – Tommy pretended to be unimpressed and said nothing about the sheer good fortune of the punch hitting a nerve to end the fight.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> While the others withdrew to the playground, Tommy ran off home, joyful yet scarcely aware of what he was doing, so great had been the strain of the punishment he had taken. When he got there he dashed to the sink, turned on the tap, and ran icy cold water over his face and neck time after time until the pain eased somewhat. Looking around, he saw a large basin full of Benger’s Food his mother had prepared for the baby(18). Without thought, he snatched this up and drank the lot.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Then he went upstairs and lay down on his bed, hoping to gain strength to face his mother, and then make his way back to school for the afternoon session. He made it, but went about as in a dream for several hours.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(15) Probably 1911, the year before my father left school; a heat wave set temperature records not broken until 1990 and the weather held until September.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(16) John Philip Sousa: 1854-1932, American composer and conductor of marches including The Stars And Stripes Forever. Of Spanish and Bavarian ancestry, he started out as an apprentice US Marine Bandsman and later ran his own band; by and amazing coincidence he developed the sousaphone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(17) In fact, the Queensbury Rules then in force for boxing included three-minute rounds and a one-minute break.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(18) “The baby”? Not Alf by this time. No mention of this boy’s birth in my father’s <i>Memoir</i>, but he was named John Fleetwood (from his mother’s maiden name), born April 1, 1911, at 26, Lowden Road, Edmonton – he died within a year having “failed to thrive” (three months later in 1912, Sam’s 12-year-old brother Frank Sydney died of diphtheria. My father mentioned neither death in his writings nor ever spoke of them to me, much though he talked about everything else in his early life so I never knew of the existence of either of these uncles of mine until I researched the family for these notes to the <i>Memoir</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Benger’s Food: an earlier Complan, made in Strangeways, Manchester, originated for the sick but used by the well too – a 1914 ad in <i>The Graphic </i>said “with this food the digestive system, whether enfeebled by illness, overwork or advancing age, is rested and restored, and while this takes place, complete nourishment is maintained… you never tire of it, as with ordinary milk foods”.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">This interim passage covers how he maintained contact with the Scouts and Mr Frusher after going out to work in 1912, aged 14:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘… he carried on with his Scouting activities, two meetings a week, Thursdays and Saturdays, and he now attended evening classes twice weekly too. It had been decided he should learn commercial book-keeping and typewriting, two useful skills whatever job he chose or had to do. So most of his weekdays concluded at about 9.30pm…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Tommy no longer had the benefit of free piano lessons from Mr Frusher </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">[see last week]<i>. Certain advantages available to a schoolboy were not on offer to the worker, however small his wage packet. But, as Scout- and choirmaster, the Governor – as the boys called Mr Frusher, though only in his absence – did provide compensations relative to Tommy’s age and new standing.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> He introduced new subjects to the Troop’s training schemes: so Tommy learnt signalling, semaphore and Morse code (the last, he particularly liked). Using flags – one for Morse, two for semaphore – and, at night, signal lamps, they sent messages across fair distances. Furthermore, after training at the church hall on Saturday afternoons, Tommy and other seniors could go to a rifle club where, for half an hour, they practised shooting on a covered range about 300 yards long, using old Army rifles (surplus from the Boer War, fitted with Morris tubes which allowed them to fire .22 ammunition). Supervisors checked their scores and entered them on competition cards. They paid a nominal sum for bullets used, but some kind person unknown had paid for their club membership. Dear old Frusher, they guessed.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> He also undertook courses in first aid. Adapting his instruction from the Red Cross manual, he paid a good deal of attention to treating wounds.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">And now comes a fateful, largely coincidental connection between all that outdoor activity, that fit and healthy life despite varying levels of poverty through the years, those skills learned in the Scouts and… what was to follow for “Tommy”/Sam’s entire generation. It’s early summer, 1914:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘However, he soon discovered that Scouts were not alone in camping out on the edge of London. Walking by himself one Sunday, Tommy came to a wide open space beside one of the main routes from London to the North(19) and he saw with great excitement that this usually uninspiring area had become a town of tents; soldiers with rifles on their shoulders, men filling bowls with water from tanks on wheels, then holding the bowls for one another to help with shaving and washing. They emptied the used water into a large hole dug for waste disposal.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Tommy watched it all, for an hour or more. In another area, men were cooking a meal in large containers heated by open fires in shallow trenches. They fried bacon, boiled water for tea. When the bugle sounded, the soldiers lined up in orderly fashion until the cooks forked and ladled good helpings of bacon and tea into their mess tins (the lid, with a folding handle, held solid foods or acted as a frying pan, the larger bottom part contained all liquids). Soon afterwards, the clatter of eating changed to the noises of an Army striking camp, taking down tents and packing them and generally getting ready for departure, their work accompanied by much banter and laughter…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Scouting, Tommy realised, had taught him a good deal that would be useful to a soldier. He could help erect a tent, use a rifle, and communicate efficiently by semaphore or Morse code or a simple field telegraph. As a Patrol Leader, he had acquired the ability to stand up in front of a group of lads and give brief orders.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> If any of these things might appear to have been intended to prepare youngsters for military service this was certainly not the intention behind Mr Frusher’s work. As a practising Christian, at heart a pacifist, he never said anything to Scout meetings about the war scare and the training had nothing of a military character to it – no yelling of orders or foot-stamping drill. Saluting, with three fingers raised and thumb and little finger touching, served as a frequent reminder of the three promises a Scout made when joining the movement.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(19) Probably the Great Cambridge Road, aka the Old North Road, now the A10.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">By September, 1914 “Tommy”/Sam and “George”/Ted had enlisted, underage both… and suddenly remembered their regular Scouts meeting. There Mr Frusher made one last, maybe despairing attempt to hold on to them… and, no doubt, their youth and innocence, even their lives:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘… </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">in all the excitement, he had overlooked Thursday evening’s meeting of his troop. In fact, having become a soldier, the thought of putting on the uniform of a Boy Scout suddenly seemed incongruous – more so when he briefly imagined appearing in front of the mass of men among whom he had spent recent days wearing the dented frontiersman’s hat, khaki shirt adorned with various badges and shoulder ribbons, short, blue knickers and bare knees, with, final touch, in his hand a stout five-foot staff. Yes, what sort of greeting would this apparition receive from that mixed crowd? Horrible thought.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> That Saturday afternoon, Ted and Tommy went along to the hall where the troop assembled. They intended to tell Mr Frusher they were now soldiers and would therefore have to give up membership of the troop. They arrived purposely a little late, perhaps 20 minutes after the usual time, assuming the programme for the afternoon would by then have commenced without help from them. They would have a few words with the Governor, then walk out, severing the association of several years just like that.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> “There you are, at last, and not in uniform. Is something wrong, Mr Norcliffe?” This to Ted, now a qualified assistant Scoutmaster, therefore addressed as a man. “Do please tell me about it.” Ted explained and Mr Frusher’s usually pale face flushed. This may have been due to relief that nothing awful had occurred in the Norcliffe family, but Tommy, studying the Governor’s bearded face, suspected that annoyance really caused the blush, which was accompanied by three rapid blinks and a long stare – signs of his inner struggle to subdue anger.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> When Ted ventured to speak of leaving the Scouts, back came the assertion, “Once a Scout, always a Scout!” and the brothers found themselves assigned to their respective duties for that afternoon and getting on with them – after having exchanged glances which conveyed the advisability of tolerance and co-operation at this juncture.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Tommy’s feelings were strangely mixed. Facing his patrol he felt it was good to be back among familiar faces and subjects and where his falsehood regarding his age was of no consequence. No exciting, unknown future. Here, he would always be allowed to play his small part. This thought helped to soften his sadness at the coming separation from familiar faces and places. He knew the new life to which he was committed would have some awful periods, but youthful optimism kept him from dwelling on such possibilities.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> The meeting over, Mr Frusher called his seniors together, told them of the brothers’ enlistment and expressed the hope that all the others would not desert him. Those able to give assurances did so, but the senior assistant Scoutmaster had to tell him that, as an officer in the Royal Navy Voluntary Reserve, he would have to report for duty shortly. The brothers promised they would give what help they could in future, but they said their goodbyes just in case military duties prevented their return.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> The farewells might have been said with deeper regret had those present been able to foresee that years would pass before the few who survived would be able to get together again.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">All the best</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">– <i>FSS</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Next week: RETRO 6 – Sam, 14, has to leave school for lack of money and starts his two years in the world of work before… he jumped at becoming a Tommy: he comes a cropper over walking sticks; as a junior office boy at a tin-mining company in the City he encounters the class system and all its fine tunings of English snobbery as tutored by “Sergeant”, the company Commissionaire; he… discovers great working-men’s caffs and snaffles crumbs (and cigars… and gin) from the rich men’s table… makes a foolish foul-up of a near-romance… and, by the time he’s 16, finds himself looking down the barrel of a working-lad’s wasted life existential blues…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote <i>Nobody Of Any Importance</i>, a <i>Memoir </i>of his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
FootSoldierSamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01449820798842961719noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545275143240244101.post-72206810273438684632019-06-02T00:30:00.000-07:002019-06-02T08:17:13.169-07:00The Making Of Foot Soldier Sam 4 – 1903-1912: Young Sam gets religion, after a fashion… observing churchpeople from romance to fire-and-brimstone and earnest striving to rise up from poverty to respectability via fêtes and a church-hall soirées… then free piano lessons from the Vicar stir his lifelong love of music and life begins to bloom (despite the rather odd sex education sessions)…<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Name="toa heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Closing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Message Header"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Salutation"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Date"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text First Indent"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text First Indent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Block Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Hyperlink"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="FollowedHyperlink"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Document Map"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Plain Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="E-mail Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Top of Form"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Bottom of Form"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal (Web)"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Acronym"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Address"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Cite"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Code"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Definition"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Keyboard"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Preformatted"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Sample"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Typewriter"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Variable"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal Table"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="annotation subject"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="No List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Contemporary"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Elegant"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Professional"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Subtle 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Subtle 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Balloon Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Theme"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" QFormat="true"
Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="41" Name="Plain Table 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="42" Name="Plain Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="43" Name="Plain Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="44" Name="Plain Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="45" Name="Plain Table 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="40" Name="Grid Table Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="Grid Table 1 Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51" Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52" Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="List Table 1 Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51" Name="List Table 6 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52" Name="List Table 7 Colorful"/>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18pt;">Memoir(1)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> – 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 </i>Memoir<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, added
documentation.</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 16.0pt;">For details of how to buy the <i>Memoir</i> or
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Gallipoli<span style="color: purple;"> </span><span style="color: #161616;">& </span>Somme<span style="color: #8b5200;"> &</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200; font-size: 16.0pt;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200; font-size: 16.0pt;">Arras 1918/POW</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200; font-size: 16.0pt;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200; font-size: 16.0pt;">etc </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616; font-size: 16.0pt;">mini-e-books click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=4897427382137035394;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=4;src=pagename"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">here</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616; font-size: 16.0pt;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 16.0pt;">plus see reader reviews </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=6753328261534245137;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=1;src=pagename"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">here</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 16.0pt;"> and </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=8857004925280018109;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=2;src=pagename"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">here</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and reviews from the
Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association here.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 16.0pt;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616; font-size: 16.0pt;">For AUDIO excerpts click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/footsoldiersam"><span style="color: #0010ee; font-size: 16.0pt;">Here</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #7c4000; font-size: 16.0pt;"> Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nobody-Of-Any-Importance-A-Foot-Soldiers-Memoir-of-WW1/300782296758247"><span style="color: #0010ee; font-size: 16.0pt;">Here</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 16.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 9.25pt; tab-stops: 21.3pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 9.25pt; tab-stops: 21.3pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">The war’s over at last – but Sam’s blog,
Facebook page and tweets will continue until his </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">Memoir <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">concludes with the Centenary of the July 19,
1919, Peace parade in London…<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 16.0pt;">All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d; font-size: 16.0pt;">Memoir<i> will always go to the
British Red Cross – and the current running donations total as of May 1, 2019,
is £4,178.05 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the
"edit" tool has vanished!).</i></span><span style="color: black; font-size: 16.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">Dear all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 9.25pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 21.3pt 56.65pt 85.0pt 113.35pt 141.7pt 170.05pt 198.4pt 226.75pt 255.1pt 283.45pt 311.8pt 340.15pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">A hundred years ago
this week, in the aftermath of the Armistice… On June 2, 1919, the Paris Peace
Conference machinery spat out one of the unilaterally-drafted treaties it was
producing quite regularly during its final weeks – this one addressed to
Austria featured accepting responsibility for the war and hefty reparations
(the Austro-Hungarian Empire had already dissolved). Austria resisted signing…<br /><span style="font-size: 18pt;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Otherwise, post-war unrest proceeded in every way imaginable.
Actual wars featured: the Khaibalikend Massacre (June 5-7) which saw 6-700
Armenian civilians killed by Azeri and Kurdish troops and “irregulars”, the
attack organised by a Nagorno-Karabakh governor-general the British military
had installed earlier in the year; Finland declaring war on Bolshevik Russia (June
6), over the ownership of border territory Karelia, making official the Aunus
Expedition by “volunteers” who had begun a sort of invasion on April 21; </span><span style="font-size: 18pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Ukraine launching the Chortkiv Offensive
against Poland in an attempt to annex Eastern Galicia (June 8-28); General Denikin’s
Southern White Russian force advancing against the Bolshevik Army (8).
Tenuously related perhaps, US Marines landed in Costa Rica and in due course helped
overthrow the dictator – who happened to threaten US control of neighbouring
Nicaragua.<br /></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">The UK, involved all over the shop, sent reinforcements for the
doomed Archangel venture in northern Russia (June 3), while British troops
fired on and killed four of a rioting crowd in Valletta, Malta (7), who were
protesting against post-war food shortages and stirring towards independence.
At home, race riots occurred through the month in Liverpool and Cardiff as
white and black workers clashed because of tensions caused by demobilised
servicemen taking jobs (the National Archive records that the Government responded
by repatriating 600 black people).<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">And, variously – the only “theme” would be general upheaval – a referendum in the Ålund Islands voted 95 per cent for a transfer from Finland
to Sweden, but it never happened because the League Of Nations wouldn’t allow
it (June 1), and in America eight mail bombs exploded and hurt no one (8) but
fuelled the then current Red Scare.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16.0pt;">[</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16.0pt;">Memoir<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller
Sam Sutcliffe </i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16.0pt;">from Edmonton, north London,</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16.0pt;"> 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), </span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16.0pt;">then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons </span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16.0pt;">(Blogs May 15 to
September 25, 2016)</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16.0pt;">… until</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16.0pt;"> 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 Battalion
(Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017).</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16.0pt;"> </span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><br /></span></i>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16.0pt;">During
this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench
warfare’s privations. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France –
reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied around Arras
until mid-March when he ran into his own Essex </span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16.0pt;">2/7th </span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16.0pt;">Battalion.
They moved into the trenches near Fampoux 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 doing hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany and
finally moving westwards to Lorraine – whence, the day after Armistice, his
long trek towards the French Front began. He reached safety after tiptoeing
through a German minefield (November 15 probably). Then began his recovery from
chronic near-starvation – and a brief emotional breakdown – until, finally, on
December 10, 1918, he returned to England and another few days in hospital
before reuniting with parents and siblings, especially brother Ted, home on a
week’s leave but suffering badly from gas damage. </span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><br /></span></i>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16.0pt;">Civilian life offered Sam a
warm welcome… until, in February 1919, the Army called him back - though only
to a “Dad’s Army” unit. Meaning, at first, a few weeks </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16.0pt;">de facto<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> holiday in Brighton. But then, something
completely different… through the spring, Sam and others ex-POWs guard German
POWs at a camp in Sussex, while making various attempts to get back to “normal”
life… At which point, for the time being, the story breaks off as explained
below…]</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 9.25pt; tab-stops: 21.3pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">FOOTSOLDIERSAM
SPEAKS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">RETRO 4: With my father, Signaller
Sam Sutcliffe’s a-century-ago-this-week(ish) story taking a break – because he
just didn’t write enough about his late spring/early summer period of 1919 –
I’m revisiting the (in-hindsight) theme of his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Memoir</i>’s opening chapters about his childhood and teens: that is, The
Making Of Foot Soldier Sam, the young Tommy who got through Gallipoli, the
Somme, the Spring Offensive and eight months as a POW… to peace and a normal
life. <br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 9.25pt; tab-stops: 21.3pt 49.65pt 13.0cm 375.65pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">So, Retros 1 and 2 covered a) his wealthy toddlerhood in
Manchester for just a couple of years after his birth (on July 6, 1898) and
then, after the collapse of the family tile business, real hungry poverty in
London b) his developing immersion in the tumultuous life of 1900s Edmonton, a
suburb then on the northern edge of north London – streets full of horses, cattle
and sheep (on the hoof to the butcher), roads thrusting out into the
surrounding countryside and a market place steaming with humanity, tooth and
claw.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">Last week, The Making Of 3 covered his
schooldays, including a gradual discovery of his own talents, despite
relentlessly daunting comparisons with his older brother Ted’s sparky
brilliance, and the frustration of both boys when they had to leave education
at 14 for lack of money to pay for more.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">Now, these excerpts illustrate his relationship with the church –
which is to say various churches. He doesn’t seem to have been a particularly
“religious” child/young man in the theological sense and barely mentions any
kind of deity throughout the Memoir. But, around a basic faith and involvement
in church activities, he drew much-observed knowledge of human life and the
youthful moral standards he was to maintain throughout the war.<br /></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">The children (four of them then, Ciss, Ted,
Sam and Sidney; Alf arrived in 1903) had attended a church in Tottenham when
they first came down from Manchester to London in 1901/2. But they had to start
again when they moved to Edmonton a year or so later when Sam (</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">born on July 6, 1898) </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">was </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">5 or 6. And as soon as they
settled, Sam’s mother looked for a church the children could attend…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">(NB: my father wrote the
early chapters in the third person, calling himself “the boy” and then “Tommy”,
while he temporarily aliased Ted as “George”.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">‘Not long after the family’s arrival in this growing suburb,
it had occurred to mother that church attendance would be good for the
children. She probably would not have time for it herself and father would not
want to do anything of that sort because the religion to which he had been
slightly attached in Manchester was Unitarianism and there was no branch of
that somewhat obscure sect nearby. So sister </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">[Ciss, 10 by then]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> was given the job of seeking out a suitable
place…<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">Somebody told her
about a small church half a mile along the road – a “tin church”, they called
it. She set off one Sunday with the other children and found it standing back
from the main road, surrounded by rough grass. They were accepted immediately
and, each according to their age, given a place in a Sunday school class.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><br />The tin church had
a small hall attached with, at one end, a platform bearing a small organ, its
pipes brightly painted, and a couple of tables at which sat the people who were
going to conduct the service. To the side of the platform stood two tall,
anthracite stoves of roughcast metal, their chimneys poking out through the
roof. With them alight, the place warmed up comfortably. The stoker was a Mrs
Pavitt – small, thin, wispy grey hair, toothless, pale blue eyes, a sort of
smile from time to time. She seldom spoke but worked very hard to keep this
place warm and clean even though the odd shilling or two would be all that this
poor community could afford to pay her.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">At the organ for a
rousing hymn, a tall, young man called Cyril Smith perched on a stool, his
rather lank hair flopping down over his forehead – but a nice face with a good
smile. The preacher would read aloud a verse of Rally Round The Banner or some
similar lively, lilting, marching sort of hymn, then off Cyril would swing and
the congregation heartily followed, singing various parts to the best of their
ability. Turning the pages of the sheet music for him, if necessary, and
keeping close to him, was his girlfriend… I suppose you would call her.
Marjorie Peters had blue eyes, bulging somewhat, a broad nose, very prominent,
front top teeth, healthy colour in her cheeks and as tall as Cyril. A
well-matched pair. She too played the organ and socked out those bracing hymns.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><br />Two men took
charge of the service for the whole congregation. Two very different types. Mr
Reardon, rather flat of foot, average height, a good head of hair and a droopy
moustache, much given to smiling. When he preached a sermon or composed a
prayer there was gaiety to it, happiness, and he played a very sweet euphonium
when they went out to sing their hymns in the street. Mr Reardon worked as an
insurance agent, collecting local people’s pennies and halfpennies door to
door.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">His opposite
number, Gillette, had a deep bass voice, splendidly underpinning the hymns… When
they sang, Gillette’s face was white, but his eyes burned. Young, with a blue
chin and a big Adam’s apple, when he preached it was with all the depths of
sincerity he could muster. His strong speaking voice was just the vehicle to
transport the brimstone and fire which would be slopped over the people should
they stray from the narrow, straight path. Yet, while he stood on that small
platform, his eyes would stray to follow Marjorie Peters’s every movement, and
when he sang solos to her organ accompaniment his loud voice became harsh with
emotion, his face more lugubrious every time he looked her way.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">The children in
the choir and congregation noticed every detail. “Cor, look at his dial now!”
they’d mutter. They felt that his unrequited love for her was a little local
tragedy in which they were all, to some extent, concerned… All this lent a
little colour to those parts of the service which might otherwise have seemed
dull.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">On Sunday afternoons
the children went to Sunday school and sat at benches arranged in groups around
the teacher’s chair. Tommy’s group had a Mr Blackhead, a little man, ashen of
face, a bluish, shaved-but-still-visible beard, black, wavy hair, small, dark
eyes, 45 perhaps. Certainly, he wasn’t an open-air type and one could assume
that he worked in a foundry… <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you
happened to sit near him his sourish breath would come floating over… His class
was useful in that it helped to pass the time…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><br />One sunny Sunday
evening, the smiling and happy Reardon stood on the platform, euphonium under
arm, and called upon the brothers to sally forth into the streets and take the
message to the people. With Cyril and Marjorie carrying a small harmonium
between them, the whole congregation set off. In a side street, they formed a
circle, the harmonium in the middle. All had their hymn books with them and,
led by the two instruments, they sang heartily. “Happy day, happy day, when
Jesus washed my sins away/He taught me how to watch and pray.” If the little
bag passed around at one of these street meetings realised two or three
shillings, that would be a very good evening.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">Over the year or
so during which the children attended that chapel, they put the odd ha’pennies
and pennies they’d saved into the annual outing fund – a trip to the sea, the
crowning day of the year for the children. When it arrived, their excitement
was intense. The Sunday-school teachers took them to the nearest railway
station where they boarded a specially chartered train. The cost per head must
have been very small.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">Tommy paid no
attention to the name of their destination, but the thing he did remember was
the tea. Lots of women bustling about ushered them into a big hall, hustling
them towards trestle tables. Enamel mugs full of lovely tea. Bread and butter.
Butter! What a treat. And cake. Plenty of cake. The cake did smell lovely, it
really thrilled Tommy.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">Despite that pleasant
interlude, after a few months, Sam/”Tommy” and siblings found they had to
change their place of worship again – reaping accidental benefits for their
beleaguered father:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">‘After all that, mother suddenly discovered they had gone to
the wrong church! Had sister taken them just a little further along and to the
right side of the main road they would have found a Church of England. Another
tin church – corrugated iron, that is.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">As mother reminded
them, they had been christened into the C of E** shortly after their arrival in
London. At that time a lady had called and given them some little silvery sweets
which they had relished. She chatted with mother, told her she was a visitor
from a nearby church, and learned of the family’s circumstances. So she sent
along some very useful things: a sack of coal and a few items of food.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">Mother could do no
less than take the children along to that church and have them christened… they
had joined the C of E fold and now the discovery of the correct tin church
began a better and very interesting phase in the life of the family.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">This was a mission
church.*** A large church in the wealthy part of the West End of London had set
aside a fund to establish a mission among the poor people living in these
semi-developed outer-London suburbs. There was no real hint of snobbery or
class in this. The clergyman received a very small salary.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">He turned out to
be a very likeable man. Glanfield Rowe was his name… As was the custom, soon
after the children joined his congregation, he visited their home. He met
mother and later father also. Mr Rowe being a reasonably well-educated man,
father felt that here was somebody to whom he could talk freely.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">The two met on several
occasions, on one of which father was persuaded to change his faith and be
baptised into the Church of England… The collapse of the family business in
Manchester had dealt a severe blow to father. Ever since he had become rather
timid and fearful. But his association with the rector in this small church
seemed to stiffen his morale a bit. He got a slightly better job as an
under-manager in the shipping firm for which he was working and this meant a
small rise in salary.’<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">** Records for the parish
of St. Olave, Woodberry Down, Middlesex, show four children baptised on
September 17, 1902: Dorothy (“Ciss”), Philip Broughton (“Ted”), Charles Samuel,
and Frank Sidney. Woodberry Down is just south of Tottenham where the family
first lived on coming to London. <br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">*** The mission church
movement within London began about 1880; maybe the “tin church” was what one
web source describes as the “iron room” (as in “corrugated iron”?) put up in
1904 on the northern side of Malden Road, Edmonton, but there seem to have been
several others in the district.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">Here, looking back from his
70s when he wrote the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Memoir</i>, Sam
notes how church society eased some of poverty’s oppressions – but not all by
any means:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">‘…many did survive on the tiniest of incomes, like Tommy’s
family, keeping at least an outward appearance of what was called
respectability. They frequently suffered deprivations in their home. But even
in those circumstances, they could still find energy and time to do a little to
help others, as with church work. But the toll on nerves, the irritation, the
bitterness, the feeling of instability and fear of even worse overtaking them
often blighted the lives of people who were doing their best to keep things
going under difficult circumstances. And of course, the children often suffered
the lash of the tongue or the slap of the hand, not always deserved.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">Still, “Tommy”/Sam’s father
felt uplifted by the contribution he could make, with Glanfield Rowe’s
encouragement:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">‘In due course, Mr Rowe persuaded father and, to some
extent, mother to play a more active part in church events. Father became
secretary of the men’s club – its purpose to provide an hour or two’s friendly
entertainment to the members of the congregation.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">The parson’s
ambitions soared and he organised a committee to draw up the plans for a garden
f</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16.0pt;">ê</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">te. One of the more wealthy local residents was persuaded to
permit the use of his fairly extensive grounds. Of course, the committee took
several months to organise the day. Various people were voted into taking care
of specific tasks. Father was voted treasurer. Mother undertook to be in charge
of the food and drink side. From its original small concept onwards, it had
begun to grow into quite a large affair. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">Tommy and his
brother were to take their turn selling ice cream – made by a local shopkeeper
– in cornets and wafers. With no bulk manufacturer then, each trader made his
own in a small machine and supplied it in cylinders… They set them up on a
stand constructed by a carpenter member of the congregation.<br /></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">The aim was to
raise as much money as possible for a fund dedicated to building a new church
hall. Since this was a mission church, for every £100 raised the mother church
would certainly contribute at least another £100. Everybody worked to that end.
The parishioners were poor, but it looked as though the women had been working
very hard to make clothes to wear on the day, sewing their own dresses and decorating
hats… Their appearance on the day did them credit. The men couldn’t afford new
suits, but those they had were clean, the trousers pressed, and they all looked
fine. A feeling of brotherhood and endeavour prevailed.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">You see here the beginnings of a change in the life of the
family. Formerly prosperous and then down to the depths of poverty and despair,
they were now getting integrated into a community at times. The parents became
known by the people in that district and, although very poor, seemed the better
for it – especially father, through his part in the church men’s club.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">Soon after the f</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16.0pt;">ê</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">te, the new church hall was built and the club had the good
fortune to be given the use of a large room with a full-size billiard table and
equipment for other games. The wives provided light refreshments and Tommy
remembered his mother sewing the heavy leather cloth together for the cover to
spread over the billiard table at close of play. A nice, social atmosphere
developed and when the boy was allowed into the club room for a few moments, he
noticed the difference in his father. That normally quiet, sometimes morose man
became quite affable among other men, smiling, chatting away in a manner which
Tommy had thought impossible.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">… mother and
father took part in more social events there. They organised dances – the
music, the catering. They would plague the local shopkeepers for assistance,
donations in kind. Tea, sugar, anything of that sort, lemonade, ice cream –
generally members of the congregation, of course, the shopkeepers must have
suffered a sort of sweet blackmail at times to get them to part with stock they
could hardly afford to give away. But commerce and religion were closely
linked; the tradesmen did tend to join the church they thought would bring them
the most customers.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">The dances gave
amateur musicians the chance to show their skill. At first, the band consisted
of violins, mandolins, a cello, a bass, kettle and bass drums. They gave a
swing to it. Old-time dances. Valetas and other waltzes. Humble though the
company, a mantle of great decorum, restraint and respectability descended on
them when they took to the floor, partly because they had a professional MC. As
was the custom, dressed in tails, with a large buttonhole and white gloves, he
occupied the centre of the dance floor and took strict control. During each
dance, he would take a lady round and demonstrate the steps, beating time, and
talking to each couple in turn, ensuring that they followed his instruction.<br /><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><br /></span></i></span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">The price of
admission included the purchase of a dance card for each lady, a booklet
really, printed on stiff board with a pencil attached on a silky cord. When
approached for a dance, the lady would note the name of the applicant against
the numbered dance of her choice.</span></i></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">You couldn’t be
glum on such occasions, each helping as much as he could. They were all learning
to conduct themselves in a nice, happy way with their fellows, the ordinary
poor people and those few with a little more money joining together…’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">Happy as he was at this tin
church, the lad was to undertake one further ecclesiastical transfer. It came about
through Mr Frusher, already his Scoutmaster. “Tommy”/Sam must have been ten or
eleven by then, because the Scouts didn’t establish themselves as a national
organisation until May, 1908, two years after Baden Powell’s “Brownsea
experiment”. This change was significant for Sam because it opened the door to
his lifelong delight in playing piano and in music generally:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">‘Suddenly a change occurred for Tommy. In charge of the
Scout Troop was a cultured man, whose name I’ve mentioned in passing – Mr Frusher,
who was also the vicar, the organist and choirmaster at the parish church. He
had private means, being a member of the family which owned and controlled the
three local newspapers (he took no active part in the business, concerning
himself with the church and the Scout movement). He approached Tommy at one of
the Scout gatherings and said, “I’d like you to join the church choir. Ask your
parents if they will be agreeable. It will mean you changing your church.” The
full C of E church – as opposed to their familiar “tin” mission – was a mile
and a half further away from Tommy’s house</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">****<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">. But the parents agreed to the move.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">Tommy joined the
choir having only just passed the vocal test, which proved pretty strict… Mr
Frusher’s eventual approval surprised him – as did the small payments to be had
from singing with the choir. Four times a year the Sunday collection would be
shared among the members – a fair amount, for the congregation filled the
building.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">The vicar, an MA,
was a Cambridge graduate and a fellow of Trinity College, the Royal Academy of
Music, and the Royal College of Organists too…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>with his dome of a head, his powerful voice and perfect diction, he had
the gift of making people believe that all was well in this best of all worlds;
after his sermons, they would leave the church feeling secure, strong,
fortified, ready to meet the trials of the coming week…<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">[For choir practice]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> at the very large organ, controlling all
the musical proceedings from the height of his stool, sat Mr Frusher, whom
Tommy liked and respected so well. A mirror above the keyboards gave him a
complete view of the choir and the younger members were well aware of that so
no misbehaviour ever occurred during the service.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">The usual Sunday
evening saw this grand church, almost a cathedral, completely filled with
people and everybody enjoying the singing. None more heartily, I fear, than
Figgy Avverdate – extremely tall, ragged clothes, a pot hat on the back of his
head, a face of extreme ugliness with bloodshot, bulging eyes, beetling brows
and a high forehead, a fattened nose, his mouth surly when closed and
displaying blackened fangs when open, a dirty rag round his long, scrawny neck,
a discarded long, black gent’s morning coat worn and torn, trousers of
indescribable filth, and on his feet big, club-soled boots, the toes cut away
to reveal corny toes and bunions. On the street, he would usually stand leaning
against a wall, a figure of dread to all children.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">So a new world
opened up: music. Tommy’s training was strict and very detailed and he felt his
life becoming quite full… Mr Frusher had a big house, much too big you might
say for one man and his housekeeper – she and her family occupied the basement.
But the whole place was well used. He had two music rooms, one at the front on
the ground floor, the other on the first floor, and each contained a Bechstein
piano. He used the breakfast room, at the rear on the ground floor, for choir
or Scouts meetings and a large back room on the second floor for church
committee meetings and the Sunday afternoon class.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">Picture Mr Frusher
of medium height, well-built, wearing a beard, pointed, and the then
fashionable pince-nez. Most days he wore a frock coat with a silk hat and
striped trousers. Tommy used to love looking at the boots he wore; without
toecaps, of fine soft leather, kept in good condition by his housekeeper. He
was one of those cold-bath-in-the-morning men. He would sometimes describe with
relish how he had broken the ice. The water was poured out the night before into
his hip bath in his bedroom where there was no heating (it was not customary
except in case of sickness). His working day, training people to play the
piano, started at 9.30am and went through to maybe 6pm. Comfortably off, he
varied his terms according to each pupil’s financial position.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">Around that time,
Tommy heard how this good man had been engaged to be married some years
previously, but the girl died of consumption. He had been very broken up and
went to live in Switzerland. Some regarded this as a selfish thing. But there
was the possibility of him having contracted this highly contagious disease and
Switzerland was the recognised place for curing, or at least alleviating the
condition. He came back to this life and devoted all his waking hours to
church, music and the Scouts. Many boys were the better for these activities
and the older ones maintained contact with him even if they went abroad.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">All that left two
evenings vacant for Tommy, but before long he joined the vicar’s class to learn
music. The children could afford to buy only one type of instrument, the
flageolet, big brother of the tin whistle. The vicar gave them sheets of music
in staff notation and Tommy had no difficulty in playing the tunes as soon as
he mastered the simple technique of covering half the hole to play the
half-note. The two- and three-part arrangements provided by Mr Frusher sounded
very good – rather like the recorders children play nowadays.’<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">**** All Saints, on
Church Street, Edmonton, still occupies the site of a church built in the early
12th century and a few fragments of the Norman original remain in the west
wall. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">Aside from the choir
repertoire and the flageolet tunes, “Tommy”/Sam had already developed a liking
for the pop music of the day through the church dances and the cylinders of
music hall songs one of the family’s lodgers used to play on his phonograph –
Sam recalled ‘… When Father Painted The Parlour, along with other more
sentimental numbers’ and ‘the little group sitting round listening, the comfort
and companionship of the room’. He was about to develop his natural gift via
setting himself a very tricky challenge:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">‘At home, Tommy’s parents made an important addition to the
furniture in the front room – the parlour, as they called it. A friend of
Tommy’s sister told her that, her father having died and her mother being
compelled to let half of the house, an old piano had to go. It was completely
out of tune and very old, but when it was mentioned to mother she agreed to
have it. She paid only a few shillings, just for carriage. The piano looked
extraordinary; very tall – almost three times the height of modern pianos –
with ornamental woodwork, candlesticks and red silk curtains covering the front
part of it above the old, yellowed keys.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">Tommy, already
much interested in music, made a wild promise to tune it. He felt sure he could
do it by ear. He’d seen a man in the local piano shop doing it: the tool, the
“key”, he used on the screw at the top of each string, turning it this way and
that until it sounded right. Tommy discussed it with his friends and one young
man said that, if Tommy took an impression of the shape of the screw at the top
of each string, at his place of work he could make a tool to fit.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">Tommy mentioned
his intention to Mr Frusher. A rather derisive smile greeted the proposition,
but he gave Tommy a tuning fork for A. With this to guide him, he used the key
to get the middle note right and the rest followed from that. The complete job
took a long time. Day after day, in his spare moments he’d be sitting there
tapping away on the keys and turning the screws until his ear told him it was
as near as he would get. The deep bass remained questionable, the ear alone
could not get that correct. But he had the beginnings of a piano. Good enough
to play with one finger.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">When he told Mr
Frusher he’d about finished the job, curiosity overcame the choirmaster and he
had to call round and see it. Although, when he played a few bars on this
thing, his face betrayed a degree of pain, still he complimented the lad on
what he’d done and said, “If you like, I’ll give you a few lessons. You already
know something of music. I’ll teach you the scales and arpeggios and so forth
and we’ll see how you get on.”<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">Thereafter, Tommy
took a half hour’s lesson every week – free, for Tommy’s parents couldn’t
afford to pay, of course – all scales as promised, apart from the odd small
practice piece. Scales of every key and major harmonic or melodic minor. Mr
Frusher’s lessons concentrated on getting the fingers supple, in the correct
position, covering the correct notes. Tommy would faithfully carry out the
practice as directed by the master and then, at the end of each session, he
would treat himself to a little informal tinkering about on the keys, perhaps
working out a few bars of a popular tune, a music-hall ditty.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">At school,
generally, he was quite happy. But soon his piano studies gave him a chance for
more enjoyment and to enhance his standing among his classmates – all because
of the scholarly teacher’s willingness to encourage any special talent he might
find among the boys. When he heard about Tommy taking lessons from Mr Frusher,
he had the school piano wheeled right through from the hall into the classroom,
sat Tommy down, fixed his music upon the rest, and said, “Right, well, play”.
And he did. A popular piece of the day called Blake’s March and, after that,
one of the simple songs he had learnt. For his age, he played very well. The
class felt somehow relaxed, relief from pressure, and Tommy’s performance
became a regular feature of Friday afternoons for several weeks in succession.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">“Tommy”/Sam’s busy programme
of Scouts, choir, music lessons and school carried him happily through from 10
to 14, 1908-12. Then he had to leave school for lack of cash, as recounted in
last week’s blog. Although, about the time he went out to work he even had to
leave the choir because his voice broke, in one area of life he actually came
more firmly under Mr Frusher’s mentorship, specifically his teaching of the
bold yet puritanical sexual morality which was to guide (you might think
“restrict” – a matter of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tempora</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mores</i>…) the lad throughout the war:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">‘A subtle change occurred in Mr Frusher’s treatment of these
seniors, both as Scouts and members of his church. Consultation with them about
the organisation of events and outings became his new approach where,
previously, he had taken charge. Those who had, before their voices broke,
served as choirboys under him and attended Sunday school, he now invited to
separate meetings. Like the first-aid classes, these took place at his house.
Usually, they took the form of a discussion, on Biblical subjects mostly,
chaired by the Governor </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">[the lads’ nickname for Frusher]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">. He did not repeat Sunday school’s childish views of the book’s
teaching and stories, instead suggesting more earthy explanations.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">On these
occasions, Mr Frusher even led discussions of men-women relationships.
Discouraging romantic notions without deriding them, the elderly, bachelor
teacher continued where the school lessons in anatomy and physiology left off.
“Frankness in these matters kills morbid curiosity,” he would say. He explained
the sex organs – particularly the female genital parts always omitted from the
school’s anatomical charts.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><br /></span></i>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">In a sensible way,
he described the feelings contact between the sexes could arouse, the actions
and the results that would follow: the girls in trouble, the unwanted babies;
the worry, regret, fear; the difficulties which beset a young man who has
fathered a bastard. He drew this picture so impressively the lads were never
likely to forget. In fact, he constantly impressed upon them that sexual
intercourse before marriage was wrong, a crime, it must never even be
considered, let alone indulged in.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">He instructed them
about another aspect of sexual development too: masturbation. He told them what
a habit it could develop into, assumed they had never done it – correctly in
most cases, thought Tommy – and assured them that if they never started they
would never be bothered by the habit. What he used to call “night losses” –
about which most young men know something – would, he believed, have an ill
effect on a lad. But they could be averted, he said, if you didn’t sleep on
your back. This could be achieved, he recommended, by tying a cotton reel or
bobbin round your waist and placing the uncomfortable object against the spine.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">But, beyond such
practical matters, he wished the lads to grow up as what he called “gentlemen”.
The girl being so constituted that marriage and child-bearing were the most
important things in her life, she would generally submit to a man’s desires –
after a certain amount of caressing had taken place – in spite of any advice
she may have received. Mr Frusher’s conclusion: the man – stronger, physically
and mentally – had a bounden duty to accept responsibility and ensure that nothing
occurred, when the girl was in his care, which he could not freely reveal to
her parents. The final word had a memorable simplicity to it: chivalry.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">Coupled with
lessons in physiology and home nursing, both part of advanced training for all
Boy Scouts, this early debunking of the sham romanticism so prevalent in those
days did help the boys. Furthermore, the Scout Code they had sworn to included
the words “To be pure in thought and word and deed”******; sticking to it
became a settled part of their life and conduct. Tommy remembered all these
things in the company of the girls with whom he occasionally formed
friendships. Some may have thought him reticent or slow, but all realised that,
at any rate, he was safe… ’<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">******
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16.0pt;">The tenth
article of Scout Law, added in the 1911 fourth edition of Baden-Powell’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scouting For Boys</i>.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">All the best</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> – <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">FSS</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">Next week: RETRO 5 – Young Sam and a
1900s city boy’s outdoor life. As per the jolly song of the day, the
poverty-ground family find they’re happy when they’re hiking out in the nearby
woods, and then he joins the Scouts and it’s all dibdib camping and dobdob…
signalling and shooting(!). Also, Sam meets the costermongers and their
backslang; top o’ reeb anyone?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">(1) In his
70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nobody Of Any
Importance</i>, a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Memoir</i> of his life
from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a
POW to the 1919 Peace parade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment--><br />FootSoldierSamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01449820798842961719noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545275143240244101.post-32144293422967798522019-05-26T00:30:00.000-07:002019-05-26T00:30:14.948-07:00The Making Of Foot Soldier Sam 3 – 1903-1912: school – teachers like Miss Thomas, Miss Smith, Mr Page… and Dizziba rambling about the Crimean War and never sparing the rod – infant embarrassments of the taken-short kind – trying to match his brother Ted – impossible!! – but not being “Stinker” Jackson at least – and Mrs Varley’s Waxworks, and posing as Shylock – and leaving, sadly, in 1912, because his parents couldn’t afford any more education for him…<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir(1) <i>– 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 </i>Memoir<i>, added documentation.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">For details of how to buy the <i>Memoir </i>or </span><span lang="EN-US">Gallipoli <span style="color: purple;"></span><span style="color: #161616;">& </span>Somme <span style="color: #8b5200;">&</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">Arras 1918/POW </span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">etc </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">mini-e-books click </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=4897427382137035394;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=4;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">plus see reader reviews </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=6753328261534245137;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=1;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">and </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=8857004925280018109;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=2;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;"> and reviews from the Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=7620675943831341074;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=0;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">. </span><span lang="EN-US"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">For AUDIO excerpts click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/footsoldiersam" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #7c4000;"> Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nobody-Of-Any-Importance-A-Foot-Soldiers-Memoir-of-WW1/300782296758247" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">The war’s over at last – but Sam’s blog, Facebook page and tweets will continue until his </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir <i>concludes with the Centenary of the July 19, 1919, Peace parade in London…<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">Memoir <i>will always go to the British Red Cross – and the current running donations total as of May 1, 2019, is £4,178.05 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!).</i></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Dear all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">A hundred years ago this week, in the aftermath of the Armistice… At the Paris Peace Conference a lot of deals got close to signed and sealed, but not the big ones (although the Supreme Council Of Allies meeting at Versailles did recognise the two white Russian leaders, Admiral Kolchak in the Urals and General Denikin in Galicia, to support them against the Bolsheviks, May 26). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> But some backstairs stuff seemed to be proceeding, such as the arrangement with UK only by which Belgium took over the Ruanda-Urundi (sic) part of former German East Africa as a mandate (May 30) – later confirmed/legalised by the still-emerging League Of Nations. Meanwhile, at the official top table, the UK Treasury’s financial representative at the talks, John Maynard Keynes, resigned from his post (26) because of fundamental disagreements with PM Lloyd George – Keynes, en route to becoming the 20th Century’s most influential economist, believed the level of reparations insisted on by the British and French would ruin Germany and damage the European economy (he may not have been far wrong…).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> All around Europe political jockeying and armed skirmishing continued. In Romania, the Bendery Uprising at Bender/Tighina saw local Russian Bolsheviks momentarily take over the town’s railway station, PO and telegraph office, before Romanian troops with French support got the insurrection suppressed by midnight (May 27; 150 rebels briskly executed). Armenia declared Independence from Russian rule without immediate uproar (28). British warships defeated a Bolshevik flotilla near Kronstadt, Gulf Of Finland (31). And, cheered on by the French who welcomes anything that might dilute Germany’s potential future power, the Rhineland declared itself an independent republic, its capital Wiesbaden (June 1).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> And the Third Anglo-Afghan War sprang to life again with a British siege of the walled fort at Spin Boldak (May 27; noted as the last British Army use of escalade ladders in battle), responded to by an Afghan attack on Thai fort (May 28 onwards) which was relieved by mainly Indian and Gurkha Regiments under the command of General Dyer, by then just six weeks on from ordering the infamous Amritsar Massacre.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">[</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Memoir <i>background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe </i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">from Edmonton, north London,</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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), </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">… until </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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 Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied around Arras until mid-March when he ran into his own Essex </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">2/7th </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Battalion. They moved into the trenches near Fampoux 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 doing hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany and finally moving westwards to Lorraine – whence, the day after Armistice, his long trek towards the French Front began. He reached safety after tiptoeing through a German minefield (November 15 probably). Then began his recovery from chronic near-starvation – and a brief emotional breakdown – until, finally, on December 10, 1918, he returned to England and another few days in hospital before reuniting with parents and siblings, especially brother Ted, home on a week’s leave but suffering badly from gas damage. Civilian life offered Sam a warm welcome… until, in February, 1919, the Army called him back - though only to a “Dad’s Army” unit. Meaning, at first, a few weeks </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">de facto <i>holiday in Brighton. But then, something completely different… through the spring, Sam and others ex-POWs guard German POWs at a camp in Sussex, while making various attempts to get back to “normal” life… At which point, for the time being, the story breaks off as explained below…]</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">RETRO 3: With my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe’s a-century-ago-this-week(ish) story taking a break –because he just didn’t write enough about his late spring/early summer period of 1919 – I’m revisiting the<i> </i>(in-hindsight) theme of his <i>Memoir</i>’s opening chapters about his childhood and teens: that is, The Making Of Foot Soldier Sam.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> In his <i>Memoir </i>he wrote a substantial section about the period from first memories, aged about two in his case, to 16 when war loomed. He had no ambition to be a soldier, but as it turned out this generally unplanned upbringing did frame the nature of the young Tommy who survived Gallipoli, the Somme, the Spring Offensive and eight months as a POW – never a hero, always doing his duty as best he could. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> So, Retros 1 and 2 comprised excerpts a) on his wealthy toddlerhood in Manchester for just a couple of years after his birth (on July 6, 1898) and then, after the collapse of the family tile business, real hungry poverty in London b) his developing immersion in the tumultuous life of 1900s Edmonton, a suburb then on the northern edge of north London – the streets full of animals, from horses hauling trams and carts to cattle and sheep on the hoof to the butcher, roads thrusting out into the surrounding countryside and a market place steaming with commerce of every sort from roughhouse pubs to pawnbrokers to a pharmacy and its disreputable competition, the quack doctor, vending “pills, potions and perorations”…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Now these excerpts take in his recollections of school, good and bad – though, on the whole, he did enjoy it as a relief from the grinding poverty and tensions of home life. In the move from wealth in Manchester to barely scraping by in London Sam did miss some schooling, despite a brief stint in “infants” in Tottenham. But when his mother decided they were settled in Edmonton, her thoughts turned at last to education. First she sorted out the three older children “Ciss” (really Dorothy, born 1894), “Ted” (really Philip, 1896) and Sam, not the toddler Sidney (1900), nor the baby Alf (1903). </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">(NB: my father wrote the early chapters in the third person, calling himself “the boy” and then “Tommy”, while Ted’s temporary alias was “George”).)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> So, The Making Of Foot Soldier Sam – School Days, 1903-12:</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘Now came the question of new schools for the children. Easily solved. An elementary school stood only a 10-minute walk from the house(2)… The two older children fitted into their class quite easily. But Tommy had been to school for only a brief period. Because of the moves from Manchester to London and then from one district to another, he had lost slightly over a year, so he went into the infants’ part of the new school. The alphabet, the abacus, and plasticine occupied his days for the first few weeks. Games. Dancing to music on the piano played by the teacher. And the maypole featured quite frequently.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Tommy soon acquired a regular way of living. After his breakfast of bread and margarine and a cup of tea, at 20 to nine he set off for school, ran along with the rest of the children and got there about 10 to. At nine, when a hand bell rang out, the children formed up into double lines, then marched into the assembly hall to a military tune played on the piano. Miss Smith was the pianist, a lady of 30 or so with a mop of curly hair not conforming to the usual fashion of the period. On the highly polished wood-block floor, small white crosses were painted about 30 inches apart. On each one stood a child. They took up the same positions every morning. It had been drilled into them.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> They faced the rostrum, a small raised stage with a handrail in front of it, occupied by three persons only. In the middle, the headmistress, a Miss Thomas: a short, sturdy, manly type of woman, ruddy cheeks, bright eyes, certainly knew her job – how to take control of this swarm of children and command silence when silence was needed, singing when singing was required. Everything worked like clockwork, fixing indelibly in Tommy’s mind a picture of the hall: the children standing in lines, Miss Thomas’s beady eye watching for the movement, the cough, the sniffle which she would not approve… it was really not allowed, you know. The children came to regard the good lady not with fear, but respect, and a wish to please her.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> To Miss Thomas’s left on the rostrum, Miss Smith – the joy it gave the lad when she played the piano… A feeling when he took his place in assembly each morning that everything was in order, was as it should be.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> The brief morning ceremony over, the children formed up again, each class in two lines. Their teachers then lead them off to the strains of another of Miss Smith’s stirring marches. In time to the beat – as best they could – they took their places at their desks and faced the teacher. A Miss Booth presided over Tommy’s class, a tall, stately lady who usually wore a velvet gown gathered in at the waist. An appearance of depth and stateliness, the ideal matronly figure to command the children’s respect. One look from her would subdue even the most difficult child.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> When morning school finished, Tom would be allowed to go home for lunch – home now a place where some food could be had, though never a satisfying meal, just enough to keep them going. Perhaps a cheap meat stew with a few vegetables. Puddings were out, of course. Money would never run to that.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Afternoons started at 2 o’clock. To Tommy they always seemed nicer, more friendly, warmer than mornings. He gradually became aware of the children around him in the classroom. To his right, a well-dressed and rather good-looking boy with a quite outstanding name: Nelson-Moxon. How did he come by it? Who were the Nelson-Moxons? What was his family doing in this poor neighbourhood? Nelson-Moxon. Tommy would repeat it to himself while considering these questions. Nelson-Moxon. What a grand name…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> To his left a little girl. Bright, rosy cheeks, merry eyes, dark hair… curls across her forehead. Always smiling. They became quite friendly. One day she held out her hand to him and they sat there listening to the teacher, holding hands. But disaster struck. Tommy felt a rumbling in his tummy and soon after that a dampish unpleasant something or other in the seat of his trousers. As realisation of what had happened came to him he freed his hand from the little girl’s grip, stood up, dashed down the gangway, out of the classroom, out of the school building, across the playground and the road and into the fields. So to the haven of home. His first romance shattered.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(2) Since the <i>Memoir</i>’s first edition in 2014, Stephanie M. MacDuff, a diligent and enthusiastic WW1 researcher and friend of <i>Nobody Of Any Importance</i>, has discovered that the children must have attended Eldon Road School, Edmonton, then surrounded by fields, now thronged with suburban streets (and an all-new building by the looks of it). Thanks to Stephanie for this and other points, from Phil pp Sam.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">At seven, back then, it seems children would move on from infants school to “junior mixed” until they were 10 – but for my father, as you’ll read, this period was curtailed so it may have run from 1905-7. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘Girls and boys together in classes learning simple arithmetic and reading. After two years in that class he was presented with a book as a prize. Then the head teacher, a kindly and, as the boy thought, good-looking lady spoke to him, asked his name and so forth, and had a conversation with his class teacher. As a result he moved upstairs to a boys-only department – all ages up to 14 in a series of classes.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> There, with space at a premium, the assembly hall had to be used for lessons. Partitions drawn across after assembly screened off two classes. Catching up quickly after his missing year, Tommy bypassed the lowest class. Unfortunately, this meant he never really learnt the geography of Britain, which caused him some inconvenience for years afterwards.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> He took a liking to his new form teacher, a young man called Parker, fresh from college. But, shortly, the teacher fell ill and for a couple of days the two groups in the assembly hall joined together and he came under the authority of a very strange man, elderly, with a grey, pointed beard, ruddy face, iron-grey hair and a tongue like a whiplash.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> The old boy rambled on, seldom sticking to one subject, telling the youngsters about the Crimean War, the price of tea shortly after it ended – apparently it soared to 8 or 9 shillings a pound and bread went up to a shilling a loaf… and similar bits of fruity information. But regularly, perhaps every ten minutes or less, he would call a lad forward from his desk, instruct him to hold out his hand and wham the cane down on it. Perhaps the boy had been doing something wrong, who knew? But surely that constant procession, wham, howl, surely they couldn’t all have been breaking the rules all the time.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> No indeed, that old fool was a relic of a previous age of education in this country when it was assumed that all boys were wicked, all boys were bad. Corporal punishment should be administered regularly to keep the little devils in hand.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> The stick as a means of maintaining discipline bred no respect in the children. The old boy’s nickname, “Dizziba”, in those days indicated the first stages of insanity. Even as he walked down the street the bigger lads would yell after him – if they could remain hidden – “Dizziba! Dizziba!”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> The contrast between that idiot and the young teacher when he returned from his illness was very marked. In most cases, the lads lapped his lessons up. Parker was carroty of hair, pale of face, a jutting jaw, height about 5’10”, broad-shouldered – just the type to become a sort of hero to the class. If his legs looked a little bandy, he was always nicely dressed – a rare sight for those boys, a nicely-dressed man.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> He was so new to the job that he didn’t know the golden rule, “Nobody allowed outside the grounds during school hours”. When the time came for the weekly one hour of physical training, noting that the fields around the school extended for a mile at least in one direction, he took his class out through the gate and organised a game of rounders. But, sadly for us, it wasn’t repeated. We heard that the headmaster ticked him off and thereafter that sort of thing had to be done in the playground. There was no sports kit – nobody in Tommy’s class could afford it anyway – so their PT comprised just bending and stretching and running around, that sort of stuff; it wasn’t too bad.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Occasionally, Tommy would catch sight of his brother, who was two to three classes ahead of him, being both older and remarkably clever. Learning everything rapidly and exceedingly well just came naturally to him. He set a pace in the school which the other lads could not hope to keep up with. But it dawned on Tommy that, as he moved through the school, each master would expect him to follow in his brother’s footsteps and match his brilliance. Clearly impossible! He admired his brother, didn’t envy him at any time, but probably suffered unnecessary anxiety because of constant comparisons with his talent and performance.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Another year passed and Tommy went on to the next class. He rather feared this because the teacher was a North-Country man, short, wiry, strong, and reputedly rather harsh. But he taught well. He either wrote down or told his boys the things they ought to know and, after a time, he tested them and questioned them and if they didn’t know, why didn’t they know, huh? He knows over there, why don’t you know? Given any suspicion of inattention… out came the stick.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Tommy had only a brief stay with that gentleman because, for some reason, it was decided he should swiftly step up again to the next class – and a teacher of a different type, scholarly, firm, but gentle. The lad who did his best received every encouragement. The teacher selected those he thought the most promising and rearranged the seating to fill one side of the room with the lads on whom he thought it worthwhile to lavish most of his attention.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Finding himself among that top group, Tommy wondered why. He was clean, which was something to a teacher in charge of perhaps 40 small boys but, looking around, he saw that most of them were better dressed than him.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> He wore completely home-made clothes. For the first time since they moved to London he had the luxury of a vest, a woollen vest. To make it, mother had cut down an old men’s vest. A cotton shirt over that, a white celluloid collar – quite deep and easily washed under the tap, it cost thruppence farthing, no more than that, and no laundry… In addition a sort of jacket; blue, thick, wool cloth, strong and warm – because Tommy’s family’s next-door neighbour had a son in the Navy. He came home once and gave Tommy’s mother a complete uniform, a flannel vest, jacket and baggy trousers, in good condition although he’d worn it for some while. Quite a lot of cloth there for her to work on and produce a jacket and knee-length trousers. Of course, the cut wasn’t marvellous. The most obvious thing about it was that it was home-made.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">As you see, Sam/<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 18pt;">“</span><span style="font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: small;"></span>Tommy” had his own kind of class consciousness from an early age, later reflected in his writing about the WW1 Army. No doubt, his childhood understanding and perspective was affected not just by observing poor and rich lives in his neighbourhood, but his own family’s “coming down in the world”. That meant he had snapshot memories of prosperity in Manchester from his first two or three years and then the continuing awareness of how bitter his mother felt about their social and economic descent – and how sorry and ashamed his father remained, the debacle being his responsibility (see blog two weeks ago).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘Compulsory school attendance brought together children who otherwise would never have rubbed shoulders. None of their parents well off, though some more so than others, they observed varying standards of cleanliness in their homes. On one occasion Tommy felt a good deal of itching round his body and scratched. Mother noticed and suspected what was wrong. In his vest she found a number of lice. She had never seen them before, but knew about them and wondered where he could have got them from. School? She paid a visit there. “Ah,” said that good man, Tommy’s teacher. “I’m aware of this already – I found some in my underclothes. We must discover who is bringing them in. I’ll confer with my colleagues and we will evolve some plan for finding the carrier.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Predictably, Stinker Jackson turned out to be the one, the host of these wretched lice. Poor Stinker. Even a lad like Tommy could look across at him and see his staring eyes, wide-open mouth, dirt-streaked face, and feel sorry for him and justified in pitying him. Stinker’s family relied for their living on keeping pigs. He and his sisters had to work in the sheds, cleaning them out, before they came to school. The smell of the piggery hung about him. By common consent, depending on who was absent with illness, he would occupy the most isolated desk in the classroom. When the lice were discovered, the teacher sent him home with orders to his parents to scrub him up and never let him come back carrying these wretched things again.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> The school did try to encourage some universal standards of personal hygiene. Tommy never forgot the day when the head of the junior-mixed department had assembled all classes. There on a small table in front of her she had a long, narrow box and a cup of water. In her hand she held a toothbrush with which she gave a demonstration. In the box was powdered chalk. She dipped the brush in the water, then in the powdered chalk, and carefully brushed her teeth up and down all round and explained the reason for it to the children.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">But this school clearly did take an adventurous attitude to education, trying to give the strivers, at least, every opportunity, whatever social background they might spring from.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘The school was experimenting. It had been decided that Tommy and some others would spend two years in the same class with one teacher. They had a “standards” system numbered 1 to 7 and Tommy’s group would be going through standards 4 and 5. After two years they would move on, depending on the teacher’s assessment of their abilities as displayed by general work and termly exams. Luckily, Tommy liked the teacher, whom he observed closely. He liked his white teeth, his silky moustache and his grand nose with its high bridge marked at the top by the spectacles he wore in class. But all the boys appreciated him because they felt he treated them fairly. In turn, they were willing to do their best.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Tommy learned the essentials. The world, its continents, its countries, the people who inhabited them. What they grew or mined in the way of fruit, grains, metals, minerals, and what they did with those things. Whether they treated them before selling them. Also what they bought in, treated, and sold again. Then history… a plodding progress from the time of the Romans onwards. Learning the kings and queens who ruled our country and whether they were good, bad or indifferent. Something of the laws promulgated during their reigns. The children had to memorise the year in which each monarch came to the throne. Most could remember these dates for a brief period, but recollection was apt to lapse quickly except when, perhaps, some big event or some battle occurred, or some important law was passed during that reign. Of course, they did arithmetic – the quicker means of adding and division and subtraction.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> The teachers worked to a syllabus. At each hour of each day they commenced a given subject. A short pause between each lesson and then straight on, teaching interrupted only by a break in the morning and the midday meal.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> No marvel, Tommy did come somewhere near the top, third to fifth generally. If he fell below that it would be because of illness – all the usual ones.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Reading these extracts from his school life you can see how “Tommy”/Sam grew to love most of it and learn much from what was available to him. His general enjoyment of life also flowed from his after-hours pleasures – music, Scouting (both detailed next week) – but in the following recollections he’s avidly grasping every classroom opportunity to think creatively and take responsibility. Not only that; his hawk-eyed view of non-academic matters unfolding around him gave him a sense of life beyond book-learning:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘He found that time simply rushed by, every waking moment occupied – the pattern for the following three or four years. In due course, he moved up to his final classroom. The clever master there – A.E. Page, known as “AEP” – managed to handle a syllabus which covered three groups of pupils at different stages in their education. A huge man, over six feet tall, athletic in build although getting quite old now, he had played for quite a well-known football team, the boys believed.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> AEP was a Cambridge man and proud of it, whereas the headmaster had studied at Oxford… and when he made his rounds and came into their class, the slight – not antagonism – but that little thing rubbing between them became obvious to the boys. The head would pause for a while for AEP to complete what he was saying, then start on a talk on some subject he deemed important. He would ramble on rather and the boys got a bit of fun out of this by watching their class teacher’s gorge gradually rise. He had rather prominent eyes and they began to stare, and his face coloured up as his blood rose. The boys quite welcomed these little interludes, especially if AEP’s lesson concerned a subject they didn’t know too much about. Perhaps sometimes they even hoped the head would step in when he didn’t.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> The class was called standard 6 – above it only standard 7 and X7, the cream. In Tommy’s classroom, the majority of the boys were triers. Some didn’t bother and they would come in for a good deal of deserved abuse from the teacher, but he would concentrate on those putting in effort to get the best out of the education offered. AEP could even distinguish ability in the quality of nervousness which can prevent a lad appearing successful in a class. To the right teacher it was obvious that these boys would come through and do well. In many classes such pupils received scant attention – they would be dubbed dunces and come to think of themselves that way.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> These last three years(3) became the most important and informative in his school career. They had to cover a lot of ground in a short time and one doesn’t pretend that any education in depth was achieved. But they acquired a sound grounding in English and that included a study of grammar until they really understood it. A boy had to take a sentence apart, give the grammatical name to each word or group of words in a sentence – noun, verb, subject, object, and so on. “Parsing” it was called. If you could do that successfully you had learnt a very important part of elementary grammar.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Latin couldn’t be taken in any depth and it was doubtful that AEP had the ability anyway. But he did lay down that prefixes, roots, derivations and suffixes of Latin had to be memorised, for he quite rightly considered them to be the basis for understanding many English words. Frequently in later life, a chap would be able to deduce for himself the meaning of a word by looking at its Latin elements.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> However, AEP didn’t devote his English-teaching solely to grammar. He put much energy into bringing literature to life too. He even suggested a project to take the class to a good theatre. But first he prepared them thoroughly in advance, undertaking a study of Shakespeare’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">The Merchant Of Venice<i>. The class read through it in silence – often puzzled by the language – then he gave various boys their speaking parts and so they learnt a great deal about the play.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Meanwhile, they saved up penny by penny for the great day when they would journey into the West End. Finally, one evening, they set off for the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square(4) where this great play came to life before their eyes, a memorable evening (as Tommy soon proved via a dramatic venture of his own).’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(3) My father told me he left school at 14, so probably 1909-1912.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(4) Present building opened 1888 as the New Court Theatre.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Here “Tommy”/Sam even refers to an open classroom debate between pupils and teacher as “thrilling” – certainly not the image we have of public education pre-WW1. But then money, lack of, casts its shadow over his future, although he pitches into everything as enthusiastically as ever, while it lasts:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘Each subject had its allotted half-hour, hour or two hours a week, although some, such as arithmetic, they took daily. Anatomy and physiology they covered in an elementary way, but enough to give knowledge of the human body and what it was composed of. The skeleton on a huge chart would be hung up, the bones named and memorised, and the types of joints. Another brightly coloured chart showed muscles and organs. The chap in the picture, it was noticed, had no bladder and no privates. And they were never mentioned in instruction. One assumes it was similar for the girls in their class.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Under AEP, Tommy had the great pleasure of being in the same class as his brother, who sat on the far side with the select group. Those chaps more or less worked in a freelance way. The things they wanted to do they were encouraged in. They read books not in the syllabus. If they were particularly good at writing or painting, AEP permitted them to spend long periods on these subjects. The rest of the classwork went on under the master’s direction, but the select group could ignore what was going on and persevere with their own special interests.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> On one occasion, when they discussed the “topic of the day” and AEP gave his view of current affairs, Tommy was thrilled to see his brother espousing the cause of the Conservative Party, well knowing the teacher to be a Liberal-radical type. And the two went at it hammer and tongs for a while. Then it finished with obviously no ill will felt. The boy had stated his point of view and he had not been shouted down. His opinion had been considered, listened to. Tommy’s brother would shortly go out into the world to make his way and already he was being treated like a man. This was noted by the younger lads.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> However, in answer to a discreet enquiry Tommy’s parents made of AEP, they learnt that neither boy would be able to take advantage of an examination that could secure them a place in the local grammar school. They couldn’t afford the fees.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Good teachers are born not made and AEP, Tommy’s last and best teacher, was a shining example. Let’s take the matter of music. The ordinary elements Tommy learnt from Mr Frusher(5), but AEP particularly loved to teach the class four-part chorus tunes – full songs with all verses and a proper accompaniment – such as Sweet Lass Of Richmond Hill, Who Will O’er The Downs Go Free, and on the sacred side, that old anthem How Beautiful On The Mountains.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> So when a singing lesson was timetabled, AEP made preparations. On the black slate which lined the wall above the cupboards he wrote out the words and four-part tonic sol-fa music for the songs. Long before this, Tommy had discovered he had a natural gift for singing tunes in tonic sol-pha (if anybody whistled a tune or picked it out on the piano, Tommy could spiel it off – doh, me, soh etc – without any effort at all, so he found this method of learning very agreeable).<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> AEP was in no hurry, the time each song took immaterial. For him, the point was that the class should learn to sing properly. So he would test the boys’ voices. He soon discovered who should sing the alto, treble and even a few tenors. Some voices in X7 were on the verge of breaking. When the class had learnt the whole thing, he would sing the bass line. He had a marvellous voice like a lusty old corncrake, but he carried the tune and, anyway, the full blast of the class drowned out his rasping efforts. It was one of the more pleasurable lessons.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(5) Vicar/choirmaster/scoutmaster/music teacher/mentor, of whom much more in the next two “The Making Of” blogs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘About then, with some regret, George left school and got a job in the wholesale paper trade – we shall hear more about that.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Still with a year or so to go, Tommy was doing reasonably well in his exams despite always feeling he could never rise to the same heights as his brother. The thing was to get on and do the best possible. At English, in composition and dictation he was good. In arithmetic and everything that came under that heading including a smattering of algebra, percentages, rates of interest and what were generally called problems – things that made you scratch your head and think – well, you could call Tommy’s performance moderate to poor. Sometimes, though, he would feel inspired and shine briefly.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> One of AEP’s more dubious methods of inspiring those who were a bit backward entailed what he called “Questions” where he would point to a boy and ask him a question, then, if he couldn’t answer, move on to the next and the next. When he had established that nobody knew the answer, AEP would turn to one of his high-fliers and say, “Well then, Jones?”; on the whole, this chap would come up with the answer quickly. Once or twice, AEP must have forgotten that Tommy’s brother had departed and suddenly swung this question on to him. Often, Tommy could do it, but he remembered one occasion when he couldn’t and he wished the floor would open up and let him through.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">It was decided, for the first time, to hold a special “school day”. The plan included a bazaar, several small plays, some singing, and a long afternoon during which parents and friends could visit, listen, do what they wished, and make quite friendly contact with the teachers. Tommy and a friend were allotted the task of going to the bigger houses in the area, whose occupants might be willing to give old items such as trays, candlesticks, any sort of metalware or jewellery – anything they could clean, burnish, and offer for sale.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> The two boys sacrificed much school time to hike miles, always collecting something useful. A pair of heavy solid-silver, engraved candlesticks, he remembered – black they were, from being stowed away in a lumber-room. Tommy polished them up.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> One of the shows the pupils put on they called </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Mrs Varley’s Waxworks<i>(6). Tommy’s pal, Charlie – the one who lived in a small drapery shop – had developed the gift of the gab with a vengeance, so he took the part of the showman who strutted around, spoke about each of the dozen “waxwork” characters on the stage, and told them when they should step forward and jerkily perform the actions he described.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Drawing inspiration from his trip to the Royal Court, Tommy played Shylock. His father procured a false nose – hooked, of course. His mother cut up a bright red, silk skirt and turned it into a cloak. Then, with an old smoking cap on his head and his face made up swarthily, he jerked forward with a large curved knife and went through the motions of removing his pound of flesh from the victim.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Another boy took the role of a Red Indian; he did what he thought the correct dance and performed a wee bit of scalping.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> The audience took to it so well that a tour of the church halls and the schools in the area was suggested. Quite a professional troupe they became – and this led to the first party ever at Tommy’s home. His mother thought she would like to entertain all the waxworks. Quite an undertaking, with their furniture and accommodation so limited, but it went off well, a jolly party, and Tommy’s friends spoke of it for some time afterwards.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(6) The shows, popular at the time, and the name came from <i>Mrs Jarley’s Waxworks</i>, mentioned briefly in Charles Dickens’s <i>The Old Curiosity Shop</i>, 1841.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">These blogs are generically titled The Making Of Foot Soldier Sam, but it’s not intended in a simplistic “events A + B = character trait C” way. So I’ll just throw out a guess here that there is a non-specific connection between my father’s reluctance, below, to be designated “top boy” and his later fervent endeavours to evade promotion in the Army (and then when he achieved it – Corporal/Acting Sergeant on the Somme – to “revert” to the ranks as he did in 1917, I’m not sure how, given he didn’t commit any significant disciplinary offences, by his own account and military records too).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘Tommy neared the end of his school days. He knew that he just had to leave, start work, and earn a few shillings. He would have welcomed some sort of further training, but clearly the family’s finances would not allow that. He felt particularly aware of this because his greatest friend, Charlie, the draper’s son, was able to continue his education at a commercial college. Their friendship lasted until later years in life. But, for the time being, the break had to come.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> During his final months at school, Tommy found himself in the top group of class 7X. Not only that – his teachers, including AEP, began to give him what they called the “top-boy treatment”. He didn’t believe he was top boy and thought perhaps the glory of his brother was shining on him a little.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> But, along with some of his fellows – as had happened to George when he reached this level – he took certain fixed lessons with the class and then worked independently on any subject in which he was especially interested. For Tommy, that meant the history period he had reached; the end of the 19th century, the wars in Africa.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> He read several books about it, fiction mostly, and conceived the idea of writing a book on the subject himself. He set to work, spending an hour or two on it each day. That continued until the end of his time at the school. Unfortunately, it grew very long and he could not complete it before he had to leave.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Aside from this freedom of study, AEP gave him responsible, practical jobs too, such as making a stock list of the school book store to help the teachers draw up their syllabuses for the new year beginning in September – a task AEP would normally have undertaken himself, but he thought it would give Tommy useful experience.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> The settled life he’d enjoyed – school and then all those regular evening activities – was about to be fractured. Even his voice began to break, ending his participation in the church choir. That made a great change; Sundays and two nights of the week free. He had time on his hands. Too much even.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Finally, a month’s holiday, a brief return to school in the summer until his birthday in July(7), a farewell chat with his teacher, AEP, the big, admirable man, another with the head, who handed him an excellent testimonial. And goodbye to all that.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(7) 1912, almost certainly!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">All the best</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">– <i>FSS</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Next week: RETRO 4 – back to toddlerhood and how “Tommy”/Sam got religion after a fashion… not much thinking about any god, but a lot of observing people in various tin church missions… like the trystful trio of bulgy-eyed Marjorie Peters and her beau Cyril on the organ and Gillette, his fire-and-brimstone rival for her favour… and his own parents, striving to recover a modicum of respectability via helping the rector run a fete and a church-hall soirée with a band and proper dance cards… and then, under the aegis of “the big church” the lad joins the Scout troop and the choir and gets free piano lessons from the Vicar Mr Frusher which stirs his love of music and, in a very small way, life begins to blossom (despite the rather odd sex education sessions)…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote <i>Nobody Of Any Importance</i>, a <i>Memoir </i>of his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
FootSoldierSamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01449820798842961719noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545275143240244101.post-11101262784815612032019-05-19T00:30:00.000-07:002019-05-19T00:30:02.052-07:00The Making Of Foot Soldier Sam 2 – 1902-1909: growing up in the street menagerie of the London suburbs, “horses everywhere”, sheep on the hoof and Daisy the friendly cow… and the wild marketplace – merchants, pawnbrokers, desperate housewives, deadly fights… but the quack doctor's “pills, potions and perorations” could cure everybody’s ills…<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial";">Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial";">Memoir(1) <i>– 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 </i>Memoir<i>, added documentation.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">For details of how to buy the <i>Memoir </i>or </span><span lang="EN-US">Gallipoli <span style="color: purple;"></span><span style="color: #161616;">& </span>Somme <span style="color: #8b5200;">&</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">Arras 1918/POW </span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">etc </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">mini-e-books click </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=4897427382137035394;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=4;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">plus see reader reviews </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=6753328261534245137;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=1;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">and </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=8857004925280018109;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=2;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;"> and reviews from the Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=7620675943831341074;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=0;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">. </span><span lang="EN-US"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">For AUDIO excerpts click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/footsoldiersam" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #7c4000;"> Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nobody-Of-Any-Importance-A-Foot-Soldiers-Memoir-of-WW1/300782296758247" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial";">The war’s over at last – but Sam’s blog, Facebook page and tweets will continue until his </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial";">Memoir <i>concludes with the Centenary of the July 19, 1919, Peace parade in London…<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">Memoir <i>will always go to the British Red Cross – and the current running donations total as of May 1, 2019, is £4,178.05 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!).</i></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">Dear all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">A hundred years ago this week, in the aftermath of the Armistice… The Paris Peace Conference came out with nothing of note, so wars, continuing and new, dominate the this summary of significant and still lethal events…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;"> In the Greco-Turkish War/Turkish War Of Independence, while the Greek Army, supported by the Allies – British in particular – after landing at Smyrna, pushed on westwards into Anatolia and over the coming weeks took Manisa, Balikesir, Aydin and other cities (May 21-5), the Turks’ Gallipoli General Kemal Atatürk landed a small force on the Black Sea coast of the peninsula (19) and shrewdly concentrated on building support.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;"> In the east, confusion reigned. The Russian Civil War and Bolshevik revolution seemed to be the catalyst, along with local upheavals responding to the war’s end. The Poles, under General Pilsudski, were invading Ukraine from the west (May 19 onwards), taking on a mix of Socialist Revolutionaries (led by Symon Petylura) and Ukraine nationalists – who themselves were fighting the Red puppet governments in many of the cities. At the same time, Romania attacked Ukraine from the southwest.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;"> And up on the Baltic, the German Volunteers/<i>Landwehr </i>– fostered by the British as a defence against Red Russians, oddly enough – captured Riga, Latvia, from the Bolshevik Latvian Army (May 22)… And in the Estonian War Of Independence, local forces captured Pskov after a Red rifle brigade decided national loyalties took precedence given half a chance and swapped sides (24-5).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;"> Over on the Caspian, the British proceeded with their policy of interference, by tackling the (Red) Russian Navy ships based at Alexandrovsky Fort (May 21) with a flotilla of armed merchant ships. White Russian leader Admiral Kolchak expressed his appreciation by complaining that, when the surviving Red ships fled. the British didn’t pursue and destroy the lot of them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;"> Meanwhile, in an even more distant but somewhat related post-war conflict, in Winnipeg, Canada, growing strikes saw 13 trade unions and 6,800 men involved (May 24; one cause was disruption arising from the sudden arrival of demobilised servicemen).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">[</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Memoir <i>background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe </i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">from Edmonton, north London, </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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), </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">… until </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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 Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied around Arras until mid-March when he ran into his own Essex </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">2/7th </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Battalion. They moved into the trenches near Fampoux 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 doing hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany and finally moving westwards to Lorraine – whence, the day after Armistice, his long trek towards the French Front began. He reached safety after tiptoeing through a German minefield (November 15 probably). Then began his recovery from chronic near-starvation – and a brief emotional breakdown – until, finally, on December 10, 1918, he returned to England and another few days in hospital before reuniting with parents and siblings, especially brother Ted, home on a week’s leave but suffering badly from gas damage. Civilian life offered Sam a warm welcome… until, in February, 1919, the Army called him back - though only to a “Dad’s Army” unit. Meaning, at first, a few weeks </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">de facto<i>holiday in Brighton. But then, something completely different… through the spring, Sam and others ex-POWs guard German POWs at a camp in Sussex, while making various attempts to get back to “normal” life… At which point, for the time being, the story breaks off as explained below…]</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">RETRO 2: With my father Gallipoli/Somme/Spring Offensive veteran and POW Signaller Sam Sutcliffe’s a-century-ago-this-week(ish) story taking a break because he just didn’t write enough about his late spring/early summer period of 1919, I’m revisiting the <i>de facto </i>theme of the opening chapters about his childhood and teens i.e. The Making Of Foot Soldier Sam. In his <i>Memoir </i>he wrote a substantial section about the period from first memories, aged about two in his case, to 16 when war loomed. He had no ambition to be a soldier, but as it turned out this generally unplanned upbringing did frame the nature of the young Tommy who survived Gallipoli, the Somme, the Spring Offensive and eight months as a POW – never a hero, always doing his duty as best he could. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;"> But excuse me: in last week’s “Next week” paragraph (if you see what I mean) I was thinking I’d proceed chronologically through his early years. Since then I’ve decided to revert to an earlier approach, and choose excerpts thematically, as that relates more explicitly to “The Making Of…”. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;"> So the previous blog addressed his </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">painful new beginnings in north London (when aged three/four to seven – his birthdate was July 6, 1898) after the family fell from prosperity to ruin in their hometown, Salford, and in Manchester. At first, they only grew poorer and more hungry – at one point, Sam tried eating paper to fill his belly. He struggled with schoolmates mocking his accent, his own self-consciousness about his obviously home-made clothes and – when they moved from Tottenham to Edmonton – the hostility to newcomers of the neighbours’ children.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;"> But the child’s view section of the <i>Memoir</i> took in far more than the details of his own problems. Young Sam noted the sights, sounds and smells all around him and remembered them for the rest of his life (he wrote his <i>Memoir </i>in the 1970s).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;"> In this week’s twin-themed excerpts he describes first, the way animals thronged the streets and lives of city kids in the early 1900s – bringing them the sort of entertainment and education later available only to country children, and second, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">with similar relish, all the hustle and energy of the big city bursting outwards into the countryside which surrounded his suburb, Edmonton. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">(NB: my father wrote the early chapters in the third person, calling himself “the boy” and then “Tommy”.)</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">For this first glimpse of the urban menagerie kids of his generation lived among, we’re back in 1902 when the family arrived in London and, momentarily, four-year-old Sam felt things weren’t so bad after all:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘They all climbed into a horse-drawn cab at the terminus, their bags piled up beside them, and off through the busy streets – seeing all these carriages and big wagons drawn by numbers of horses. Horses everywhere. Splendid sight. Temporarily at least, life seemed to be on quite a prosperous plane. It wasn’t so really, of course. They just had no other means of transporting the family and baggage across London.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> They went into a big building, a hotel right down in the East End, a district called the Minories(2). They were shown to a room with only two beds in it for the five of them. A temporary arrangement mother had made. She said she had rented a flat on the outskirts of the city, but they couldn’t move in for two or three days. The excitement of watching the comings and goings occupied the time they remained there. Then once more to a horse-drawn cab – their last ride in such a vehicle for many a day. The journey took an hour or so — the children peering about all the way, everything around them of interest(3).’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;">(2) The Minories: a district (former parish) and street near the Tower of London.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;">(3) Their destination and new address was 24 Vale Side, Eade Road, Tottenham, as evidenced by Sam’s brother Alf’s birth certificate (Alfred Brotherton Sutcliffe, born March 8, 1903).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">Settled in Tottenham and soon starting school, my father really began to encounter and learn about urban livestock of various kinds, whether draft animals, meat on the hoof, or even on one occasion a wildish and rather menacing herd of horses:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘To children, the distance from house to school felt considerable. Down the road, round a corner, round another corner, and they came to a busy main road, the traffic all horse-drawn – horses everywhere, horses pulling small carts, great wagons. Milkmen used them, bakers used them delivering house to house. But the boy took a particular interest in horse-drawn trams. He had never seen anything like them. The horses weren’t big really — large ponies you’d call them. Two of them pulled each tram along on its rails, the driver seated at the front, the reins in one hand, a light whip in the other. A conductor on the back collected the fares. The lower deck was glazed, the upper deck open to the sky.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Strange that coming to live in this busy town brought him into contact with animals; not nature in the raw, but nature anyway. Manure constantly cluttered the roads. A deal of urine lay around. The boy and thousands of children like him watched the normal processes of what you might call intake and output and very soon clearly understood what was going on.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> These tram drivers, for instance, would be observed closely by the children, especially when they came to a terminus. Our boy would stand there and, if there happened to be a fairly long wait between arrival and departure, watch the driver put the bag of corn or chaff under the horse’s nose, pass the strap over its head, and adjust it so that the animal could eat comfortably. He’d see the horse’s jaws champing away. Every now and then it would blow hard when the dust got in its nostrils. To see a bucket of water placed in front of one of these ponies, that was worth watching. In went the horse’s mouth, a sucking and pumping operation followed, the speed at which the water vanished from the bucket unbelievable.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> That was the front end of the animal. The rear held his interest equally. Some horses, he noticed, had one opening just under the tail and some had two. One can’t say that the reasons for this were clear to him at first. He knew that if the tail went up and the animal was of the type which had one opening, dollops of manure would issue forth, landing on the road with a series of thuds and what, to him, was quite a pleasant smell. If the animal had two of these openings, if he saw the lower one moving he knew that a jet of water would presently shoot out. It was advisable to step back because, although the water had no bad odour, if one arrived home with shoes and socks soaked with the stuff there would certainly be trouble from mother.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> He was learning, all the time learning.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> It soon became obvious to him that the animal with only one of these openings must have an outlet elsewhere for the water. On the first occasion it became apparent to him, he watched, with wide-eyed amazement, the emergence from immediately in front of the horse’s hind legs a big, long thing from which poured forth a stream of liquid splashing into the road and flowing away along the gutter.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> So that explained how the two types of animal urinated and he thought no more about it. But sometimes a horse some distance away would put up his head and neigh loudly, perhaps start to jump about, even lash out with his hind legs, his hooves cracking against the bodywork of the tram or cart. The boy didn’t quite understand the reason for this behaviour, although he realised it was connected with some other animal in the vicinity. But it wasn’t for him to know that the noisy, frisky animal was disturbed by one of the opposite sex.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> It wasn’t just horses. One could see cattle driven along a busy road to market, a flock of sheep – just one old man with his stick and a dog controlling them. Butchers bought sheep live at the nearest market and had them driven to their own slaughterhouses.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Animals everywhere<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> The lad came into further contact with ponies because his road ended in a low, large field. You went down an embankment and there horses were put to graze. A free feed. Quite a consideration for the owners, no doubt.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Well, one day the children were playing in that field and the horses all gathered into a mob. When that happened, usually there was fighting — they bit each other or, more often, presented their rear ends to their foe and shot out their back legs to catch him a whack in the ribs with their hooves. The children would watch, excited.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> But, on this occasion, when the children turned to leave, the mob of horses all followed them from the field up the embankment on to the road. Why they did it, I don’t know –unless they thought the children were leading them to food or water – but the children got rather scared. So the sister led them up the pathway to an unoccupied house, thinking the horses would go straight on. But they didn’t, they followed the children to the front door. So now you had the children cowering against the door with several of the horses crowded in between the house and the front-yard railings while others waited on the pavement.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> How fortunate then that, after a while, their father came home, carrying his customary walking stick. You can picture his astonishment when he saw the children’s predicament. In wealthier times, he had owned a fashionable trap drawn by a smart pony – he had aspired to teach it to trot, an ambition of many well-to-do men. So, used to horses and unafraid, he edged his way into the yard and beat the horses off with his stick. Quite a feat. He took the children home.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> As winter came on, the poorly surfaced roads frequently became slippery and, on several occasions, the boy saw horses fall down and become tangled in their harness. When this occurred, the driver would climb down as quickly as possible and sit on its head. The first time the boy saw this happen, the horse lay quite still so he thought, “He’s finished, he’s dead”. But he soon realised this was the accepted method of controlling a fallen horse and preventing it from trying to get up while tangled in harness, which might loosen or break the shafts.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> At this point, while the driver remained seated on the horse’s head, almost any man in the neighbourhood would help to free the beast. Then, with much slipping and sliding on the ice, the poor thing would scramble up – the forelegs first, they’d straighten out, then the hind legs would get a grip on the road and up would come the rear half, and there it would stand, usually quite placid.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">And then there was Daisy, the friendly cow… and a small equine mystery that aroused Sam’s compassion:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘… our boy would always go to the rail of yet another field where he’d hope to see Daisy, a young cow. Often, she would come over and allow herself to be stroked; he would smell the sweet, grassy breath of her and watch the flies that gathered around her eyes and sometimes beat them off. On one occasion, with no Daisy in sight, there was a horse instead. But what had happened to the poor beast? The lad was shocked when he saw, at the base of the neck where it is broadest, its coat almost in shreds, obviously torn on barbed wire. Mercifully, the owner had already dressed it with some ointment, so this area of torn flesh was a mass of yellow. Something else for him to think about.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">The move to Edmonton (1903/4) – because the family couldn’t afford the rent in Tottenham any more – saw the children again viewing a new locale from a horse-drawn vehicle (a tram, not a cab this time):<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘But suddenly a jolt. Father appeared one day and said, “You must say goodbye to your mother for the moment and come along with me. We’re off to a different home.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> So they set off and walked the quarter of a mile to the end of the road on which they were living – the unbuilt part with fields on either side – and came to the main road where they boarded a horse tram and climbed to the upper deck. For the children, an exciting journey followed. New buildings, new sights. It lasted nearly an hour. Twice the ponies pulling the tram had to be taken out of the shafts and fresh ones installed. It was the custom to change them quite frequently.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> The journey finished in what seemed to be a very far away place, a developed suburb eight miles to the north of Central London(4).’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;">(4) Edmonton, probably at the address shown in the 1911 census, 26, Lowden Road, Edmonton (now N9).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">Their new address, on the northern edge of the rapidly expanding city, enabled Sam to get close to another bunch of horses – those used by the builder/developer of their unfinished street – and also led him to make his debut as a very small-scale tradesman, an inclination which served him well at times during World War 1 and, thereafter, for the rest of his working life:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘The builder had a large number of horses to pull the carts his men used and he stabled them at the end of the road. Again, Tommy was able to get close to these animals. As a special favour, the builder sometimes allowed him to go into the stable’s central cobbled area, sometimes even to clean out the stalls — rake out straw and manure while the horses were out at work, hose down the floors and walls, and refill their mangers with hay or chaff or grain.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> That introduced him to an activity which sometimes produced a few pennies. Men who worked their gardens for food or flowers needed manure and sometimes Tommy was able to get a few buckets from the stable. On occasion, the dahlia-loving German next door would purchase their wares. Often, though, it had all been sold to a market gardener on contract, so Tommy and his brother took to scouring the neighbourhood streets to find what their customers wanted. With a bucket and a small shovel they’d set off in the early hours of the morning. A large bucketful of horse manure fetched one penny. A valuable coin(5).<o:p></o:p></span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;">’</span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;">(5) One “old” penny – 240d to the £ – is about 50p in new money, inflation adjusted 1905-2019 according to the online CPI Inflation Calculator.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">Now, the switch of themes, to “our boy”/Sam’s encounters with the uproar and expansive energy of the city, and his district, Edmonton, thrusting outwards into the countryside – it really was all fields round there in 1905ish! – </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">the spirit of commercial adventure untrammelled </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">on the northern edge of metropolitan development </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">– and not always succeeding as the lad came to realise:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘Despite their lack of money, the children found much to excite them in the neighbourhood, especially the terrific activity on the nearby main road out of London(6). Stacks of wooden blocks and pipes and tall, iron standards appeared, laying by the roadside. Work lasting several years began. Hordes of navvies with pick and shovel dug trenches and laid tramlines in a new road surface made with wooden blocks (replacing the granite chips which had previously done the job).<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Following the roadworks led the children to explore further. Much open space lay beyond the new street they lived in; fields and market gardens, a farmhouse with a large barn and pigsty. Tommy liked all the natural smells. Temporarily, they lived at the very edge of the city.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> They found brickfields… They watched as workers dug up clay and mixed it with water to form a thick mud they called “pug”, which they then moulded and baked. The manufacture all took place in the open air.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Then, among the tall grass of the fields around their school, they found kerbs and manhole covers laid at intervals along what had obviously been intended as a road. They learned that, during an earlier boom period encouraged by the extension of the suburban railway line, speculators put up street after street of cheap terrace houses. But the bubble burst and they abandoned the work at whatever point it had reached when the money ran out. You could still walk around streets they had completed, though “To Let” notices stood outside many of the houses. Someone told Tommy the rents ranged from about 6/6 to 8/6(7) per week, low even for those times.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> … Although their row of houses where the children lived had been completed and the drains and gas pipes laid, the builder still had to suspend operations from time to time – due to lack of money it seemed – and the road itself still hadn’t been made up. No footpath, no pavement, no lampposts, no surfaced road, just the rough ground. But the builder was a very nice man, Tommy thought. He’d supervise his men working on the houses at one end of the street, while at the other he collected the rents for the occupied houses.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;">(6) Hertford Road, which started at Bishopsgate; later the A1010.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;">(7) For post-decimalisation readers, 6/6 (six shillings and sixpence) = 32.5p, 8/6 = 42.5p. To offer an inflation perspective, the CPI Inflation Calculator online says £1 in 1904 would = £120.58 in 2019.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">Now I’m moving on to “our boy”/Sam’s tour of the neighbourhood, a magnificent passage I think bringing out both the expansionist dynamism of the area and its enduring connection with Dickensian times in the mid-19th century. The characters, the knees-up fun, the drunken violence (even death), the poverty and opulence, the sights, the sounds, the stinks – all human life is here, recalled and described in fine and florid detail by a man writing in his 70s, remembering from when he was aged maybe six to eight or nine:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘One afternoon, after quickly eating his lunch at home, Tommy set off for school, taking the route he could rely on to provide something of interest every day. He walked to the end of his street – itself almost made up now – to the main road where the navvies swung their picks, shovelled great lumps of earth aside, and manhandled tram rails and wooden blocks into place. To make their way towards the town square, pedestrians had to jump over various trenches which, for Tommy, only added to the excitement of what was going on.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> A little way along, a row of small cottages had been converted into shops. You could buy all your requirements in one or other of them: a laundry, a fish shop, a confectioner, a barber, a cycle maker, general stores. Then you passed a large church, very big for that area, and a row of houses obviously occupied by middle-class families – who, only a few decades earlier, would have lived on the other side of the road, in The Crescent(8), a terrace of houses built early in the 19th century and adorned with ornamental stonework. Each house has its basement, two floors, and attics above. The servants of earlier days did their work in the basement and slept in the attics. Now families of comparatively poor people occupied The Crescent, but a shared garden laid out as part of this estate remained in front of the bowed terrace. It still bore some appearance of dignity.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> After the middle-class houses, Tommy passed a blacksmith’s forge, horses coming in and out constantly. Children spent many happy hours watching the procedures there. The horse would be led in, the blacksmith would examine its hooves, and then start removing the shoe. He heated pieces of roughly shaped, thick metal. Holding the glowing, new shoe with tongs, he would try it out on the horse, then adjust it by reheating and hammering away. Sometimes the horn of the hoof had to be pared away a little. When the blacksmith had achieved a perfect fit, he heated the shoe again and nailed it to the hoof amid a cloud of tangy smoke. Tommy’s greatest thrill came from watching the blacksmith work the bellows until the fire roared while the black coals turned red, then bright orange and even white.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Re-crossing the road, another blacksmith’s place, more bellows, and then the piercing shriek of the circular saw in the wood mill next door assailed his ears as it cut trees into planks and planks into squares. He could only stand just so much of that noise.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> A little further on he came to a huge pub. He always wondered at the size of this place. Why had it been built there? Behind it were fields and then Tommy’s school. A large square building, the pub had four floors, tall windows and ornamental stonework at the front. It must have been intended as a hotel, but in a small town with little wealth on the edge of London, who would use it? Probably another product of the short-lived speculation boom which left those abandoned and overgrown roads out in the fields. It must have shocked the people who built the hotel when they realised their customers were the rough-and-ready working classes.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Tommy often looked in and saw men sitting on the benches in there, smoking clay pipes and spitting on the floor. He’d inhaled the foul smell of stale tobacco, stale beer, and smelly humanity and it didn’t attract him in any way. But the pubs never seemed to shut – at least, when there was work around – serving from 4 or 6 in the morning until midnight. It was quite common to see men staggering drunk along the street at all hours(9).<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Once, as Tommy walked to school, he encountered a large crowd gathered outside the pub. Tommy squeezed his way in among them and saw a policeman down on the ground; a big man knelt over him, punching at him and then clamping his teeth onto the policeman’s ear – a feature of brawls in those days. Soon some bobbies who’d heard what was going on came running up, grabbed the big man, and arrested him, while a couple of them took their colleague off to hospital. Tommy heard later that the policeman died of the wound he sustained, no doubt from an infection. His assailant served a long term of imprisonment.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> When the uproar faded, Tommy turned into a road made of railway sleepers which ran along one side of the pub and something else caught his eye. A dirty, unshaven man sat on the ground with his back against the rear wall of the pub yard, filling an old, clay pipe. Tommy paused to watch and realised he was packing it with horse dung. When the man looked at him, he ran off away past the brickfield and reached the school gates in safety.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Sometimes, on his way home from school in the late afternoon, when he came to the main road and the huge pub he would turn the other way, towards the general market area. He’d smell it long before he saw it; strong odours of meat, fruit, stale beer, piss… every dark corner had its deposit of human excreta, no public lavatories(10) at that time. If it happened to be a Thursday afternoon, you could see the sheep coming up the busy road in the care of just one man and his dog, driving them to meet their fate in the butcher’s yard. Butchers in those days killed their own animals and the meat was really fresh and good. However, this particular butcher would buy his beef “on the horn”, as it was called, at Greenwich – slaughtered there. He ferried the carcasses back to his shop on a horse-drawn wagon.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> This market area was triangular: on the left side, from Tommy’s direction, a row of shops selling foodstuffs and every household requirement – fishmongers, bakers, grocers, greengrocers, a pawnbroker. Facing them, across a wide paved footpath, a group of stalls also selling food, mainly cabbages and other greens from the market gardens nearby.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> At the base of the triangle ran a single-track railway with level-crossing gates. This railway bisected many living areas, an heirloom of early bad planning. Oddly, a short stretch of track in the market place had been built on tiles and underneath them flowed a wide stream. Obviously, before they built the railway, this place had been a ford. The engineers had driven in piles to set the railway and a small station(11) above the water — not always very sweet water either. Some people seemed to regard any stream near a town as the natural dumping ground for dead cats and other items for which they had no further use.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> On the remaining side of the triangle (should you be getting lost: to Tommy’s right, that is, but in the far corner near the railway) stood an old coaching inn, untouched over several hundred years, with a cobbled yard at the side and, in the rear, an extensive stable. The innkeeper himself kept several horses, a few local people had one or two, and visiting circuses also made frequent use of the premises. In fact, the proprietor almost always wore riding breeches, red waistcoat, hacking coat and a bowler and did all his journeying around the neighbourhood on horseback. A very popular man.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> A couple of doors along, father, sons and daughters ran an old-time family pharmacy – the shelves arrayed with bright blue and orange decanter-shaped containers. The premises served also as a large post office. Two of the sons had trained in dispensing medicines and their father oversaw everything, a venerable figure with his long, lean face, pointed beard and, invariably, a smoking cap (a sort of fez with a tassel on top).<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> While the pharmacy portrayed the respectable face of medicine, every market worthy of the name would have its resident quack, generally known as Doctor Brown. That name might cover a multitude of sins. Our Dr Brown was a fine figure of a man clad in a cutaway black coat, striped trousers, patent leather shoes and a tall silk hat on his head – proper morning dress – his fair moustache waxed to two long points. He looked clean, every inch a doctor, and the tale he told about the pills he sold, that was part of the weekend entertainment and a huge crowd would gather around him. According to their number, so the length of his story grew and, proportionately, the sales at the end of it. He gave value for money in pills, potions, and perorations and did very well indeed.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> In the middle of the triangle was the old village green, as it had been before this small town became a botched urban district. Marked out by a low iron railing, it comprised a pond, a patch of grass, and a couple of may trees. On warm summer days the out-of-work and assorted idlers would sun themselves there, six or a dozen of them lying on their backs while, around them, the activity of the market went on.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> This was a market of long standing and not just weekly, like many in the country. Most of the stallholders worked every day of the week except Sunday (a few on the coaching-inn side operated on Saturdays only). Although they held regular pitches, they had no licenses, no permits. Rather, they occupied their places by right of conquest. If you went along there at 4 in the morning you would see that a board or a trestle had been thrown on the ground at the site and a man or men guarded it. Later in life Tommy became quite deeply concerned with these people, but more of that later(12).<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> As darkness fell, the shops around the marketplace lit up incandescent gas lamps, reasonably bright, none of the brilliance of electric lighting. The stallholders used paraffin flares — a can with a metal tube hanging from it and a burner at the bottom producing a flame about 18 inches high. It would have been very dangerous in an enclosed space. According to his wealth, each stallholder had one, two or three of these flares burning. This always attracted crowds on dark nights — the greatest numbers guaranteed on Friday nights when, as Tommy sometimes observed, the market’s character changed to a degree.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> That was the night the workers drew their wages and a little more money than usual flowed into the tills of shopkeepers and stallholders who shouted their wares ever more vigorously to make themselves heard above the hubbub. Everybody with a few pennies to spend felt the pleasure and excitement of it. The publicans did well too, of course. Diagonally opposite the coaching inn, stood the market triangle’s second, less grand pub and on Fridays a throng would gather on the pavement outside both establishments, holding pint pots and talking until late into the evening.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> This played a part in generating another of the market’s thriving businesses, operated by gentlemen offering funds to those who, during a hectic weekend, got through their wages, perhaps leaving no money to buy even food for the family until the next week’s pay arrived. On the Monday morning the procession from the sidestreets would begin, a ragged band making for the pawnbroker’s shop (adjacent to that second pub). Father’s best Sunday suit, mother’s best Sunday costume, even the children’s boots and shoes would go over the counter. The pawnbroker advanced a shilling or two on them. The hope was – and, generally, it did happen – that these goods would be redeemed the following Friday night, ready to be worn at the weekend.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Some women carried huge bundles to the pawnbroker’s shop, undoubtedly including sheets and blankets, which would be missing from the family’s beds for the week – if ill fortune befell them in the meanwhile, how were the children to be kept warm? How were the old people to be kept warm? Short of clothing, short of bedding, short of food during the worst part of the week until the man’s wages, to some extent, redeemed them…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Even so, many did survive on the tiniest of incomes, like Tommy’s family, keeping at least an outward appearance of what was called respectability. They frequently suffered deprivations in their home. But even in those circumstances they could still find energy and time to do a little to help others, as with church work. But the toll on nerves, the irritation, the bitterness, the feeling of instability and fear of even worse overtaking them often blighted the lives of people who were doing their best to keep things going under difficult circumstances. And of course the children often suffered the lash of the tongue or the slap of the hand, not always deserved.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;">(8) The Crescent comprised 25 Georgian houses by the Hertford Road, built 1826-1851 “by a London solicitor”, Wikipedia advises. Largely converted to flats by the turn of the 19th century. The whole row has been Grade II listed since 1954.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;">(9) </span><span style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;">An online search suggests World War I brought about the restriction of licensing hours to 9am-11pm, then 10pm – although one source says the 1914 Defence Of The Realm Act tightened the permitted hours even further. The current much looser laws came in during the 1980s with further amendments in 2005.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;">(10) In Europe, public lavatories fell out of favour from Roman times until the 19th century. London’s first arrived in 1851, at the Crystal Palace Great Exhibition. I can’t find any clear record of how many were provided during the following decades, though most seem to have been in the middle of the city, but the immortal Thomas Crapper’s improvements in the mechanism – including the invention of the ballcock – seem to have caused them to be spread more widely (sales encouraged by his promise of “a certain flush with every pull”).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;">(11) My </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;">father doesn’t name it, but this must have been Lower Edmonton station, on Edmonton Green, opened 1872; the market grew up in the late 19th century alongside the working-class influx from London’s “inner suburbs”.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;">(12) In fact, my father’s <i>Memoir </i>barely touched on his life after World War I, because he stopped in July, 1919, with the Peace parade celebrating the Treaty Of Versailles – not to mention the 600 pages and 250,000 words under his belt. What he’s referring to is that he spent much of his working life post-WW1 as an Edmonton market trader (a draper) – a barrowboy – in partnership with younger brother Alf, until they moved on to a small shop.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">Yet all sorts of things could make Sam feel a little less poor, a little less strait-jacketed by circumstances. Here, improbably, it’s new developments in street lighting:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘Some months passed. On the main road the navvies had finished their work: tramlines put down and rather high standards erected with light fittings on the top of them. Arc lamps</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;">(13)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;">. The night they were switched on was the first time street lighting by electricity in that area had been attempted.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> These lamps rely on two sticks of carbon fitted with a slight gap between them so that when a current passes through them it leaps the gap – the arc – and creates a bright light. Sometimes they work well and sometimes not at all. Sometimes they give a steady light and sometimes a flickering light. But the effect excited many people to take an evening stroll just for the sheer joy of seeing the lights and their road illuminated at night.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Tommy too felt something romantic, quite thrilling, about it all as he made his way to the marketplace and up the street to Mr Frusher’s</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;">(14) </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;">house or the church. Very old, dingy buildings became interesting in this mauvish, pinkish light. So did people on the street. Their clothes could not be seen in detail, their faces took on an unusual colour, and they looked different – not the rough-and-ready folks he was used to seeing about.’</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;">(13) Arc lamps had been gradually introduced to London streets from 1878 onwards.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 16pt;">(14) Mr Frusher, the vicar/choirmaster/Scoutmaster, music teacher – a mentor to the boys of the community, he figures extensively in later “Making Of” blogs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">All the best</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">– <i>FSS</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">Next week: RETRO 3 – how school helped shape “Tommy”/Sam the kid into Sam the teenager who became a Tommy via… teachers like Miss Thomas, Miss Smith and Miss Booth, Mr Parker, Mr Page, and Dizziba rambling about the Crimean War and never sparing the rod… and junior mixed embarrassments of the taken-short kind… and trying to match his brother Ted – impossible!… and getting ahead and winning prizes… and not being “Stinker” Jackson… and “thrilling” classroom debates, and horrible moments when he couldn’t answer the question… and Mrs Varley’s Waxworks, and posing as Shylock… and loving it so much the time rushed by… and leaving, sadly, because his parents couldn’t afford any more education for him…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote <i>Nobody Of Any Importance</i>, a <i>Memoir </i>of his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
FootSoldierSamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01449820798842961719noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545275143240244101.post-47883191692099243082019-05-12T00:30:00.000-07:002019-05-12T00:30:04.871-07:00The Making Of Foot Soldier Sam 1 – 1900-1905: in Manchester, a small boy sees his family fall from considerable wealth into ruin… then new beginnings in London – the wrong accent, the wrong clothes – not to mention poverty and hunger…<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir(1) <i>– 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 </i>Memoir<i>, added documentation.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">For details of how to buy the <i>Memoir </i>or </span><span lang="EN-US">Gallipoli <span style="color: purple;"></span><span style="color: #161616;">& </span>Somme <span style="color: #8b5200;">&</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">Arras 1918/POW </span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">etc </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">mini-e-books click </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=4897427382137035394;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=4;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">plus see reader reviews </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=6753328261534245137;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=1;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">and </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=8857004925280018109;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=2;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;"> and reviews from the Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=7620675943831341074;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=0;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">. </span><span lang="EN-US"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">For AUDIO excerpts click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/footsoldiersam" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #7c4000;"> Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nobody-Of-Any-Importance-A-Foot-Soldiers-Memoir-of-WW1/300782296758247" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">The war’s over at last – but Sam’s blog, Facebook page and tweets will continue until his </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir <i>concludes with the Centenary of the July 19, 1919, Peace parade in London…<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">Memoir <i>will always go to the British Red Cross – and the current running donations total as of May 1, 2019, is £4,178.05 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!).</i></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Dear all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">A hundred years ago this week, in the aftermath of the Armistice… The Paris Peace Conference, which started to sow last week, began a bit of reaping, though a mere hint of what was to come in the medium term…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Following the announcement that Italy had failed to secure Smyrna, in Anatolian Turkey, one of its favoured territorial benefits from fighting Austria-Hungary throughout WW1, Greece received strenuous Allied backing to move in sharpish (not least, because disappointed Italy was suddenly said to be scheming with the Turks!). Greek troops, conveyed by British Navy ships, landed at Smyrna (May 15; now Izmir) and quickly progressed inland. This started the four-year Greco-Turkish War or Turkish War Of Independence. Atatürk began a measured response by landing at Samsun on the Black Sea coast and taking time to build communications and support.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> In the Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks’ new initiative retained momentum with the defeat of the White Army at Bugulma (May 13; Tatarstan, 720 miles east of Moscow). In the Anglo-Afghan War, begun on May 6 by an Afghan incursion through the Khyber Pass (now linking Afghanistan with Pakistan), the British and Indian Armies broke back through to the Afghan side (May 13 onwards).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> And in the latest civil unrest in one of the victorious Allied nations, a major strike broke out in Winnipeg, Canada, involving electricity, water and fire service workers disputing edicts by the city council – discontent exacerbated by lack of jobs and the return of thousands of demobilising forces men.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">[</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Memoir <i>background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe </i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">from Edmonton, north London, </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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), </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">… until </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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 Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied around Arras until mid-March when he ran into his own Essex </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">2/7th </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Battalion. They moved into the trenches near Fampoux 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 doing hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany and finally moving westwards to Lorraine – whence, the day after Armistice, his long trek towards the French Front began. He reached safety after tiptoeing through a German minefield (November 15 probably). Then began his recovery from chronic near-starvation – and a brief emotional breakdown – until, finally, on December 10, 1918, he returned to England and another few days in hospital before reuniting with parents and siblings, especially brother Ted, home on a week’s leave but suffering badly from gas damage. Civilian life offered Sam a warm welcome… until, in February, 1919, the Army called him back - though only to a “Dad’s Army” unit. Meaning, at first, a few weeks </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">de facto<i>holiday in Brighton. But then, something completely different… through the spring, Sam and others ex-POWs guard German POWs at a camp in Sussex, while making various attempts to get back to “normal” life… At which point, for the time being, the story breaks off as explained below…]</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">RETRO 1: As per last week’s “next week” paragraph – if you get my drift – my father Sam Sutcliffe’s a-century-ago-this-was-happening story has to take a break because he just didn’t write enough about his late spring/early summer period of 1919. It’s almost as if he’d never heard of blogs! But the weeks between the freeze-frame as he bade farewell to his Littlehampton ladyfriend, towards the end of his ex-POW of the Germans guarding German POWs in Sussex period, and the final run down the finishing straight of his Memoir towards the July 1919 Peace parade he attended will not be wasted.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> I decided the necessary retrospective could best be deployed by revisiting the <i>de facto </i>theme of the opening chapters: The Making Of Foot Soldier Sam. In his <i>Memoir </i>he wrote a substantial section about his childhood from dawn of “consciousness”, aged about two in his case, to 16 when war loomed. Not that he knew he was going to be a soldier, but as it turned out this is what delineated the character of the young Tommy (and the rock-like old man I knew – I was born when he was 49): to sum up, on the battlefield he was always afraid and never ran away; he frequently doubted his officers’ strategies – especially the grandiose ones coming from HQ Generals etc – but he never disobeyed an order… and he survived it all to live a “normal”, which is to say “ordinary”, life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> So I’ll start the <i>Memoir</i>’s opening paragraphs, when the Sutcliffes lived in Manchester – well, Salford initially – at the time of Sam’s birth on July 6, 1898. <i>[My father wrote the early chapters in the third person, calling himself “the boy” and then “Tommy” – you’ll get used to it, honest!]</i>:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘May I say straight away he became nobody of any importance(2)…</span></i><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> The child, the boy, the youth, the man whose life I am going to talk about, think about, write about… his earliest recollections are of several incidents which occurred in a northern town – a dull, damp, depressing place.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> He remembers sitting on the floor of a kitchen with a lady – Mrs Rowbottom he called her – giving him titbits as she proceeded with her cooking. Little sweet pastries. He blesses the memory of Mrs Rowbottom.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> He remembers too a shop full of toys, particularly a drum — he was allowed to tap away on this drum… He gathered that his mother owned this toyshop and life at the toyshop went on happily for him…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Except for one strange memory. As he learned how to feed himself and draw crudely with crayons his mother noticed he was left-handed – “cack-handed” she called it. She didn’t like it, the boy didn’t understand why, but she forced him to change, nagging him, slapping his left hand away from the knife or the jam pot when his mistakes had particularly annoyed her. Of course, he obeyed; he learned to live right-handed. But, for a long time, it felt wrong.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(2) I remember how that first sentence delighted me when I first read it – as if Dad was handing me the title to the <i>Memoir</i>, a phrase both noting his own “ordinariness” and, accidentally or not, commenting on the way World War 1’s trench warfare diminished millions of individual men, rendering them down into cannonfodder.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Sam experienced only a little of the family’s security and wealth before their fortunes changed and they plummeted towards what used to be called “ruin”…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘So, 1900 it must have been(3). The boy aged two, living in Manchester with two brothers, one a couple of years older than him, the other younger, a sister five years older, a mother and father(4) an apparently happy, comfortable home.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> He remembers a very pleasant outing, a visit to Belle Vue. Belle Vue – he didn’t know what it meant or what it was, but he saw animals there, pretty things called deer. He looked through the railings into their green enclosure… And fireworks, the great firework display… bursting rockets, humming rockets, whistling rockets, a lovely picture in the night. Such little things… they remain with him always.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Then experiences of that sort became all too rare. It would have been a treat to see a smile on mother’s face. He seldom saw that these days. He remembered her going round the place singing and generally enjoying life. But all that was fading, replaced by a heaviness, a constant worry and depression — resulting in perhaps rather harsh treatment of the children at times.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(3) My father dated this period of his childhood memories a full four years later, but I corrected it in the text to avoid confusion; information from the 1901 census and 1902 baptism records prove his memory at fault, for once, by showing the family had moved to London by then – I guess he made this mistake because he just couldn’t believe he could remember anything with such clarity from the age of two… but he did!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(4) My father was born on July 6, 1898, at 53, Great Cheetham Street, Broughton, Manchester. In this Memoir, he hardly used his siblings names (except for Philip/”Ted”/”George”, of whom more later), but, as of 1900, they were: Dorothy (always known as “Ciss”), born December 3, 1894, at 49, Great Cheetham Street; Philip Broughton, born October 15, 1896, at 53 Great Cheetham Street (I don’t know why the street number differs for Ciss’s birth – perhaps the family owned two adjacent properties in their financial heyday); Frank Sidney (or Sydney, spellings vary on official documents), born June 5, 1900, at 5, Vernon Place, West Gorton, Manchester. Their parents were Charles Philip, born April 29, 1864, at 132, Elizabeth Street, Cheetham, Manchester, and Lily Emma, née Fleetwood, born August 18, 1872, in Lincolnshire (though one record shows this as her baptism, not birth date; birth certificate not retrievable) – they married on May 2, 1894, so Dorothy/Ciss must have been born prematurely, er, maybe. Broughton was a prosperous part of Salford; I never heard it mentioned that my Uncle Philip’s name came from his birthplace, I understood it was a “family name”, but either could be true.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">The family firm, which made and dealt in decorative tiles (see pic below) went bust – “Ruined!” as they used to wail – because Sam’s father inherited the business and couldn’t handle it, while at the same time freeloading relatives bled it dry.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEnLX4en2WEMz4ofB0jSrjVdo-WrtFuPLSxdk0LeejtT_Zu9CVlQZt6bjLVa3chFq8AdcGS7VywiSlM3K8dLxmK3gIbpkEOhb6g612vG4Zf03mk9MOSzUwVv2tcOakJLzKU2OGdzqVP8k/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-05-01+at+15.58.28.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="404" data-original-width="428" height="604" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEnLX4en2WEMz4ofB0jSrjVdo-WrtFuPLSxdk0LeejtT_Zu9CVlQZt6bjLVa3chFq8AdcGS7VywiSlM3K8dLxmK3gIbpkEOhb6g612vG4Zf03mk9MOSzUwVv2tcOakJLzKU2OGdzqVP8k/s640/Screen+Shot+2019-05-01+at+15.58.28.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A tile sold by CP Sutcliffe. A now defunct website reckons this one was called<br />the Broughton – see Footnote (4) above – and adds that Sutcliffe's lasted<br />roughly from 1885-1991, but that this tile may have been made for them by<br />a company ny called Maw & Co.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">The move to Gorton may have represented their first small step in the process of “coming down in the world” – to a proper working-class back-to-back terrace with shared privy in the yard:</span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘The people were kindly to him and his brothers and sister. But worry and anxiety hung over all. Each day seemed dark and drab and dull in a heavy way, which only the weather in a Northern industrial town can contrive(5). So oppressive to a child.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">(5) The census of March 31, 1901, shows they then lived in Albert Place, Longsight, Manchester.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">But family life really approached the “falling-apart” stage when Sam’s father suddenly vanished (1901/2), without farewell that the boy recalled. His mother told the children he had gone to London to look for work:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘Sad news, this, for the boy because he really loved his father, even though he’d only seen him at bedtimes. Sometimes father would join the children as they were prepared for bed and the boy remembered a cot in which he had slept in earlier days, made of ironwork, though similar in design to the wooden cots of today. For some reason the boy recalled standing up in it, calling out, “Father! Father!” And father came. Said the things that fathers said to their children and laid him down, comforted. Off to sleep the boy went.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">However, soon the family followed father into the unknown – London. A “flit”. A train journey, not enough tickets, but the inspector smiled on them, he understood…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘The boy remembers the clothes he wore that day. He heard later that it was called a Little Lord Fauntleroy Suit. Nice, green material. Green velvet. A long jacket, a belt, knickers to the knee and a hat – a sort of Tam O’Shanter – all of the same cloth. He particularly remembered arriving at the London station and looking at this suit of his and feeling quite proud of it.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> They all climbed into a horse-drawn cab at the terminus, their bags piled up beside them, and off through the busy streets – seeing all these carriages and big wagons drawn by numbers of horses. Horses everywhere. Splendid sight. Temporarily at least, life seemed to be on quite a prosperous plane. It wasn’t so really, of course. They just had no other means of transporting the family and baggage across London.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">They stayed briefly in an East End hotel, five of them to two beds, before their mother moved them to a place father had found and mother approved, a rented three-bedroom house – the address crops up in a baptism record: 24 Vale Side, Eade Road, Tottenham.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Their father said he’d got some work representing a German firm, but they hadn’t paid him yet… Mother started to sell items of their old good china and furniture she’d had sent down. She began the process of getting their lives in some kind of order despite straitened circumstances. One of her first considerations: getting the kids to school. This is when Sam really learned he was a stranger in a strange land:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘The older brother and sister had, of course, been sent to school in Manchester, but under slightly better circumstances because the parents had been able to pay for their education. In London they attended an ordinary council school – quite a good school, but utterly strange to the boy…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Within a few days, as the other children grew bolder, whenever Miss Tasket or another teacher called on him to answer a question his accent started to attract adverse attention because it was so different from what all the Cockney kids around him were used to. The trouble really started when, for some reason, he had to say “photograph”. With his Mancunian vowels, it came out “phawtawgraph”, with a short, hard “a” in the final syllable. They all laughed – many, it seemed to him, with that mean, harsh, forced laugh children produce when they want to wound one of their fellows. “It’s ‘phoetoegraaph’!” one of them yelled and in a trice the whole class was chanting “Phoetoegraaph! Phoetoegraaph! Phoetoegraaph!” until Miss Tasket exerted her rather languid authority and quietened them, though saying only that the noise must stop without explaining that their mockery was wrong and cruel.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Over the following days, similar derisive eruptions occurred when he’d say “coom” – “Cum! Cum! Cum!” – or “glass” with that short “a” – “Glarss! Glarss! Glarss!” The boy cringed with shame and embarrassment.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> At once, and desperately, he tried to change the way he spoke. With his first, momentary, new friend – a forgotten name – he spent an afternoon’s play, as it might have been, under a table; he couldn’t remember where, but he had a clear picture of it, the thick table legs, the dark shadows, the other lad’s Cockney quack, exasperated yet persistent and somehow kind as he repeated time after time “T’ain’t plànt, it’s plarnt! Plarnt!” and ”T’ain’t bàth, it’s barth! Barth!” The boy copied him diligently and found he had a good ear. Impelled by raw fear of ridicule, within a couple of weeks – if he measured his words carefully – he could speak with a fairly anonymous middling English accent which, at least, did not provoke mass mockery. At which, mercifully, the other children forgot about him and he returned to the obscurity he craved.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">With father still unpaid, “Tommy”/Sam’s mother earned a bit of money – apart from the china sales – by working as an auxiliary nurse… at the same time as all the children went through scarlet fever. Their fifth child, Alf, was born in 1903 and she certainly felt bitter about “coming down in the world” – to the extent that her children often went underfed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘… when one day our boy saw a lad younger than himself sitting on the ground tearing up paper and eating bits of it, he asked him, “Why are you eating paper?” “Because I’m hungry,” said the boy. Our lad thought, “Perhaps it would help if I could do the same”. He tore up some paper and chewed it, but, oh, it tasted horrible. He never resorted to that again and he didn’t hear what became of the little boy who had been eating quite a lot of it.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">But not carrying any grief about their social decline, Sam did actually start to enjoy life to a degree. However, more disruption ensued: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘… suddenly a jolt. Father appeared one day and said, “You must say goodbye to your mother for the moment and come along with me. We’re off to a different home.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> So they set off and walked the quarter of a mile to the end of the road on which they were living and came to the main road where they boarded a horse tram and climbed to the upper deck. For the children, an exciting journey followed. New buildings, new sights. It lasted nearly an hour. Twice the ponies pulling the tram had to be taken out of the shafts and fresh ones installed. It was the custom to change them quite frequently.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> The journey finished in what seemed to be a very far away place, a developed suburb eight miles to the north of Central London(6). Streets of small houses. They walked along until father turned off and led them to a front door at one end of a terraced row. The house was completely empty. At that point, father said, ”I shall have to leave you here for a time. I have to see to something. You amuse yourselves.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> So now we have three children in an empty house, no food, no warmth, but still the excitement of the new surroundings kept them occupied for some time.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> They went to the bedroom at the back and looked out over a small garden. They saw a group of children playing a few doors away and called out to them. By way of response, a boy swung his arm back and threw a stone which hit Tommy on the forehead. A howl of pain, down came the window. Above the pain, fear of the new place and what these children might do. A swelling came up. His brother applied a wet hankie, but the loneliness and anxiety, that wasn’t so easily got rid of.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> Father didn’t reappear and the children felt hungry. No food in the house and no money. They started searching the garden – overgrown with weeds and dumped rubbish. They did discover something that might have been eatable. A piece of bread, green with mould. The boy nibbled at this, but it tasted too horrible.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> As darkness fell, the children huddled together in the corner of a room. After what seemed like many hours, a bang on the front door. They rushed down and it was father, in the road behind him a small, horse-drawn van. The driver and father began to unload bedding and a few bits of furniture. Beds were set up: a double bed, a smaller bed, and a cot. Mattresses, sheets, two blankets per bed and a cotton cover, pillows. So, a roof over their heads and a bed to sleep in. But no food still. Cold, sad, nevertheless grateful for their father’s presence, they tucked themselves in, quite warm, and went to sleep.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(6) This was Edmonton, now in the borough of Enfield, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">probably at the address shown in the 1911 census, 26, Lowden Road (N9 its modern postal district).</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Next day, father had to leave them again:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘Hungry, fearful, miserable, the children huddled together in one of the beds until, after some hours, father returned. He brought some cheap meat, potatoes and carrots. Although no cook, no handyman at all, he put all these things into a saucepan, boiled them up and shared them out so the children had their first meal. Not a very good one, not a very palatable one, but at least it filled them and warmed them and, with night coming along, they went to bed and forgot all their troubles in sleep.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">As Sam wrote, “It was a bleak experience in a bleak house”. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">But soon after this alarming house move (1903/4), their father at last got a steady job, albeit low-paid – especially when six-days-a-week train fares from Edmonton to Liverpool Street had to be covered (the normal working week back then was five and a half days, including the Saturday morning).</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘That week when Dad received his first pay packet was long remembered because on the Sunday, very unusually, their mother lit a coal fire in the grate of the kitchen range and they baked rather more potatoes than usual and boiled a small number of haricot beans (hard when bought, they had to be soaked for 24 hours or so before cooking). For this occasion dishes they hadn’t used for some time were set out on the table. One for the potatoes, another for the beans, and a larger one for the joint. Mother placed it at the end of the table where father sat. He carved it most carefully, small portions for the children, of course, but the taste of that meat in addition to the beans and the potatoes was a treat.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">In Edmonton, my father moved up to the junior mixed school (probably Eldon Road, in 1905, when he was seven). The teachers placed him in the top stream – and he started to feel self-conscious about his home-made clothes:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">‘Finding himself among that top group, Tommy wondered why. He was clean, which was something to a teacher in charge of perhaps 40 small boys but, looking around, he saw that most of them were better dressed than him.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;"> He wore completely home-made clothes. For the first time since they moved to London he had the luxury of a vest, a woollen vest. To make it, mother had cut down an old men’s vest. A cotton shirt over that, a white celluloid collar – quite deep and easily washed under the tap, it cost thruppence farthing, no more than that, and no laundry… In addition a sort of jacket; blue, thick, wool cloth, strong and warm – because Tommy’s family’s next-door neighbour had a son in the Navy. He came home once and gave Tommy’s mother a complete uniform, a flannel vest, jacket and baggy trousers, in good condition although he’d worn it for some while. Quite a lot of cloth there for her to work on and produce a jacket and knee-length trousers. Of course, the cut wasn’t marvellous. The most obvious thing about it was that it was home-made.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">All the best</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">– <i>FSS</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Next week: RETRO 2 – how neighbourhood churches, from “tin” missions to the grand parish edifice, helped to carry “Tommy”/Sam through poverty and other miseries at least into his early teens… (featuring: love birds Marjorie and Cyril… ‘Butter! What a treat!’… ‘You couldn’t be glum on such occasions’… fetes, dances, the choir, Scouts, learning the piano and new life opening, for a while at least…)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote <i>Nobody Of Any Importance</i>, a <i>Memoir </i>of his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
FootSoldierSamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01449820798842961719noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545275143240244101.post-20349363567961459022019-05-05T00:30:00.000-07:002019-05-05T00:30:08.778-07:00Sussex, May, 1919: Brit POWs guarding German POWs… and Sam’s first post-war romance – with the little lady from Littlehampton – reaches the crunch moment: can his despite-it-all virginal virtue survive a roll in the haystack?<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial";">Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial";">Memoir(1) <i>– 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 </i>Memoir<i>, added documentation.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">For details of how to buy the <i>Memoir </i>or </span><span lang="EN-US">Gallipoli <span style="color: purple;"></span><span style="color: #161616;">& </span>Somme <span style="color: #8b5200;">&</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">Arras 1918/POW</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">etc </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">mini-e-books click </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=4897427382137035394;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=4;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">plus see reader reviews </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=6753328261534245137;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=1;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">and </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=8857004925280018109;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=2;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;"> and reviews from the Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=7620675943831341074;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=0;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">. </span><span lang="EN-US"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">For AUDIO excerpts click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/footsoldiersam" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #7c4000;"> Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nobody-Of-Any-Importance-A-Foot-Soldiers-Memoir-of-WW1/300782296758247" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial";">The war’s over at last – but Sam’s blog, Facebook page and tweets will continue until his </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial";">Memoir <i>concludes with the Centenary of the July 19, 1919, Peace parade in London…<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">Memoir <i>will always go to the British Red Cross – and the current running donations total as of May 1, 2019, is £4,178.05 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!).</i></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">Dear all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">A hundred years ago this week, in the aftermath of the Armistice… Germany started to get the bad news from the Paris Peace Conference. Given no voice in the discussions, on May 7 their new Weimar government was granted its first official sight of some of the Versailles terms. In the previous days, they’d lost their Chinese colonies to Japan (to China’s chagrin – riots ensued as reported in last week’s blog), but now they learned of German East Africa’s re-assignment to Britain and France and German South West Africa’s transfer to South Africa. Four days later, after digesting, Germany protested. But only worse was to come…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;"> Meanwhile, Italian Prime Minister Orlando, concerned about any future reunion between Germany and Austria – the latter Italy’s invader foe during World War I – had negotiated in April to acquire the South Tyrol, taking in about 250,000 German speakers, Trieste, Trentino and Dalmatia. Then, when President Wilson blocked Italian acquisition of Fiume, on the Adriatic, Orlando stormed out… only to return in early May having gained nothing and lost out on his ambition to take the port of Smyrna (now Izmir) in western Turkey.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;"> Away from the conference table, Russia remained at war – albeit with itself. While the vestigial Allied forces up north near Archangel again beat off the Bolshevik Army (May 10), in the ‘Counteroffensive Of Eastern Front’ (April 22-July 19; definitely no definite article before the ‘Eastern’) phase of the civil war the Red Army’s southern group tried to surround their White opponents in Tatarstan (about 1,200 miles east of Moscow), but they got away to the east (May 6). Trying to build their strength out that way, the Bolshevik Government drafted 35,000 Central Asian Muslims (from May 7), but soon found them rebelling and joining the anti-Russian Basmachie fighters – Turks in Turkistan, particularly around Tashkent (2,100 miles southeast of Moscow; now in Uzbekistan). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;"> In “the subcontinent”, Great Britain started a war on Afghanistan (May 6-August 8) following an Afghan incursion into India to take a town called Bagh at the western end of the Khyber Pass (May 3). British, Indian and Gurkha troops attempted to recover it on May 9 and failed, but came again and drove the Afghans back over the border (11)…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">[</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Memoir <i>background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe </i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">from Edmonton, north London,</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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), </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">… until </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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 Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied around Arras until mid-March when he ran into his own Essex </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">2/7th </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Battalion. They moved into the trenches near Fampoux 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 doing hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany and finally moving westwards to Lorraine – whence, the day after Armistice, his long trek towards the French Front began. He reached safety after tiptoeing through a German minefield (November 15 probably). Then began his recovery from chronic near-starvation – and a brief emotional breakdown – until, finally, on December 10, 1918, he returned to England and another few days in hospital before reuniting with parents and siblings, especially brother Ted, home on a week’s leave but suffering badly from gas damage. Civilian life offered Sam a warm welcome… until, in February, 1919, the Army called him back - though only to a “Dad’s Army” unit. Meaning, at first, a few weeks </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;">de facto <i>holiday in Brighton. But then, something completely different… through the spring, Sam and others ex-POWs guard German POWs at a camp in Sussex, while making various attempts to get back to “normal” life…]</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">April-May, 1919, Sussex: Sam continues with his final Army job, in a squad of fellow ex-POWs guarding German war prisoners still detained at a run-down near-stately home in the village of East Preston, five miles southeast of Arundel. Transferred to Home Guard forerunner, the Royal Defence Corps, he’s emerged from a short-lived lust for revenge and come to enjoy fraternising with (most of) the enemy – the two lots of POWs found they had quite a bit in common as fellow veterans of WW1 attritional front-line trench warfare… <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;"> But Sam still had business unconcluded – and mutually frustrating – with the sophisticated(?) young woman he’d been seeing in Littlehampton (a two-and-a-half-mile walk across the fields from East Preston). Thus far the virginity he’d not surrendered throughout the war, despite it all, remained intact…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘For a brief, extremely enjoyable period, I continued to take my dozen or so Jerries along to the river to push those large lumps of chalk about(2); those we had placed in position earlier had already combined into a smooth, strong riverbank which would last for many years.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I still walked out once or twice a week with my formerly prim, arm-swinging bird(3), but I sensed that my slow rate of progress towards something more intimate made her impatient – especially on one fine, warm summer’s evening, when she led me to the rear of a haystack where we rested among the sweet-smelling stuff, and she encouraged me to explore so far uncharted areas by telling me about her wartime goings-on.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I learned that a coloured American soldier(4), one of many billeted in the district during the final months, had lived in her home and become very much one of the family – to such an extent that, as an accepted part of household routine, each morning he took a cup of tea up to my girlfriend in her bedroom. He stayed talking to her while she drank it and so subtly extended the length of his visits that no one noticed when a quarter of an hour, or sometimes even more, passed before he joined the others at breakfast.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Eventually, there came a time for him to join her between the sheets. She enjoyed this morning ceremony, and tried to get me at it – even with hay for a bed and the risk of the farmer arriving at an interesting, if awkward moment.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Difficult to put my finger on the real reason for my reluctance to co-operate… Being number two to the Alabamy bloke was one thing anti, a black man in bed; a clash of some sort there. But the teachings of my pre-war mentor, Mr Frusher(5), the vicar, piano teacher and Scoutmaster, still held much influence within me; never take advantage of a woman’s natural urge to have the egg fertilised, he would say… I also felt chagrin about being such a rotten judge, believing that what my eyes saw was necessarily the truth. The pretty little hat, the waisted, calf-length, Navy-blue coat, the white gloves the dainty step, and that swinging arm. Demure propriety personified…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> At the time, without giving too much thought to any of these matters, I decided to quit. That there might have been a piccaninny in the making may also have occurred to me. I don’t rightly remember.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(2) See last week’s blog for the details of the work detail in the Arun valley below handsome Arundel Castle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(3) See Blog April 14 for Sam’s gradual “courting” of the “arm-swinging bird” or the Littlehampton Lady as I dubbed her: ‘…she walked, her bearing regal, she looked neither right nor left. Her right arm swung sort of diagonally, finishing behind her back. Her left hand held a large handbag carried with arm fully extended and rigid. A Captain maybe could make an advance of some kind, or even a Lieutenant, but me, no. Till late one afternoon…’ – she stopped this strange ritual of walking ahead of Sam (she must have spotted him entering the town across the fields and timed her walk precisely several weekends in a row, it seems), turned around and invited him to walk with her. After some platonic “walking out” – literally, to country inns – she evidently decided to hurry him along a bit by saying ‘she enjoyed my company best when I’d got a couple of whiskies under my belt’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(4) As Sam’s son, I remain somewhat embarrassed about this passage because of the language he uses – “coloured” and (further on) “piccaninny” now deemed racist diction – and the degree of racism he recalls feeling in the course of this episode back when he was 20. As his editor, I decided not to cut or remove these paragraphs because, like everything else about his <i>Memoir</i>, it was personally honest and true to his times. “Times” plural, because a) you can see here how the old Sam – in his 70s during the ’70s when he was writing – was uneasy about his younger self’s attitudes while candidly recording them, but b) in ’70s Britain, neither “coloured” nor “piccaninny” had become subject to the linguistic shifts which, in the natural course of cultural evolution, constantly move the meanings and implications of words around so that, for instance, some, like these two, become signifiers of racism. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(5) Mr Frusher, his de facto mentor in Edmonton when he was aged about 10 to 16, had made Sam a prude or a gentleman, according to taste, with his emphasis on the male responsibility to rebuff female desires until the appropriate time – namely, after marriage. He called it “chivalry”. Sam’s Littlehampton Lady obviously thought his restraint worse than unnecessary. And young Sam no doubt persuaded himself that it was all down to rather noble virtue… so that he could overlook his shyness and fear in relationships with women. Fortunately, I can report that he got over this impediment soon after the war, thought rather later than the end of his Memoir; he told me how another bold girl visited him when he was bed-ridden with a cold, climbed in with him and gave him an experience he deemed well worth repeating quite often thereafter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">All the best</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">– <i>FSS</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">Next week: Sam, writing in 1972-6, didn’t foresee that I might adapt his Memoir into a weekly blog, so he didn’t write enough to about certain periods to spread evenly across the months – and May to late June is one such thin spell. So before returning to his demob and the crescendo of the grand Peace parade on July 19, I’m going to run a highlights reel, so to speak: a three-part Retro sequence from his north London childhood and teens covering The Making Of A Tommy, followed by four long collections of excerpts on the key moments of his three great campaigns/battles, Gallipoli, the Somme, the Spring Offensive and one on his POW months through to Armistice and freedom.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18pt;">(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote <i>Nobody Of Any Importance</i>, a <i>Memoir </i>of his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
FootSoldierSamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01449820798842961719noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545275143240244101.post-70747163091250707392019-04-28T00:30:00.000-07:002019-04-28T00:30:12.822-07:00April/May 1919: Sam contemplates leaving the Army soonish – and finds his self-confidence vanishing… Brother Ted‘s back in his old job, but Sam’s pre-war employer’s bust…<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir(1) <i>– 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 </i>Memoir<i>, added documentation.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">For details of how to buy the <i>Memoir </i>or </span><span lang="EN-US">Gallipoli <span style="color: purple;"></span><span style="color: #161616;">& </span>Somme <span style="color: #8b5200;">&</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">Arras 1918/POW </span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">etc </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">mini-e-books click </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=4897427382137035394;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=4;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">plus see reader reviews </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=6753328261534245137;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=1;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">and </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=8857004925280018109;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=2;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;"> and reviews from the Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=7620675943831341074;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=0;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">. </span><span lang="EN-US"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">For AUDIO excerpts click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/footsoldiersam" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #7c4000;"> Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nobody-Of-Any-Importance-A-Foot-Soldiers-Memoir-of-WW1/300782296758247" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">The war’s over at last – but Sam’s blog, Facebook page and tweets will continue until his </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir <i>concludes with the Centenary of the July 19, 1919, Peace parade in London…<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">Memoir <i>will always go to the British Red Cross – and the current running donations total as of April 3, 2019, is £4,078.85 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!).</i></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Dear all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">A hundred years ago this week, in the aftermath of the Armistice… One early direct result of agreements at the Paris Peace Conference was rioting in Peking (as was) where 3,000 students were incensed by the news that Germany’s former territories in Shantung on the east coast had been handed over willynilly to Japan; the students sought out the warlord believed to have sold out his country and beat him to death in his home, thereby founding the May The 4th Movement which soon spread to Shanghai and elsewhere (China recovered its lost land three years later). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> In Germany, left-right fighting continued as 9,000 Weimar Republic troops and <i>Freikorps </i>irregulars took control of Munich, where socialists had set up a Bavarian Soviet (May 2) – the <i>Freikorps </i>executed 700 to reinforce their message.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> To the east, however, the Russian civil war took a turn to the Red, when Bolshevik forces, recovering from their defeat at Orenburg, crushed two White Russian Divisions at Buguruslan, Orenburg Oblast (April 28; 1,220 miles southeast of Moscow), capturing the town six days later and forcing the Whites to retreat 73 miles north to Bugulma, Tatarstan. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Other post-World War eruptions ranged widely. The new Emir of Afghanistan, Amanoellah Khan, apparently under Russian influence, declared war on Great Britain (May 3).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> In America a wave of anarchist bombings began (April 30) with 36 bombs mailed to politicians and businessmen, although the only people they injured were servants and a Georgia Senator’s wife. And in Cleveland, Ohio, the May Day Riots saw a trade union and socialist protest against the jailing in April of Eugene V. Debs, already a four-time Socialist Party candidate for the Presidency (he ran again in 1920 from the Atlanta pen); the demonstrators fought police and soldiers in three locations and the riots, noted as the most violent incident of the USA’s first “Red Scare”, left two dead, 40 injured and 116 arrests.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Finally, way down in Western Australia, the Freemantle Wharf Riot pitted the Waterside Workers’ Federation against the National Waterside Workers Union, noted as strikebreakers during the war and thus preferred for all the work going on the docks. One WWF man died after being clubbed by police.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">[</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Memoir <i>background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe </i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">from Edmonton, north London,</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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), </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">… until </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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 Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied around Arras until mid-March when he ran into his own Essex </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">2/7th </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Battalion. They moved into the trenches near Fampoux 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 doing hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany and finally moving westwards to Lorraine – whence, the day after Armistice, his long trek towards the French Front began. He reached safety after tiptoeing through a German minefield (November 15 probably). Then began his recovery from chronic near-starvation – and a brief emotional breakdown – until, finally, on December 10, 1918, he returned to England and another few days in hospital before reuniting with parents and siblings, especially brother Ted, home on a week’s leave but suffering badly from gas damage. Civilian life offered Sam a warm welcome… until, in February, 1919, the Army called him back - though only to a “Dad’s Army” unit. Meaning, at first, a few weeks </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">de facto<i>holiday in Brighton. But then, something completely different… through the spring, Sam and others ex-POWs guard German POWs at a camp in Sussex…]</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">April-May, 1919, Sussex: Sam continues with his final Army job, in a squad of fellow ex-POWs guarding German war prisoners still detained at a run-down near-stately home in the village of East Preston, five miles southeast of Arundel. Transferred to Home Guard forerunner, the Royal Defence Corps, he’s emerged from a short-lived lust for revenge and come to enjoy fraternising with (most of) the enemy – they don’t share much language, but they do have a lot of WW1 front-line experience in common… <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> But while that job trundles on through the spring, he’s starting to think of the life to come, the life aborted by the war in 1914 when he was 16 – and stuck in an unpromising office-boy position anyway. His brother Ted looks well set, mind (bar the terrible gas damage to his lungs, of course)…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘Weeks and months passed until June(2) arrived with warm sunshine and news that a Peace Treaty was soon to be signed. My brother had been demobbed(3); on the first day after he left the Army, he’d started work back in his old job with a City of London paper company, determined to forget all about the recent wasted years and bring himself up to date in everything concerning his chosen trade – which company manufactured every type of paper, where it was warehoused, who the mills’ agents were and where to find them… All the information he’d had at his fingertips before the war, as he described to me in many talks before we went to war and then, lately, whenever I came home on leave from Sussex.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> But Ted’s return to work did bring one difficulty. His boss still thought of him as the lad of five years ago and hoped to pay him accordingly – which meant merely doubling his pre-war salary(4). Ted could just have flown off the handle and told him to stuff the job, yet no such reckless action followed; fuming inwardly, he worked politely and industriously to relearn his trade so that, at the appropriate time, he could demand a reward commensurate with his worth to the firm – eating humble pie, he told me, for a strictly limited period.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Meanwhile, I felt that, compared with Ted, I had a life of ease. Although I realised some of us must do the necessary chores aimed at winding up the Great War(5) (as it was beginning to be called, for reasons elusive to me), I itched to shed the uniform which five years earlier had so attracted me.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> However, when I faced my situation as it would look from the moment the Army handed me my notice of discharge, the shock was sufficient to destroy all the self-confidence slowly restored since my release from the degradation of living as a war prisoner. The boy who had, without much serious thought for his long-term prospects, gone along to enlist with his brother and two somewhat older fellows and struggled so hard to stay with them when that nasty Quartermaster Sergeant had thrust him aside because he suspected the lad was too young… age-wise, five years on, that kid was about to become a Man…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> After posing as one for so long, I suddenly had to understand that a wartime man and a peacetime man had quite dissimilar problems to cope with… although survival remained the eventual aim of both, I reflected. These realisations shook me. So, while I guarded the prison “camp” and accompanied parties of Germans to their compulsory labours, my thoughts often wandered far from them and their activities.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Back in the City with his old firm and, therefore, close to the offices of my former employer, Lake & Currie, Ted said he would telephone or call on them to find out about my prospects, if any. But he had become so busy picking up former threads and contacts that I felt too much time was being lost. With thousands of men released from the Forces daily, I might well miss my opportunity.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> So I wrote to the man who, in those far-off days just after I had joined the Army, had treated me so generously with his gold half-sovereigns and the kindly good wishes: Company Secretary F.C. Bull – brusque at times, I recalled, but only when under pressure from one of the partners, particularly the Squire of what-d’you-call-it in Suffolk. Sad to say, though, he did not now work at that address and someone at that building forwarded my letter to a different part of the City, whence I received a reply which killed off all hope of rejoining the old firm.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Signed by, of all people, the pre-war junior typist, it informed me that Lake & Currie no longer existed; she and the former senior partner (the Squire bloke(6)) now worked in a small office in Broad Street and required no staff. So war had put the skids under such a big and prosperous business. Like many a good soldier, it had gone over the top and vanished.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(2) June must be a misremembering because my father was “disembodied” (demobilised, but for Territorials I gather) on May 6 and discharged on May 30 according to records including the “Casualty Form – Active Service” (page 2) right here, if you can wiggle your way through the scrawl about two-thirds of the way down on the left:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(3) Ted Sutcliffe’s Medal Rolls index card, below, suggests his effective demob date was April 1, 1919, though it’s expressed as transfer to “‘Z’ Res” (see on the right, under "Remarks"); Wikipedia says Class Z Reserve was a contingent “consisting of previously enlisted soldiers, now discharged”, created by Army Order on December 3, 1918, pending potential post-Armistice resumption of hostilities; after post-war treaties secured the peace, the Army disbanded Z Reserve on March 31, 1920. Ian Hook, when curating the Essex Regiment Museum (he moved to the Imperial War Museum), told me he found a record of my father’s ultimate discharge as being on March 12, 1920, so it could well be he too got a final admin. transfer to Z Reserve but barely noticed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(4) According to UK inflation calculator <a href="http://safalra.com/other/historical-uk-inflation-price-conversion/" style="color: purple;">http://safalra.com/other/historical-uk-inflation-price-conversion/</a></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(may prove hyperlink-resistant)</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">prices exactly doubled between 1914 and 1919, year on year increases being 12.5% 1914-15, 18.1% 1915-16, 25.2% 1916-17, 22% 1917-18, 10.1% 1918-19 – its source credited as a </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">2004 paper “Consumer Price Inflation Since 1750” (Economic Trends NO. 604) by Jim O’Donoghue, Louise Goulding, and Grahame Allen</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">. Ted’s firm honoured a promise (in writing, mind you) to give him his old job back when (if) he returned from the war, as noted in Chapter 14 of Sam’s <i>Memoir</i>.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(5) One early source of the title was the Canadian magazine, <i>Maclean’s</i>, of October, 1914: “Some wars name themselves. This is the Great War.” It remained so named until World War II came along and demanded a predecessor – I know that doesn’t quite make sense, but it’s commonly offered as the explanation so… feel free to raise an eyebrow and say, Huh? Or… note original “TV historian” AJP Taylor recording that Charles à Court Repington (1858-1925), a former Lieutenant-Colonel who turned war correspondent (for <i>The Times </i>during WW1), named it World War 1 in order to remind future generations that “the history of the world is the history of war” – Taylor says this was in the aftermath of Armistice, and that may be when it gained a certain currency, but his Wikipedia biog reckons he used it first in writing in his personal diary for September 10, 1918.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(6) The “squire bloke” was Lake – subject, in Chapter 11 of the <i>Memoir</i>, of one of Sam’s remarkably detailed descriptions “A big man indeed. The squire of quite a large village up in Norfolk and the possessor of a dwelling in the fashionable Boltons area of Kensington and a flat in one of those small streets at the back of Trafalgar Square.… Unforgettable too, the appearance, manner and behaviour of the senior partner, Mr Lake; he had this tough, grey hair with a military cut, fairly short back, sides and on top, no parting – a style that became generally popular some years later – and a wide forehead above bushy black eyebrows above small eyes set unusually close, and yet between them stood the very high bridge of a thin, pointed nose; below that, the then fashionable, clipped, grey moustache, and small, petulant lips; the jawbones narrowed to a small, pointed chin; bright red cheeks blazed out from an otherwise pale skin.” The far more amiable and less conspicuous partner, Currie, lived in Burnham Beeches, Buckinghamshire.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">All the best</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">– <i>FSS</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Next week: Sam’s first post-war romance – with the little lady from Littlehampton – fizzles via a mixture of old-fashioned morality, a still virginal lad’s overwhelming capacity for embarrassment and awkwardness – and a <i>soupçon </i>of period racism…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote <i>Nobody Of Any Importance</i>, a <i>Memoir </i>of his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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FootSoldierSamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01449820798842961719noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545275143240244101.post-84076981248970113122019-04-21T00:30:00.000-07:002019-04-21T00:30:02.577-07:00Sam “fraternises with the enemy” again – the German POWs he’s guarding in Sussex – including fellow former front-liners Willi and Hans… they all find they’re “too young to hate anybody who did them no harm”<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir(1) <i>– 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 </i>Memoir<i>, added documentation.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">For details of how to buy the <i>Memoir </i>or </span><span lang="EN-US">Gallipoli <span style="color: purple;"></span><span style="color: #161616;">& </span>Somme <span style="color: #8b5200;">&</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">Arras 1918/POW </span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">etc </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">mini-e-books click </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=4897427382137035394;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=4;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">plus see reader reviews </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=6753328261534245137;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=1;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">and </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=8857004925280018109;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=2;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;"> and reviews from the Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=7620675943831341074;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=0;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">.</span><span lang="EN-US"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">For AUDIO excerpts click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/footsoldiersam" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #7c4000;"> Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nobody-Of-Any-Importance-A-Foot-Soldiers-Memoir-of-WW1/300782296758247" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">The war’s over at last – but Sam’s blog, Facebook page and tweets will continue until his </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir <i>concludes with the Centenary of the July 19, 1919, Peace parade in London…<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">Memoir <i>will always go to the British Red Cross – and the current running donations total as of April 3, 2019, is £4,078.85 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!).</i></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Dear all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">A hundred years ago this week, in the aftermath of the Armistice… The big story, the Paris Peace Conference, came up with nothing substantial (until the start of next week), but Europe and beyond remained embroiled in aftermath uproar of various kinds, often indicative of trouble in store.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Assorted “soviets” (outside Russia) went on springing up and/or collapsing. In Ireland, the Limerick Soviet, created on April 15 during a strike that followed the murder of a policeman/trade unionist by the IRA, briefly produced its own currency and newspaper before peacefully expiring on April 27. In Germany, a socialist leader organised 20,000 “irregulars” of the <i>Freikorp </i>into a force coherent enough to capture the town of Dachau from the local soviet (26)…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> On the multinational capitalist front, power-broking business took shape significantly with the San Remo Oil Agreement (April 24). This divided spoils among the victors – well, just UK and France – with the UK passing to the state-owned French oil company a 25 per cent stake in Turkish Petroleum it had expropriated from Germany in December, 1918, while acquiring 47.5 per cent for British-but-not-state-owned Anglo-Persian oil (April 22).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> While swathes of the Canadian Army disbanded, having served their purpose, Polish head of state Pilsudski unsuccessfully tried to generate union with Lithuania by declaration and the promise of democracy, and the democratic Estonian Constituent Assembly convened its first session in Tallinn… elsewhere shooting proceeded.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> After a short lull in the Russian civil war, the Red Counteroffensive Of The Eastern Front (April 22-July 19) started with the successful three-day defence of Orenburg, about 900 mikes southeast of Moscow, against a White Russian attack. However, in the Battle For The Donbass region (January-May) in eastern Ukraine the Whites drove the Reds into retreat in the </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Kolpakovo district.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Meanwhile, in Baku, Azerbaijan, a workers’ uprising overthrew the newish military dictatorship (April 25).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">[</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Memoir <i>background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe </i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">from Edmonton, north London,</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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), </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">… until </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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 Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied around Arras until mid-March when he ran into his own Essex </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">2/7th </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Battalion. They moved into the trenches near Fampoux 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 doing hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany and finally moving westwards to Lorraine – whence, the day after Armistice, his long trek towards the French Front began. He reached safety after tiptoeing through a German minefield (November 15 probably). Then began his recovery from chronic near-starvation – and a brief emotional breakdown – until, finally, on December 10, 1918, he returned to England and another few days in hospital before reuniting with parents and siblings, especially brother Ted, home on a week’s leave but suffering badly from gas damage. Civilian life offered Sam a warm welcome… until, in February, 1919, the Army called him back - though only to a “Dad’s Army” unit. Meaning, at first, a few weeks </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">de facto<i>holiday in Brighton. But then, something completely different…Sam as ex-POW guards German POWs…]</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">April, 1919, Sussex: Sam is continuing with his final Army job, in a squad of fellow ex-POWs guarding German war prisoners still detained at a run-down near-stately home in the village of East Preston, five miles southeast of Arundel. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Transferred to Home Guard forerunner, the Royal Defence Corps, he’s emerged from a short-lived lust for revenge and come to enjoy fraternising with (most of) the enemy… not to mention a haughty girl in Littlehampton (who hasn’t inveigled him into losing his virginity just yet). This week, he’s in charge of a hard-labour detail with his sort-of new pals – they don’t share much language, but they do have a lot of WW1 front-line experience in common…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘In spare moments, I still spent the odd half-hour with the mandolin player. His life must have been dull because, as an </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Unteroffizier(2)<i>, he couldn’t go out with working parties – this I assumed, at least, never having seen him outside his room. An engaging bloke, he was, always well-groomed and neatly moustached… I listened mostly, being well aware that he was older, better educated and more worldly-wise. I gained an insight into the Berlin pre-war lifestyle experienced at his level; it included frequent dinings-out and visits to theatres and opera houses.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Meanwhile, the work of reinforcing the Arun’s banks continued. A repetitive routine. Rifle slung over shoulder on the walk to the station, pack my merry men into a compartment and sit with them, listen and try to understand their conversations, but not often succeed – hoping that most of the Germans knew I had a smattering of their lingo, yet not exactly how much I might comprie(3)… and, at the same time, suspecting that the oddball(4), who resented deeply his captivity, spoke rudely about me or the British in general.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> When Willi Justmann, of ruddy cheek and open smile, happened to be a member of our party, he always helped us enjoy the journey. Hans(5), whose surname I forget, made another good companion. Both spoke as much English as I spoke German. No hatred in them by then – like me, too young to hate anybody who did them no personal harm. I think we youngsters mistrusted the opinions of most older men, chiefly because they felt so certain of their rightness. I’d bet those German lads had many a laugh, before the war, at the prancings of </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Kaiser<i>imitators with the ugly, carefully moulded moustaches, points upturned, the elaborate uniforms and high-kick marching to and fro.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Detraining at Arundel(6), we marched to a prearranged rendezvous with a man who supervised our unloading blocks of chalk from a barge on to the riverbank at various points. That task completed, we then rolled the lumps to the river edge and down the bank to settle in the water. Then we built up one block on top of another, and gradually constructed a new, firm riverbank.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Our boss was a genuine Sussex-by-the-sea man of about 60 years, slow-talking, comfortable, and the sort of bloke for whom people work twice as hard as they will for a bully. He wore a leather strap over his corduroy trousers, just below each knee, to guard his private parts against the marauding habits of small insects and tiny rodents. His lower regions protected and his torso massively garbed in a long poacher’s coat of heavy black cloth, he faced both weather and his fellows with confidence, knew his job well and shared his consequent contentment with those around him, including our German mates. The decent ones, that is, for when I numbered among my party, for one day only, that Prussian-type nut, the foreman soon got his measure and yelled, “Work you! Stop jawing and get on with it!”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> No other Jerry ever had a word of reproof from him in my hearing.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Up on a hill above the town, I could see Arundel Castle(7) in its extensive grounds and longed to slip away and explore them, but I needlessly feared someone might escape – why should they have done so, with return to </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Deutschland <i>probably imminent?’<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(2) <i>Unteroffizier</i>: equivalent of Sergeant in the German Army – he was introduced in the March 24 Blog.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(3) Comprie: soldierese Frenglish for “understand”, <i>bien sur</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(4) “The oddball” is a back-ref to the one German POW Sam couldn’t get on with, also introduced in the March 24 Blog. As per a few paragraphs down, Sam thought him a “Prussian” – but then he tended to think that of any German he disliked, such as the miserable prison-camp guard in Lorraine, back in autumn 1918, who continued mistreating and harassing the British POWs even after everyone else started celebrating the Armistice (see Blog November 18, 2018).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(5) Hans and Willi were the first German POWs Sam befriended when he got over his vengeful phase (again see Blog March 24).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(6) Area map showing Arundel, East Preston etc at https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/East+Preston/@50.8489064,-0.5554478,12z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x4875a480ae383f65:0x27ad9d21859cd419!8m2!3d50.811152!4d-0.48458 (if this doesn’t click through and you like to see a map of what you’re reading about, do cut and paste it into your favourite search engine).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(7) For a recent photo of Arundel Castle as viewed from the banks of the Arun where Sam and his German POWs were working in 1919 see this local news story https://www.littlehamptongazette.co.uk/news/woman-s-warning-after-toddler-falls-into-stream-near-arundel-castle-1-8706417 Parts of the castle date back as far as 1068 and it has been the family seat of the Dukes of Norfolk for more than 850 years (two of them were beheaded by angry monarchs and the palace was besieged during the Civil War).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">All the best</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">– <i>FSS</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Next week: Sam contemplates leaving the Army imminently and finds his self-confidence vanishing as he realises he has to build a new, civilian life… As ever, older brother Ted is ahead of him, back in his pre-war job… But Sam finds his own former employer bust and not hiring…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote <i>Nobody Of Any Importance</i>, a <i>Memoir </i>of his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
FootSoldierSamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01449820798842961719noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545275143240244101.post-78125895144079726272019-04-14T00:30:00.000-07:002019-04-14T00:30:07.374-07:00Sam, an ex-POW Gallipoli/Somme veteran guarding German POWs in Sussex, discovers the previously hidden (romantic!) promise of Littlehampton…<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir(1) <i>– 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 </i>Memoir<i>, added documentation.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">For details of how to buy the <i>Memoir </i>or </span><span lang="EN-US">Gallipoli <span style="color: purple;"></span><span style="color: #161616;">& </span>Somme <span style="color: #8b5200;">&</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">Arras 1918/POW</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">etc </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">mini-e-books click </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=4897427382137035394;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=4;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">plus see reader reviews </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=6753328261534245137;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=1;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">and </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=8857004925280018109;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=2;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;"> and reviews from the Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=7620675943831341074;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=0;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">.</span><span lang="EN-US"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">For AUDIO excerpts click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/footsoldiersam" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #7c4000;"> Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nobody-Of-Any-Importance-A-Foot-Soldiers-Memoir-of-WW1/300782296758247" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">The war’s over at last – but Sam’s blog, Facebook page and tweets will continue until his </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir <i>concludes with the Centenary of the July 19, 1919, Peace parade in London…<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">Memoir <i>will always go to the British Red Cross – and the current running donations total as of April 3, 2019, is £4,078.85 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!).</i></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Dear all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">A hundred years ago this week, in the aftermath of the Armistice… While not much detail was emerging from the Paris Peace Conference, French PM Georges Clemenceau wrote to one of his generals (April 15) that everything was turning out well from his point of view: “In the last three days, we have worked well. All the great issues of concern to France are almost settled. Yesterday, as well as the two treaties giving us the military support of Britain and the United States in case of a German attack, I obtained the occupation of the Rhineland for 15 years, with partial evacuation after five years. If Germany does not fulfil the treaty, there will be no evacuation either partial or definitive. At last I am no longer anxious. I have obtained almost everything I wanted.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Years later, UK PM Lloyd George observed of his more-or-less ally against US President Woodrow Wilson’s more moderate approach to punishing Germany’s: “It was part of the real joy of these Conferences to observe Clemenceau's attitude towards Wilson… He listened with eyes and ears lest Wilson should by a phrase commit the Conference to some proposition which weakened the settlement from the French standpoint. If Wilson ended his allocution without doing any perceptible harm, Clemenceau's stern face temporarily relaxed, and he expressed his relief with a deep sigh. But if the President took a flight beyond the azure main, as he was occasionally inclined to do without regard to relevance, Clemenceau would open his great eyes in twinkling wonder, and turn them on me as much as to say: ‘Here he is, off again!’”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Apart from the jaw-jaw, war-war still proceeded in eastern Europe. While the Red and White Russians’ conflict in the Urals stalled for a few days, Bolshevik forces took a heavy loss in the Battle Of Lida April 16-17), part of the Polish-Soviet War (February 14, 1919-March 18, 1921). Having camped outside the town (in present-day Belarus) since mid-March, the Polish Army attacked the Russians – who’d lately taken it after German occupation – and drove them out, pursuing them eastwards with cavalry. This signalled a strategic shift by the newly independent Poles who decided to stop fighting the Ukrainians and concentrate on their Russian border.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Much further east, in the Punjab, five days of rioting followed the Massacre Of Amritsar (April 13) – connected to World War I because the Punjab had been the main source of recruitment for the Indian Army which fought at Gallipoli, in the Middle East and on the Western Front.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">[</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Memoir <i>background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe </i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">from Edmonton, north London, </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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), </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">… until </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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 Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied around Arras until mid-March when he ran into his own Essex </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">2/7th </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Battalion. They moved into the trenches near Fampoux 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 doing hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany and finally moving westwards to Lorraine – whence, the day after Armistice, his long trek towards the French Front began. He reached safety after tiptoeing through a German minefield (November 15 probably). Then began his recovery from chronic near-starvation – and a brief emotional breakdown – until, finally, on December 10, 1918, he returned to England and another few days in hospital before reuniting with parents and siblings, especially brother Ted, home on a week’s leave but suffering badly from gas damage. Civilian life offered Sam a warm welcome… until, in February, 1919, the Army called him back - though only to a “Dad’s Army” unit. Meaning, at first, a few weeks </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">de facto<i>holiday in Brighton. But then, something completely different…Sam as ex-POW guards German POWs…]</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">April, 1919, Sussex: Sam is continuing with his final Army job, guarding German POWs detained at a run-down near-stately home in the village of East Preston, five miles southeast of Arundel(2). His fellow guards, like my father, are all ex-POWs transferred from their fighting Regiments to the Royal Defence Corps. They’d been told Winston Churchill conceived this set-up in the belief that it would do them good…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Last week, Sam ventured into a failed attempt at romance with one of the village schoolteachers – and also took to weekend walks across the fields to Littlehampton, 2.5 miles west. There he enjoyed the usually deserted YMCA – missing its departed GI clientele – for big lunches served up by the underemployed ladies in the café. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> But now the small seaside resort offers him a different kind of attraction…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">‘</span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">More than once, when I wandered into Littlehampton, I found myself walking behind a girl quietly dressed in a calf-length, Navy-blue overcoat. She usually turned right, as I did, into the High Street, at the far end of which stood the YMCA. Then, every time, she would walk straight past the building and I would climb the steps… beginning to feel curious about her and where she was going.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Everything about her suggested a degree of respectability which would preclude interruptions to her progress from a poor soldier such as myself. As she walked, her bearing regal, she looked neither right nor left. Her right arm swung sort of diagonally, finishing behind her back. Her left hand held a large handbag carried with arm fully extended and rigid. A Captain maybe could make an advance of some kind, or even a Lieutenant, but me, no. Till late one afternoon…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> She must have despaired of anything coming of the haughty act and this time when I followed her along the High Street – by chance as ever – she stopped in her tracks, turned round, confronted me and smiled. “You’re not going to duck into that dump again, are you?” she asked. Of course, I quickly adjusted my thinking and promised never again to do that if she was likely to be available.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Nothing exciting came of it, but we met often, walked around the district and usually called at a country inn for a couple of drinks… Something different, then, to make the fairly long walk to Littlehampton worthwhile.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I treated her with the respect due to one of her obviously high moral standards. But when, on one of our pub visits, she told me she enjoyed my company best when I’d got a couple of whiskies under my belt, I wondered if I was perhaps overdoing the gallantry(3).<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Resting one day on my mattress in my little room just below the roof of the old mansion, I heard a knock on the door and in came our Sergeant – a boozy-faced old twit, I thought – accompanied by a tall lad. “Hope you won’t mind sharing with this young man,” said the gaffer and, of course, I made him welcome. I said, “Come in, George, very glad to have you for a mate after all these years!” – expecting, as I did so, a sign of recognition from him… Marvelling at the strange coincidence of it all, I was staggered when he said it was great I called him by his proper name before he’d introduced himself; at which, I realised this was a stock joke of his – he thought I’d called him George because, in the Army, everyone called you George if they didn’t know your proper name.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> It shook me for, as a pre-war youngster, this lad had worked, just over Southwark Bridge from Lake & Currie’s offices, in the laboratory which assayed mineral samples sent in by our firm’s mining engineers. General dogsbody George(4) trotted over to the City with the results and took back anything that needed testing. I often chatted with him while he waited in the outer office I occupied with the old “Sergeant” commissionaire; I knew him well, even knew about a kidney complaint which caused him to become drowsy and fall asleep regardless of where he happened to be. He had told me he lived in a block of flats and had to climb several flights of stairs and sometimes sat down on a step and dozed off. Unusual for a boy of 15 or so, but that was about the only result of his complaint that bothered him.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I knew all this, yet he didn’t appear to remember me. Feeling sure he would suddenly recall our earlier acquaintance, I waited with pleasant anticipation for his day of awakening. It never came. At meals, we often sat together and, when duties permitted, we’d withdraw to the small room up top and chat before dozing off. Most days, I tried to say things which should have made him question me. But it just didn’t happen. Quiet, kindly George would occasionally talk about his boyhood times, but I had no place in them.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(2) Area map at https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@50.8359756,-0.5158142,13z <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(3) While Sam here seems to be struggling with the girl’s apparent propriety, I’ll note again that he’d emerged from the war still a virgin and carrying his own burden(?) of restraint inculcated by the mentor of his early teens back in Edmonton, the Rev Mr Frusher, who instructed the lads in his charge, as choir- and scoutmaster, that they <i>“</i>had a bounden duty to accept responsibility and ensure that nothing occurred, when the girl was in his care, which he could not freely reveal to her parents. The final word had a memorable simplicity to it: chivalry.”<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(4) I can’t give you a back-reference here because George didn’t get a mention in the section about Sam’s two years working for Lake & Currie. Even allowing for my father’s appearance having changed somewhat between 1912-14 and 1919, ages 14 to 20, with added impact from his war experience, no doubt this odd episode mostly reflects my father’s extraordinary memory encountering a very bad one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">All the best</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">– <i>FSS</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Next week: Sam “fraternises with the enemy” again; the mandolin-playing <i>Unteroffizier </i>and – while rebuilding the Arundel river bank – fellow former front-liners Willi and Hans… “too young to hate anybody who did them now harm”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote <i>Nobody Of Any Importance</i>, a <i>Memoir </i>of his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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FootSoldierSamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01449820798842961719noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545275143240244101.post-6155772752220860182019-04-07T00:30:00.000-07:002019-04-07T00:30:05.344-07:00Sam, the 14-18 front-line survivor, now ex-POW guarding POWs, takes a hesitant step back in the direction of romance, but… no go. Speaking of which, he finds himself in Littlehampton…<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir(1) <i>– 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 </i>Memoir<i>, added documentation.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">For details of how to buy the <i>Memoir</i>or </span><span lang="EN-US">Gallipoli <span style="color: purple;"></span><span style="color: #161616;">& </span>Somme<span style="color: #8b5200;">&</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">Arras 1918/POW </span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">etc </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">mini-e-books click </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=4897427382137035394;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=4;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">plus see reader reviews </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=6753328261534245137;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=1;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">and </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=8857004925280018109;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=2;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;"> and reviews from the Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=7620675943831341074;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=0;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">. </span><span lang="EN-US"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">For AUDIO excerpts click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/footsoldiersam" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #7c4000;"> Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nobody-Of-Any-Importance-A-Foot-Soldiers-Memoir-of-WW1/300782296758247" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">The war’s over at last – but Sam’s blog, Facebook page and tweets will continue until his </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir <i>concludes with the Centenary of the July 19, 1919, Peace parade in London…<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">Memoir <i>will always go to the British Red Cross – and the current running donations total as of April 3, 2019, is £4,078.85 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!).</i></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Dear all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">A hundred years ago this week, in the aftermath of the Armistice… The Paris Peace Conference produced one if its earliest and most substantial creations, the International Labour Organisation/ILO (founded April 11 and still going, with 187 nation members currently). The previous day, the Inter-Allied Women’s Conference, which had run in parallel to the Peace Conference since February 10, delivered its final resolutions concentrating on the trafficking and sale of women, voting rights, inclusion in education and human rights generally. Much of this was initially set aside by the Peace Conference participants, but it is reckoned to be the first time women (aside from the odd monarch, I presume) took part in an international treaty negotiation – officially recognised, albeit meeting away from the main chambers of debate and decision-making.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Away from the Peace Conference, the other stories of the week largely involved fighting. In Russia, the Bolshevik forces had good and bad days. In the White v Red battles in the Urals – the Armies numbering about 100,000 on each side – the Whites took Belebey (April 7; 800 miles east of Moscow in Bashkortostan) and Bugulma (10; 80 miles northwest of Belebey) forcing the Reds to withdraw and regroup. But down south, Bolshevik troops entered the Crimea (8) and occupied Yalta (12; 925 miles due south of Moscow). Meanwhile, the dire situation of the White-supporting Allied forces around Archangel (765 miles north of Moscow) provoked the British to send a relief force (9).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Territorial and political disputes and skirmishes continued in many parts of Europe, but the historic event for Great Britain and for India, whose troops had so recently fought alongside one another on the Western Front and elsewhere, was the notorious Massacre Of Amritsar (April 13). In the northern Punjab, heart of Indian recruitment for WW1, Brigadier General Reginald Dyer ordered 50 British and Gurkha troops to open fire on unarmed 20,000 people – apparently a mixture of religious pilgrims and political protesters – gathered in Amritsar’s main square. In 10 minutes deaths totalled between 379 (British account) and 1,000 (the figure from an enquiry initiated by Matama Gandhi). Initially lauded, Dyer was was forced to quit the Army the following year by vote in the House Of Commons. The Massacre fuelled the burgeoning Indian independence movement, especially Gandhi’s campaign of non-violent protest.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">[</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Memoir <i>background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe </i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">from Edmonton, north London,</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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), </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">… until </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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 Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied around Arras until mid-March when he ran into his own Essex </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">2/7th </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Battalion. They moved into the trenches near Fampoux 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 doing hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany and finally moving westwards to Lorraine – whence, the day after Armistice, his long trek towards the French Front began. He reached safety after tiptoeing through a German minefield (November 15 probably). Then began his recovery from chronic near-starvation – and a brief emotional breakdown – until, finally, on December 10, 1918, he returned to England and another few days in hospital before reuniting with parents and siblings, especially brother Ted, home on a week’s leave but suffering badly from gas damage. Civilian life offered Sam a warm welcome… until, in February, 1919, the Army called him back - though only to a “Dad’s Army” unit. Meaning, at first, a few weeks </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">de facto<i>holiday in Brighton. But now, something completely different… Sam as ex-POW guards German POWs, while taking tentative steps back into "normal" life… ]</i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">April, 1919, Sussex: Sam and his group of fellow ex-POWs had been sent to a small village called East Preston, about five miles southeast of Arundel where, to their considerable surprise, they were deployed to guard German POWs detained in Preston Place, the local sometime semi-stately home. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> This Winston Churchill wheeze – as Secretary Of State For War at the time – was intended to defuse any vestigial lust for vengeance on their recent enemies and jailors. In Sam’s case it only just worked (see Blog March 17, 2019), but in a few days he recovered his equilibrium.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Last week, he found himself an onlooker to a terrible post-war story as two newly arrived ex-POW/guards, who had suffered not just the usual privations but vilely cruel torture, went berserk and attacked the German prisoners. They did little actual harm, but both had to return to the psychiatric hospital whence they had lately been released, allegedly “cured”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Now, what Sam did at the weekends in rural Sussex. Romance?! Hijinks?! Well… he tried…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘On the railway platform one morning(2), I awaited a train which took my party to Arundel for one of our regular jobs, repairing the banks of the River Arun. A lady, whom I guessed to be my senior by several years, smiled at me. Thus encouraged, I wished her “Good morning” and learned that she was a schoolteacher. Soon she offered me a ticket, price sixpence, which would admit me to a whist drive in the village hall; she took my tanner(3) and hoped we would meet there on Saturday.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> That convivial affair made me several civilian friends and paved the way to several people inviting me into their homes. My teacher friend proved a happy person, though strictly correct in behaviour. She asked me to bring a pal, and call at the house next to the Roman Catholic village school around teatime the following Saturday. We didn’t take out prisoner working parties at the weekend, so I could easily arrange to be free.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I found a chap of the right sort, as I judged, and he did, in fact, get on extremely well with the teacher. She taught at a Church of England school, but shared the house with a Roman Catholic colleague. As you might guess, the Catholic teacher was Irish and I’ve usually found Irish eyes off-putting… But a good tea preceded settling down to some general conversation, the girls having insisted that we males occupy the armchairs.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Lumbered, as I felt, with the one I assumed – being RC – was strictly religious, I applied a degree of restraint in my manner which forbade any kind of fun and games. But, surprisingly, the girls seated themselves on the arms of our large chairs. So, to converse with my Irish beauty, I had to put my head back and look upwards – thus acquiring a crick in the neck. All in all, I wasn’t enjoying myself, and a tentative arm placed round her waist when she appeared to be slipping off her perch brought forth a lack of response which reminded me of her calling.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> More conversation rounded off that exhilarating evening.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">When free of guard duties, I began to enjoy walking along lanes and across fields. Usually, I found myself in Littlehampton(4) and making a beeline for the YMCA – opened a couple of years previously, the staff told me, to cater for the growing number of troops in the area. But the Armistice had quickly reduced the number of Servicemen using the place, especially the Americans, who seemed to vanish overnight, they said.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> The good ladies who gave their time freely to run the canteen had grown noticeably cool about everything coming to a halt so suddenly. So, when the occasional Tommy like me turned up, their enthusiasm revived, they lavished much smashing grub on us – and Britishers once more became of some account, the wealthy Yanks having deserted the local birds without warning. By way of earning my corn I would sit at the piano and tinkle a two- or maybe three-fingered rendering of The Long, Long Trail or some such tearjerker, the notes of which would echo through the now deserted building and, I hoped, bring back memories of livelier, happier days, when war kept things going at a rattling good pace.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(2) That’s Angmering station (a short walk from East Preston) whence they’d travel to Arundel (five miles northwest of East Preston). Area map at https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@50.8359756,-0.5158142,13z<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(3) Does anyone under 50 know what a “tanner”/sixpence was? So, six old pre-decimalisation pennies in one little silver-coloured coin which, I just learned, became a “tanner” in nationwide slang because John Sigismund Tanner designed it for the Royal Mint during George II’s reign (1727-1760).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(4) Littlehampton: perhaps 2.5 miles west of East Preston via the lanes and fields route; a seaside resort in Arun district of Sussex, the settlement dating back to the Domesday Book of 1086. Its repute and population grew through the 19th century as poets and artists took a shine to it (Byron, Coleridge, Shelley, Constable) and then the railway with linking cross-channel ferry to Honfleur brought other holidaymakers. Also, despite its location, it became a Cockney rhyming slang rude joke deriving from the original deployment of Hampton Wick – ergo “Hampton” = “prick” so… You get the picture I’m sure.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">All the best</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">– <i>FSS</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Next week: Sam recovers from the schoolteacher fiasco and discovers the previously hidden promise of Littlehampton… and acquires a new roommate who turns out to be an old pre-war workmate, except he doesn’t recognise Sam at all… very strange.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote <i>Nobody Of Any Importance</i>, a <i>Memoir </i>of his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
FootSoldierSamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01449820798842961719noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545275143240244101.post-11484233083968981082019-03-31T00:30:00.000-07:002019-03-31T00:30:00.394-07:00Sam and his pals guarding German POWs in Sussex village are caught up in a tragedy of war’s aftermath as British victims of torture go berserk and bayonet-charge their prisoners…<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir(1) <i>– 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 </i>Memoir<i>, added documentation.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">For details of how to buy the <i>Memoir </i>or </span><span lang="EN-US">Gallipoli <span style="color: purple;"></span><span style="color: #161616;">& </span>Somme <span style="color: #8b5200;">&</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">Arras 1918/POW </span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">etc </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">mini-e-books click </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=4897427382137035394;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=4;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">plus see reader reviews </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=6753328261534245137;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=1;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">and </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=8857004925280018109;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=2;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;"> and reviews from the Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=7620675943831341074;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=0;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">. </span><span lang="EN-US"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">For AUDIO excerpts click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/footsoldiersam" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #7c4000;"> Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nobody-Of-Any-Importance-A-Foot-Soldiers-Memoir-of-WW1/300782296758247" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">The war’s over at last – but Sam’s blog, Facebook page and tweets will continue until his </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir <i>concludes with the Centenary of the July 19, 1919, Peace parade in London…<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">Memoir <i>will always go to the British Red Cross – and the current running donations total as of March 9, 2019, is £4,011.41 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!).</i></span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Dear all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">A hundred years ago this week, in the aftermath of the Armistice… At the Paris Peace Conference, although the Big Four (UK/USA/France/Italy) had taken over, PM Lloyd George saw only complication facing them and reckoned, by comparison, they had it easy after the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 because this time “</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #363c41; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">It is not one continent that is engaged – every continent is engaged.” No notable progress reported then – except that renowned administrator Sir Maurice Hankey, the British Cabinet Secretary, moved into the minuting role, along with keeping the discussions on track.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #363c41; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Meanwhile, the latest development in Germany’s internal turmoil saw Bavaria declare itself a Soviet Republic (April 4). And the last major shooting fight of the Allied incursion in northern Russia ended in a bloody draw at the aptly-named village of Bolshie Ozerki (March 31-April 2; about 700 miles north of Moscow). The Allies fought to protect their supply line to ice-bound Archangel and succeeded, while suffering light casualties compared to the Red Army’s 2,000. But after the battle, the Bolsheviks withdrew from the area and, as soon as the waters of the River Dvina and the White Sea thawed, the Allies began their evacuation from Archangel.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">[</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Memoir <i>background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe </i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">from Edmonton, north London,</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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), </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">… until </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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 Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied around Arras until mid-March when he ran into his own Essex </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">2/7th </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Battalion. They moved into the trenches near Fampoux 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 doing hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany and finally moving westwards to Lorraine – whence, the day after Armistice, his long trek towards the French Front began. He reached safety after tiptoeing through a German minefield (November 15 probably). Then began his recovery from chronic near-starvation – and a brief emotional breakdown – until, finally, on December 10, 1918, he returned to England and another few days in hospital before reuniting with parents and siblings, especially brother Ted, home on a week’s leave but suffering badly from gas damage. Civilian life offered Sam a warm welcome… until, in February, 1919, the Army called him back - though only to a “Dad’s Army” unit. Meaning, at first, a few weeks </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">de facto<i>holiday in Brighton. But now, something completely different…Sam as ex-POW guards German POWs…]</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">April, 1919, Sussex: Sam and his group of fellow ex-POWs had been sent to a small village called East Preston, about five miles southeast of Arundel where, to their considerable surprise, they were deployed to guard German POWs detained in Preston Place, the local sometime semi-stately home. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Their task, a Winston Churchill wheeze (as then Secretary Of State For War), is to allow this duty to defuse any remaining hatred or lust for vengeance on their recent enemies and jailors. In Sam’s case it only just worked (see Blog March 17, 2019) – without him shooting a German POW, that is – but in a few days he recovered his balance. So in last week’s excerpt he befriended several of his charges, all men like himself who’d fought in the trenches and thus had something significant in common.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> However, this week two new arrivals offer a fresh challenge to Churchill’s optimistic notion:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘After a while, two new British ex-prisoners joined our guard detail – two men who never became friendly with any of us. But, to anyone who showed willing to listen, they repeated an account of one aspect of their own lives as prisoners… The Jerries had sent them to work in mines in Eastern Germany and they had both refused to go below. To punish them, their guards hung them by their ankles head-downwards over a pit-shaft – for hours, I don’t remember how long they said it was. This awful experience had caused mental derangement, though more in one man than the other.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> In their absence, the Sergeant in charge of my section told us the two had joined us late because they had been detained in a mental hospital for treatment. They were now cured, normal, he said, but we must both make allowances and keep an eye on them. This proved justified.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> One night, a small party of us on standby duty were enjoying a game of cards in the rest room when we heard rifle shots. We grabbed our guns and awaited orders from our Sergeant. He said that the men on guard must first deal with the trouble and they would call for our help if necessary.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Some time later, we heard footsteps slowly climbing the stairs to our room; four or five of our men flung the door open and burst in carrying a stretcher on which one of the newcomers was strapped down. The Corporal-In-Charge slowly made his report, while the Sergeant wrote notes: “[The man on the stretcher] and his companion were heard shouting, ‘Charge the swine!’ I ran towards them, but was unable to stop them from charging with bayonets fixed and firing their rifles as they ran towards one of the prisoners’ dormitories. Inside, the Germans ran about trying to avoid being bayoneted, but one of them got an arm wound before we overpowered the two men. The violent one we secured by strapping him to the stretcher and the other, quieter chap is being held by two men.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> The Sergeant telephoned the mental hospital from which they had been released(1). Soon an ambulance arrived and two men in white coats took charge of their former patients. The quieter one helped to carry the stretcher down the stairway and, in the ambulance, sat with a hand resting on his pal. His role, as he saw it, was to look after his poorly chum. There was more sorrow than anger about what had occurred, even, it seemed, among the Germans.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(1) Quite possibly Graylingwell Hospital, Chichester (about 14 miles west of East Preston). It was a civilian mental hospital until March 1915, before conversion to military use. From 1919 until its closure in 2001 it reverted to specialising in mental illness. By one account, Sussex had 84 hospitals by the end of WW1, many in buildings converted from other uses to deal with the great numbers of casualties, mental as well as physical.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">All the best</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">– <i>FSS</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Next week: Sam takes a hesitant step back in the direction of romance, but… no chance. Speaking of which, he finds himself in Littlehampton*…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">* If you don’t know the Cockney rhyming slang you’ll never guess.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote <i>Nobody Of Any Importance</i>, a <i>Memoir </i>of his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
FootSoldierSamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01449820798842961719noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545275143240244101.post-34980379514518807892019-03-24T00:30:00.000-07:002019-03-24T00:30:06.000-07:00Somme veteran and ex-POW Sam now guarding German POWs decides “fraternising with the enemy” is OK with the “ruddy war” over. He befriends smiling Hans and a mandolin-playing Unteroffizier… but still a snarly Prussian hates his guts…<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir(1) <i>– 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 </i>Memoir<i>, added documentation.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">For details of how to buy the <i>Memoir </i>or </span><span lang="EN-US">Gallipoli <span style="color: purple;"></span><span style="color: #161616;">& </span>Somme <span style="color: #8b5200;">&</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">Arras 1918/POW </span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">etc </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">mini-e-books click </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=4897427382137035394;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=4;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">plus see reader reviews </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=6753328261534245137;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=1;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">and </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=8857004925280018109;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=2;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;"> and reviews from the Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=7620675943831341074;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=0;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">. </span><span lang="EN-US"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">For AUDIO excerpts click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/footsoldiersam" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #7c4000;"> Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nobody-Of-Any-Importance-A-Foot-Soldiers-Memoir-of-WW1/300782296758247" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">The war’s over at last – but Sam’s blog, Facebook page and tweets will continue until his </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir <i>concludes with the Centenary of the July 19, 1919, Peace parade in London…<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">Memoir <i>will always go to the British Red Cross – and the current running donations total as of March 9, 2019, is £4,011.41 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!).</i></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Dear all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">A hundred years ago this week, in the aftermath of the Armistice… at the Paris Peace Conference the hot debate among the Big Four (UK/USA/France/Italy) remained the apportioning of damages to be extracted from Germany.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> It had already come down to numbers. While Wilson emerged as the “moderate”, proposing £6 billion (= 307bn after a century of inflation) in reparations, Clemenceau talked of “justice” as if a synonym for revenge and said £44 billion (£2,253bn at today’s prices).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Lloyd George took a highly political view – giving priority to what he could “sell” to the British people and Parliament (where his Liberal Party was a minority partner in the coalition with the Tories). His trickiest opposition came from John Maynard Keynes, financial representative of the British Treasury and soon to become a renowned economist; on March 28, he urged his PM that crushing reparations would unbalance the European economy and that the best way to head off Bolshevism would be to help Germany through its national food crisis pronto. Of course, subsequent developments didn’t make a fool of him – as promptly indicated by Russian leader Lenin approaching Germany about allying to fight with Hungary against Poland <i>and</i>the Entente nations (March 30). Not a runner at the time, but still…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> On the brightish side of the mass of diplomatic work taking place in Paris, amid all the fierce disagreement the Covenant of the League Of Nations emerged (March 25).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> At the same time, bits of war proceeded or flared up in various regions. The White Russian advance against the Bolsheviks in the Urals (March 4-April) seemed to have run out of steam. But Bolshevik forces lost a battle with the Romanians on the River Dniester (24). Further south, Italy took the Turkish Mediterranean port Adalya (March 29; now Antalya), which they held for five years until Turkish independence – and Down Under, 8,000 returned troops in Brisbane took on local police protecting the Russian Workers’ Association HQ by way of an interim climax to skirmishes with red-flag-waving trade unionists.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">[</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Memoir <i>background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe </i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">from Edmonton, north London,</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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), </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">… until </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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 Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied around Arras until mid-March when he ran into his own Essex </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">2/7th </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Battalion. They moved into the trenches near Fampoux 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 doing hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany and finally moving westwards to Lorraine – whence, the day after Armistice, his long trek towards the French Front began. He reached safety after tiptoeing through a German minefield (November 15 probably). Then began his recovery from chronic near-starvation – and a brief emotional breakdown – until, finally, on December 10, 1918, he returned to England and another few days in hospital before reuniting with parents and siblings, especially brother Ted, home on a week’s leave but suffering badly from gas damage. Civilian life offered Sam a warm welcome… until, in February, 1919, the Army called him back - though only to a “Dad’s Army” unit. Meaning, at first, a few weeks </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">de facto<i>holiday in Brighton. But now, something completely different…Sam as ex-POW guards German POWs…]</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">March, 1919, Sussex: recently transferred to the Royal Defence Corps (or possibly “lent” in some admin fashion) from his last Battalion, the 2/7 Essex Regiment, last week Sam and the fellow ex-POWs who comprised his group had to wrench themselves away from a month’s de facto holiday in Brighton and move into the countryside – a small village called East Preston, about five miles southeast of Arundel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> To their considerable surprise, they were deployed to guard German POWs detained in the pleasant enough setting of Preston Place, a sometime semi-stately home. Their SM read out instructions from Winston Churchill, no less, by then Secretary Of State For War, who advised them to let this duty defuse any remaining hatred for their recent enemies and jailors.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> In truth, Sam came very close to disappointing Churchill as he staked out a gap in the fence through which, under the previous, lax Home Forces regime a young German or two had crept out into the village of an evening and got up to who knew what mischief? He reckoned he’d have shot anyone who tried it on. But then, he wrote, his hatred vanished. Near thing…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> So now he begins to make a go of the job they’d been given, and with the recommended magnanimous spirit:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘After that, I made friends with a couple of Jerries I found to be nice chaps. One of them made himself known to me when I had taken a dozen or so prisoners to do work in a plant nursery. They had to shovel and barrow the topsoil out of one greenhouse and bring in replacement soil. I sat well back behind them as they worked with their backs to me. To a youngster, I called out “You work well” in my version of German: “</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Du arbeitest gut<i>,” probably. “</i>Wie heisst du?<i>”</i>(2)<i>, he asked. I told him, and he said his name was Hans.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> About my own age, he had a merry grin, so on the homeward trip I sat with him – as the Heligolander had sat by me, and been so kind to me, some months previously(3) – and perhaps gave the lad something to remember kindly, in the same way that I remembered my old German mate. Talking with him several times, I chummed up with his particular pal too, another fair-haired Jerry of about our age. In the familiar fashion, with a bit of theirs and bit of ours, we understood near enough what we wished to tell each other. The ruddy war was finished so why worry about being accused of fraternising with the enemy, which might have been the charge during the bad times?<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> However, one man in that working party hated my guts and, without a word exchanged, I reciprocated. One morning, as we walked to the nursery, we came to a flooded part of the lane and, before I could give any order, this bloke – he had a Prussian type of face, which may, in part, have caused my dislike – scrambled up an embankment and through a hedge, disappearing from view. Probably, he had done this before under similar conditions, but just in case he was trying any tricks I slipped a live round into my rifle and followed him, giving the others a sign to follow me. The blighter was waiting at a point where we could go down on to the road again, though the look on his wicked mug showed that he knew what I had suspected.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> One evening, when I was off duty, I heard music coming from somewhere in the house so I followed my ears to a room on a lower floor, tapped on the door and went in. There sat a German </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Unteroffizier(3)<i>, spick and span in a fine-quality uniform. He played a mandolin and very well. I knew the tune, though I couldn’t name it; something from an opera I guessed. I told him that, as a boy, I had tried to play the mandolin and he offered to let me try. I managed only a very patchy effort at an old sob-song; he kindly smiled, although a groan would have been more appropriate.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I visited him occasionally thereafter and enjoyed his music. He talked of visits to a Berlin opera house and the rather stern-looking young man smiled more frequently as we became acquainted.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> One frosty morning, when I had to go around the various buildings rousing the Jerries, my bang on one window shattered the pane and a lad whom I liked quite well staggered through the door half-enraged and half-scared, perhaps fearing that I had gone berserk. It took me some time to persuade him and his companions that the frozen state of the glass caused the breakage – I showed them pieces of it and glowering faces lapsed into grins when I pointed out that I would have been the injured party had I not been wearing thick gloves.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> On reflection, I realised that, when a prisoner myself, I would have been very disturbed had a window shattered one morning while the harsh cries of “</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Raus! Ausmachen!<i>” brought us back to miserable reality. I felt rather guilty about the occurrence, although I had been as surprised as the Jerries by the crash and clatter of falling glass.’<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(2)<i>“Wie heisst du?”: “</i>What’s your name?”<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(3) For the kindness of “the Heligolander” see Blogs July 1 and 8, 2018. An old-soldier POW guard manning the trains that took Sam’s peripatetic prisoner band from occupied northern France to southern Germany, he and Sam talked broken English/broken German – in which fractured lingo the two of them put together a conclusive comment on the war: “We must never do this to each other again/</span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">Wir müssen niemals dies zu jedem anderen nochmals tun</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 16pt;">” (or something of the sort).</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(4) <i>Unteroffizier</i>: Sergeant.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(5) <i>“Raus!”: </i>“Out!”<i>“Ausmachen!”</i> <i></i>means various things including “Make up/turn off”, so I think this may be my father misremembering what the German POW guards shouted to get them out of bed in the morning – that would probably have been “<i>Aufstehen!</i>” i.e. “Get up!”, though possibly “<i>Aufmachen!</i>” i.e. “Get yourself up!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">All the best</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">– <i>FSS</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Next week: Sam and pals caught up in a tragedy of war’s aftermath as British ex-POW victims of torture go berserk and start shooting…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote <i>Nobody Of Any Importance</i>, a <i>Memoir </i>of his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
FootSoldierSamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01449820798842961719noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545275143240244101.post-74105881611179499932019-03-17T00:30:00.000-07:002019-03-17T00:30:09.787-07:00Sam finds himself and fellow ex-POWs in charge of… German POWs. A message from Winston Churchill, no less, advises that this will help them cast aside past grievances. But Sam’s thoughts turn to deadly revenge…<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir(1) <i>– 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 </i>Memoir<i>, added documentation.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">For details of how to buy the <i>Memoir </i>or </span><span lang="EN-US">Gallipoli <span style="color: purple;"></span><span style="color: #161616;">& </span>Somme <span style="color: #8b5200;">&</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">Arras 1918/POW </span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">etc </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">mini-e-books click </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=4897427382137035394;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=4;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">plus see reader reviews </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=6753328261534245137;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=1;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">and </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=8857004925280018109;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=2;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;"> and reviews from the Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=7620675943831341074;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=0;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">. </span><span lang="EN-US"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">For AUDIO excerpts click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/footsoldiersam" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #7c4000;"> Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nobody-Of-Any-Importance-A-Foot-Soldiers-Memoir-of-WW1/300782296758247" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">The war’s over at last – but Sam’s blog, Facebook page and tweets will continue until his </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir <i>concludes with the Centenary of the July 19, 1919, Peace parade in London…<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">Memoir <i>will always go to the British Red Cross – and the current running donations total as of March 9, 2019, is £4,011.41 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!).</i></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Dear all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">A hundred years ago this week, in the aftermath of the Armistice… It was all politics in Paris at the Peace Conference with 58 sub-committees cudgelling their brains while the dominant Council Of Ten nations had already met 70-odd times since January and got nowhere that impressed the ultimate big cheeses from UK (Lloyd George), France (Clemenceau), Italy (Orlando) and USA (Wilson) who now formed themselves into a Council Of Four and carried on arguing about how tough they should make it for Germany. And on March 19 one decision emerged, namely, that the German Navy should be limited to 36 ships…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Elsewhere, aside from the unrest in many countries – from strikes to street fighting – in the only substantial shooting wars still proceeding, White Russian, French and Greek troops evacuated Odessa, Ukraine, as Bolshevik forces advanced (March 17), while in Russia itself the conflict between Red and White Armies in the Urals (begun on March 4) showed no significant movements.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Meanwhile, in Hungary, the Parliament declared a Soviet Republic (March 21) following an alliance between the Bolsheviks and the Social Democrats. This lasted two days, apparently, before Lenin ordered the Communists to purge their “partners” and they set about it with a will.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">[</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Memoir <i>background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe </i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">from Edmonton, north London,</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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), </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">… until </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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 Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied around Arras until mid-March when he ran into his own Essex </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">2/7th </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Battalion. They moved into the trenches near Fampoux 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 doing hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany and finally moving westwards to Lorraine – whence, the day after Armistice, his long trek towards the French Front began. He reached safety after tiptoeing through a German minefield (November 15 probably). Then began his recovery from chronic near-starvation – and a brief emotional breakdown – until, finally, on December 10, 1918, he returned to England and another few days in hospital before reuniting with parents and siblings, especially brother Ted, home on a week’s leave but suffering badly from gas damage. Civilian life offered Sam a warm welcome… until, in February, 1919, the Army called him back - though only to a “Dad’s Army” unit. Meaning, at first, a few weeks </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">de facto<i>holiday in Brighton. But now, something completely different…]</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">March, 1919, Sussex: after the my father, Private Sam Sutcliffe’s “month by the sea with nothing to do” – whence I left him to it and compiled themed-excerpt blogs on fear/courage, sex/romance, front-line food and comradeship – we can now resume the “one-hundred-years-ago-this-week” sequencing I’ve adhered to as much as possible since July, 2014.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> We left the Gallipoli, Somme, Spring Offensive veteran and ex-POW – aged 20 – in Brighton, billeted in a Spartan dormitory near the top of a grand Palmeira Square mansion. He’d been transferred from his last Battalion, the 2/7 Essex Regiment, to the Royal Defence Corps. Sam called it the “Old Man’s Brigade”. It originally comprised men deemed “too old or medically unfit for battle field service abroad”. However, significantly as it transpired in mid-March, his group parked in Brighton were all former POWs. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Well, as usual in any sector of the Army, the easy life came to an end. Shaken out of his lethargy, Sam embarked on a most peculiar week, which might have been his undoing to put it mildly… and he could have held Winston Churchill responsible:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘Soon, our small party moved on from its enjoyable sojourn in Palmeira Square to a Sussex village. Our job there at first appeared to be not really right for us: guarding about 80 German prisoners. For one thing, we thought it strange that they should still be kept away from their homeland while we had been back in England for some weeks.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> A coastal railway took us along to the village station. From there a short walk brought us to the gates of a big house(2); the outside gave no indication of its present usage. Once inside those tall wooden gates, we saw that even the extensive outhouses had been turned into living quarters.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Strange to see the field grey uniforms and peakless caps again. As the Jerries trolled from one building to another they showed no interest in our presence. We were shown to our allocated rooms – mine, a small one high up in the old house, no doubt occupied by servants in former days. The furnishings comprised two mattresses on raised boards, but for a time I slept there alone.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> We new arrivals lined up next morning on parade and the Sergeant in charge called us to attention when a Sergeant Major approached. This Warrant Officer had a special message for us, delivery of which had been ordered by Mr Winston Churchill(3). It welcomed us on our return to the old country and said that we, with our recent experiences, should make good caretakers of ex-enemy prisoners until they could be sent back to their homes. He knew that some of us might be feeling bitter about treatment endured while in enemy hands(4), but we must put all that out of our minds and do our duty fairly and with no malice while in charge of Germans. He believed that, if we carried out this request, we would benefit personally because in “turning the other cheek” we would be doing a good thing and our characters would be the better for it.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> The SM added his hopes and the orders to back them up. We recognised the rightness of all this and I, at any rate, hoped I would be able to forgive and forget.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Yet, later that day, a man who had been there several days told me the old Home Defence(5) men, who had previously run the place, had allowed the Germans to slip through a gap in the barbed wire on one side of the grounds and meet girls from the village – and this immediately seemed all wrong to me and I planned to put a stop to it.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> So, that evening, during my stint on guard duty, when I found the carelessly repaired breaks in the wire and disentangled them, hoping to tempt some unlucky Jerry to make his exit while I awaited him with my loaded rifle, hidden nearby among some bushes.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I spent three nights there, from dusk until late, without sight of a would-be love-seeker, until my hatred or maybe sour-grapes mood vanished…’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(2) My father didn’t name this grand house, nor the village where it was located and it’s strangely difficult to trace places in England used as WW1 Prisoner Of War camps. For a while – and until after I’d published the third edition of the paperback – I thought the house may have been at Slindon, aka Eartham, four miles (6.4 kilometres) east of Arundel. But in autumn, 2018, my friend Paul Day, who lives in Arundel, came up with a couple of online sources I hadn’t hit on, particularly <a href="http://ow.ly/HLM130n4Kss" style="color: purple;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">http://ow.ly/HLM130n4Kss</span></a></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">which carries some information and a few murky photos of what was surely the very place, a building called Preston Place (now Preston Hall), The Street, East Preston, about five miles southeast of Arundel where the POWs did their hard labour. The “village station” was Angmering, whence Sam and his Germans would have either changed for Arundel at the next stop, Ford, or walked it from there. Pardon me for geeking about such details – nuts and bolts of history, you know, and nice to (probably) get to the bottom of them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(3) In January, 1919, the Liberal/Conservative coalition Government moved Churchill from Minister For Munitions to Secretary Of State For War And Air, so he probably composed this (evidently high-risk) message for ex-POW POW guards in the latter role.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(4) In Sam’s case, a good deal of brutality from guards and a lot of deprivation. See blogs from March 25 to November 11, 2018.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(5) Home Defence: “Home Forces” seems to have been the official title, probably just misremembered by my father. They were launched in January, 1916. A web page no longer available described them as comprising “<span style="color: #262626;">men and boys who had not yet completed even a basic military training” – somewhat different to the Royal Defence Corps then, and replaced by the newer outfit on this job of guarding German POWs still detained in the UK.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">All the best</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">– <i>FSS</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Next week: After deciding against murder, Sam reckons “fraternising with the enemy” is all right – as intended by Churchill – and discovers they’re a mixed bunch of blokes from Hans with the merry grin to the mandolin-playing <i>Unteroffizier</i>… and the one who hates Sam’s guts even though the “ruddy war” is over…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote <i>Nobody Of Any Importance</i>, a <i>Memoir </i>of his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
FootSoldierSamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01449820798842961719noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545275143240244101.post-28935523688466345482019-03-10T00:30:00.000-08:002019-03-10T00:30:03.860-08:00Retrospective 4 – “Comradeship”, how Sam and assorted pals kept one another going in appalling conditions – Gallipoli, the Somme, Spring Offensive and as POWs – with narry a therapist in sight…<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir(1) <i>– 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 </i>Memoir<i>, added documentation.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">For details of how to buy the <i>Memoir </i>or </span><span lang="EN-US">Gallipoli <span style="color: purple;"></span><span style="color: #161616;">& </span>Somme <span style="color: #8b5200;">&</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">Arras 1918/POW </span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">etc </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">mini-e-books click </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=4897427382137035394;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=4;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">plus see reader reviews </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=6753328261534245137;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=1;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">a nd </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=8857004925280018109;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=2;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;"> and reviews from the Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=7620675943831341074;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=0;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">. </span><span lang="EN-US"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">For AUDIO excerpts click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/footsoldiersam" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #7c4000;"> Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nobody-Of-Any-Importance-A-Foot-Soldiers-Memoir-of-WW1/300782296758247" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">The war’s over at last – but Sam’s blog, Facebook page and tweets will continue until his </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir <i>concludes with the Centenary of the July 19, 1919, Peace parade in London…<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">Memoir <i>will always go to the British Red Cross – and the current running donations total as of March 9, 2019, is £4,011.41 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!)</i></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Dear all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">A hundred years ago this week, in the aftermath of the Armistice… The big-hitters had returned to Paris – namely Lloyd George (March 5), Woodrow Wilson (13). French PM Clemenceau was there already, of course, and not getting about much after the February 19 assassination attempt left a bullet between his ribs permanently. But he wasn’t happy… President Raymond Poincaré’s diary noted his Number 1 complaining that Lloyd George was a “trickster”, so he promised he would “act like a hedgehog and wait until they come to talk to me” – especially on the issue of France’s need to render Germany unable to rebuild its Army in any foreseeable future. “It is a point I will not yield,” he said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> While rioting proceeded in Berlin, the UK, Egypt and elsewhere, substantial military action continued in Russia where the Bolshevik Army was having a bad time against the White Russians in the Urals – on March 16 the Whites’ Western Army captured Ufa, Bashkiria (890 miles east of Moscow), without a fight, apparently.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">[</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Memoir <i>background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe </i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">from Edmonton, north London,</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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), </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">… until </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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 Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied around Arras until mid-March when he ran into his own Essex </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">2/7th </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Battalion. They moved into the trenches near Fampoux 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 doing hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany and finally moving westwards to Lorraine – whence, the day after Armistice, his long trek towards the French Front began. He reached safety after tiptoeing through a German minefield (November 15 probably). Then began his recovery from chronic near-starvation – and a brief emotional breakdown – until, finally, on December 10, 1918, he returned to England and another few days in hospital before reuniting with parents and siblings, especially brother Ted, home on a week’s leave but suffering badly from gas damage. Civilian life offered Sam a warm welcome… until, in February, 1919, the Army called him back - though only to a “Dad’s Army” unit and, so far, a few weeks </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">de facto<i>holiday in Brighton…]</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Retrospective 4: As of February-March, 1919, my father, Private Sam Sutcliffe, Gallipoli, Somme, Spring Offensive veteran and ex-POW, found himself in Brighton – billeted in a Spartan dormitory near the top of a grand Palmeira Square mansion. Transferred to the Royal Defence Corps – an early Dad’s Army – for his concluding months in uniform, at this point he simply enjoyed “a month spent by the sea with nothing to do”… which he described conclusively with just that phrase so, for want of concurrent 100-years-ago-this-week blog material…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> I’ve left him for four weeks until the powers-that-be come up with something useful for him and his mates to engage with (which they did, resuming next week). For now, a fourth themed-excerpts look back. Last week, it was a young Tommy’s experiences of “Army Grub”. Now a look at how “Comradeship” played its part in keeping him going through it all…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> (Warning: another long read ahead – best bring your mates… and NB in the early excerpts my father wrote in the third person and called himself “Tommy”(!), “our lad” and such, while his older brother Ted aliased as “George”.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Dictionary definitions don’t really address subjects this complex and profound, so I’ll just say I’ve chosen these stories from my father’s <i>Memoir</i>because I feel they reflect my own sense of the full meaning of “comradeship” and how it differs from friendship: namely, I see comradeship as friendship expressed and confirmed through shared action or work towards a common objective. Of course, this doesn’t apply only in wartime, but it certainly can be deepened by crisis experienced together. However, a surprise to me, having made these selections, was the impermanence of most comradeships my father felt part of during WW1 – I have no idea how “normal” this turned out to be for the majority of Tommies. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> It’s a real bonus, I think, that Sam began his <i>Memoir</i>with toddlerhood and gave a thorough account of his growing up before he joined the Army in September, 1914. So I’ll begin with a few anecdotes hinting at how he grew into his own, no doubt highly individual understanding of comradeship.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> A boy restrained to quite solitary quietness in early years by fear of poverty and upset at home, he started to come into his own when he joined the newly-founded Boy Scouts (in 1909-10):<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘Becoming a member of this movement opened a new phase of living for Tommy. Life had been hard and grim. Now very pleasant pastimes came to occupy many of his out-of-school hours and he began to enjoy the company of other boys under happy conditions, free from the pressures of schoolwork and the overseeing of the form teacher. He experienced more tolerance and kindness from the Scoutmaster and his assistants, this being a voluntary organisation…’</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">With the troop, he did regular gym sessions, took all sorts of specialist lessons including first aid, played a part in precursors of the Gang Show, and at Easter and Whitsun trekked a few miles from Edmonton to go camping in Epping Forest:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘<i>They practiced running, vaulting with the pole over brooks and other obstacles, tracking in woodland areas – and tying knots, of course… They fenced, not with swords, but stout sticks… The older boys took boxing lessons – Tommy did, in due course. And yet they still seemed to have plenty of leisure time when they could wander through the forest by themselves or in groups.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> The site comprised a hill at the edge of a large farming estate, with the tents set up in a row at the top, their water supply a spring at the bottom. A line of youngsters took it in turns to lower their buckets into the small pool around the spring – very carefully, so as not to disturb the silt at the bottom…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> At 6.30 each morning, a bugle call, reveille! Up and out of those beds and, given fine weather, the Scoutmaster, assistant Scoutmasters, and all of the boys in their pants and vests rushed down to the river and in they went. The water came up to their waists or shoulders. They took their soap, so a cold bath and a quick towelling on the riverbank, then back up the hill to breakfast; large containers of hard-boiled eggs or saveloys</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(2) </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">– very popular with the lads – and bacon with plenty of bread and butter and boiling tea. Done over campfires, it all went off with the precision of a military camp.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(2) English, red, pork sausages.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Looking back, naturally, “Tommy”/Sam came to recognise the potential military application of much that Scouting offered:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘<i>Scouting, Tommy realised, had taught him a good deal that would be useful to a soldier. He could help erect a tent, use a rifle, and communicate efficiently by semaphore or Morse code or a simple field telegraph. As a Patrol Leader, he had acquired the ability to stand up in front of a group of lads and give brief orders.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> If any of these things might appear to have been intended to prepare youngsters for military service this was certainly not the intention behind [Scoutmaster] Mr Frusher’s work. As a practising Christian, at heart a pacifist, he never said anything to Scout meetings about the war scare and the training had nothing of a military character to it – no yelling of orders or foot-stamping drill.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Community activities too played their part, as they always have, in fostering comradeship – organising and working together – be it a school open day or a church fete to raise money for a new hall. He even observed his father, usually subdued as if forever carrying the weight of the business failure that plunged his family into poverty, blooming as these successful activities diminished his sad loneliness:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘<i>A nice, social atmosphere developed [at the new church hall] and when the boy was allowed into the club room for a few moments, he noticed the difference in his father. That normally quiet, sometimes morose man became quite affable among other men, smiling, chatting away in a manner which Tommy had thought impossible.’<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Of course, all “learning experiences” do not occur within orderly confines such as school, Scouts and church. There’s play. And play that gets out of hand. These two stories show how “Tommy”/Sam accidentally explored both comradeship and leadership in a context of boys’ “battling”:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘<i>Tommy often joined his schoolfriends, all aged 13 or so by then, to stage mock battles on the old brickfields. Each kiln had an open space in the middle, so they made good forts. But came the day when a rival gang, led by a boy called Wayland, started a quite vicious and serious attack – because, it seemed, they had a grudge against Tommy.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> No particular incident had provoked it. But he sensed it may have arisen from his close friendship with Charlie Bolton, the brainiest lad in the school. Within their own group, Charlie insisted on Tommy taking the lead in any activity such as the brickfield battles. Maybe he saw himself as the organiser of strategy and Tommy as the chief when it came to fighting (albeit play-fighting, usually). People did tend to cast Tommy in that role in his later life, for reasons he could never fathom; he always shed the ill-fitting cloak at the earliest possible moment.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> But Tommy had become aware that Wayland’s crowd referred to his group of quieter types who tried their best in class and did quite well as “The Good Boys”… Even though Wayland always appeared assured and competent, he spent his time criticising and complaining about teachers or anyone else in authority over the children… he started to behave towards Tommy as if he hated his guts. He insulted and persecuted him, as children can.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Then came the battle at the brickfield. Tommy and his friends took shelter in the middle of a kiln and returned the shower of bricks and pieces of brick coming their way. It went on for some time quite evenly until Tommy, standing up to look for a possible target, caught a brick on the top of his head. Then the battle stopped. A great deal of blood poured from the wound. The aggressors departed in a hurry and Tommy’s friends saw him home.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Over the following weeks, the one-sided feud took a strange turn. A boy called Hoy, normally a bad-tempered lone wolf who snapped at anybody who dared to disagree with him, seemed to appoint himself Wayland’s deputy. At school, he picked a quarrel with Tommy and a fight started. Tommy’s pals stopped it, but all agreed that the matter needed settling. Between them, they fixed a time and venue: lunch break the following day in the neglected field in front of the school…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> They didn’t make the arrangements in any casual way. Both boys appointed seconds – Tommy, naturally, had Charlie – and they asked another boy, Arthur Fowler, to referee because he had nothing to do with the conflict and both sides rated him a “good sport”.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> So, at midday, a crowd gathered, the two gangs among them, but keeping well apart as they filed through a gate into the field… <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Tommy fell into the boxer’s stance he’d learnt during Boy Scout training and shuffled about. Bigger and stronger, Hoy lashed out frequently, but somewhat blindly. His face evinced murderous malice throughout. Tommy himself found real hatred rising in him as soon as the bout got going. He was being hurt. Yet a certain coolness, fruit of those boxing lessons, kept his emotions in check and helped to compensate for Hoy’s physical superiority.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> While resigned to a beating, Tommy got in the occasional whack. Round after round, the battle raged. Tommy’s mouth and face began to feel like a huge, puffed-up thing, ten times their actual size and, although, clearly, both boys were becoming exhausted, neither capable of landing a knockout blow, Tommy felt sure he was going to lose… When should they finish? When they sank to their knees? It seemed endless.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> With Hoy’s friends yelling at him to finish his foe off, by an indescribable piece of luck Tommy swung his arm over, missed his target and struck Hoy on the upper right arm. It dropped to his side and he yelled at Arthur, “I can’t hold it up! It’s paralysed! It’s paralysed!” That finished it. Arthur awarded the win to Tommy, despite the opposition’s protests. Fearing a general attack, Tommy’s friends hurried him away, shouting congratulations and slapping him on the back – Tommy pretended to be unimpressed…’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">“Tommy”/Sam had to leave school at 14 in 1912 for lack of money to continue his education. Out at work as an office boy for a tin-mining company based near Liverpool Street station he found nothing like comradeship and after two years felt himself submerged in a grey mass of people, each anonymous to everyone else – would that be a definition of the opposite of comradeship? Already, his life was heading nowhere it seemed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> But then the threat, growing into the imminence of war got to work on the populace, bonding the nation, bonding groups of individuals – pushing “Tommy”/Sam, his16th birthday in July, 1914, in one direction:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘<i>This national surge flowed through the millions of men who were more emotional than thoughtful. They pulsated, they were invigorated, and sustained… an enthusiasm built up among ordinary men. “Stand by your country,” “Be prepared to defend it,”… Accordingly, more and more were actually joining up…<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> …brother George, sunburnt and lusty after a fortnight at a camp for assistant Scoutmasters, frequently talked about England going to war and what part he might play in it. He encouraged Tommy to join him and two friends of his own age, Len Winns and Harold Mellow, in long walks at the weekends. Then, when they stopped to rest and eat their sandwiches, a pack of cards would be produced and they’d play their favourite game, solo whist. But discussions of war always cropped up. Exciting speculations on how long it would last might vary between a few months and several years.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Around September 8, Tommy recalls, the four pals — although their junior by several years, he tried to think himself into being one of them — went off on their usual train. But when they reached Liverpool Street, the elder three were talking quietly, leaving Tommy on the outside of the conversation. In the end, brother Ted said to him: “We’re not going to our offices today. We three are going to join up.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Perhaps you can imagine the sinking feeling in Tommy when he heard this. Was he going to be left on his own with the diminishing number on the train journey to an office where all was gloom? Was he going to do that? No thinking required. “I’m coming with you,” he said.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">So he enlisted – and, to his surprise, enjoyed a long delay before reaching the battlefield. The 2/1st Royal Fusiliers trained in London, Tonbridge and, from February to August, 1915, Malta. Sam generally had a great time in his first foreign country – especially when sharpening his Boy Scout skills in shooting and signalling. His skills in the latter made him an NCO, albeit on the lowest rung, Lance Corporal. He became pals with several of his fellows. But “comrades”? Not yet, I’d say. Nothing more than the trivial level of bonding afforded by practical jokes – the good kind where they’re harmless and all end up as victims and perpetrators at different times.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> The testing which, I’d argue, makes the crucial difference only came when they entered the battlefield at Suvla Bay, Gallipoli, in late September, felt the relentless fear of it and saw their first deaths. Then Sam – first person now – responded to the test of real mortal danger by practising what he’d (painfully) played at when fighting Wayland’s gang. As a dogsbody NCO, he became what might now be called a very proactive good comrade. Stationed in a hole (trench?) up on a hill observing the Turks – but still vulnerably below their positions – he endured most of two months on duty 24/7 rotating wakeful rest with his sole assistant/companion (struggling for food and water supplies all the time). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> He got to know them fast and tried to look after them. The first, “<i>showed me photographs of his parents and a sister, and I warmed myself in the glow of love emanating from him as he talked about them and their life together before the war</i>”. Debilitated, he soon went down with jaundice. With the next, Sam felt similar empathy – which he acted on in an unorthodox fashion:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘The replacement was a jolly fellow, always cheerful, named Bill Jackson. He wore thick lenses in wire frames… 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… <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> 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.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> 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.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> 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.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Comradeship could involve getting rid of your comrade? I’d say so. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Further, his relationship with his next assistant, a glum fellow called Harry Green, showed Sam could feel and act on the business end of comradeship even when he didn’t like someone – not a rare phenomenon, I suspect. When the late November blizzard came and fractured supply lines meant they hadn’t eaten for a while, Sam went down to Battalion HQ to fetch food for both of them (a couple of hard biscuits was it). Then, on his return, he found Green had taken his boots off and fallen into delirium with the effects of frostbite. Sam called for stretcher-bearers and looked after him for two days – risking his life to run for water from a nearby trench while a sniper tried to nail him – until stretcher-bearers made it up the hill and took Green away. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> His next assistant turned out to be an old friend from Malta days, Peter Nieter, and with him the ready comradeship, as the fighting diminished to a fag-end smoulder, came out in that rather different side of soldierly conduct – having a laugh:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘<i>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><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">The Royal Fusiliers evacuated Suvla in mid-December - then, to their chagrin, returned to Gallipoli in the small hours of Boxing Day to help with the V Beach getaway. After clambering through the <i>River Clyde</i>, they waited for a few minutes, Sam and Nieter reminding one another of what they’d done together:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘<i>Short, sturdy Nieter recalled our days and nights together on that hill; I hope I told him how much his faith in the cause and his cheery optimism had helped me when the physical after-effects of the blizzard got me down.’<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">On January 6 they took part in their second evacuation and then, crammed below decks in a lighter, Sam reflected for the first time on what the wider Battalion meant to him and why this feeling had grown in him:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘…<i>the proven steadiness and, in many cases, the courage of my companions – they had fulfilled their contract, signed when they had enlisted, to be loyal at all times to their king and country, good chaps to live and toil with when difficulties and dangers had to be dealt with.’<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">He had more time to ponder his experience in Egypt, where the Battalion remnants benefitted from three months’ R&R. In one passage, he assessed the role a good officer could have in fostering the right conditions for comradeship – the man in question, “Major Booth” according to the alias my father gave him, but really Harry Nathan:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘<i>All men differ in the degree of sincerity with which they express themselves. The human animal is, perforce, selfish because the instinct to survive, under test, masters all beliefs, hopes and emotions. So this feeling that we had become a band of brothers – that we 250 comprised the valuable essence squeezed by harsh experiences out of the former one thousand – while warming and heartening, was subscribed to tacitly en masse and never individually declared.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> A hub around which, or whom, the consequent accumulation of loyalty could revolve had to be agreed upon; without discussion, dissent – or, indeed, any actual voting – we elected the Major, pride of all ranks. And Major Booth, a junior officer a year ago, was indeed now officially in charge of us, since all of more senior rank had vanished, in most cases for reasons unknown to me and probably to all of us.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> In the early days back home and on Malta, his ability to learn, to practice what he’d learnt, and to lead men stood out above that of all others and quick promotion to Captain’s rank followed. Whereat, being now in charge of a Company, he imposed on its members a discipline sterner than that applied in any other – and for this, men worshipped him, because he tempered power with justice.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> An average officer would not investigate a charge brought by an NCO against a Private, but would listen to the charge, then listen to and, usually, disregard the accused sinner’s reasons or excuses, find the case proven, and pass sentence. In our hero’s case, though, clear enquiry would be made…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Later, in action, his fearless way of walking upright while surveying and inspecting the front line in full view of the enemy was very impressive – some said foolhardy, but in the men’s eyes it was great and it did wonderful things to our morale. And then the Major had brought us safely out of two evacuations and had supervised the setting up of our new camp home.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> But, rightly or wrongly, the rank-and-file chaps felt that the officers in the upper bracket generally, and perhaps class-consciously, despised this man now in command of our small Battalion (as we still liked to call it). He was a Jew and a year or more in the hotter climate had darkened his complexion so that, had he donned the robes popular in Egypt, his appearance would have matched that of any other Semite</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(3)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> He had, and deserved, the loyalty of all of us.</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(3) Semite: while “anti-semitic” has come to mean “prejudiced against Jews”, my father used the root word accurately because it means “a member of the group of people who speak a Semitic language, including the Jews and Arabs as well as the ancient Babylonians, Assyrians and Phoenicians” – source <i>Collins Concise Dictionary Plus</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">This variant on comradeship, then, crossed class and rank, but was the more strongly felt because of the belief that officer and men shared common enemies – not just The Enemy on the battlefield, but the hierarchy of the British Army!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> For Sam, though, moving from Egypt to France and the Western Front in late April, 1916, produced a whole new comradeship story. Parked initially in the great camp outside Rouen, they met head on the threat that their quarter of a Battalion would be disbanded rather than reinforced back to full strength. Their new Colonel challenged them to prove themselves:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘<i>You can imagine how hard we tried, repeating all the drill movements hour after hour, concluding with a fixed-bayonets march-past. Came the day and, watched by the General who stood throughout on a rostrum, we executed our routines – very well, we felt. Then we marched off home and, full of hope, awaited the big man’s verdict…<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> The parade at which the verdict would be announced found us tense but confident. The message read out by the Major spoke of devotion to duty, splendid efficiency, and a march-past which would have done credit to the Grenadier Guards. Delighted, and certain we would soon be made up to Battalion strength and soldier on together, we celebrated in our various ways.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">But came the day of the verdict:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘…<i>everybody – without exception! – was ordered to parade. With all present, we were surprised not to see our popular Major out in front(4). Instead, his adjutant stood there. I had not seen him since the occasion of his appearance at Gallipoli, walking out in the open when we were all in holes or trenches – when one of his arms was bandaged and supported by a sling and he looked ill. Today, he looked fit physically, but his face was pale.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> He quickly told us that, in spite of all our endeavours and successes, it had been decided that our numbers were too small for making up with reinforcements. Groups of us would be sent to various Battalions in the two Territorial Divisions on the Front in France. He said much more. One could see tears on his face. But no comment came from the ranks, no response whatsoever. Had the Major done the execution job, some men would have said a few words, heartfelt if not exactly polite. However, the adjutant’s emotion was wasted on us; when we dispersed we were quite a different set of men to those hearty mugs who had, for weeks, tried so hard to please…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> … After Gallipoli, the survivor members of our Battalion had felt some kind of joy-in-comradeship bond, but we’d backed a loser and that was that. Henceforth, we owed allegiance to no one, every man for himself and devil take the hindmost.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(4) Major “Booth”/Nathan had been “granted a month’s leave”, it seems.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">So, Army admin. had the power to destroy comradeship – almost a synonym for “morale” at this point – with a decision which, to the Tommies, ignored their months of muck and bullets and privation and loss and holding together despite it all…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Feeling disgusted, betrayed even, Sam had great difficulty in adapting to his next Battalion – the Kensingtons. Transferred in early May, he joined them at Souastre, a couple of miles behind the section of trenches they manned at Hébuterne, opposite German-held Gommecourt which gave its name to this northern sector of the Somme Front. His deep bitterness endured – yet, ultimately, not for more than two or three weeks. He wrote:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘<i>None of the men who had come from the old Battalion in Rouen with me ended up in my new Platoon. I even felt glad about that; a feeling of comradeship would have existed had any of them been with me, and I wanted no more of such attachments.’<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">That is, he was realising, how comradeship, like any strong relationship, brings vulnerability – because you can lose it. At first, he sought to defend himself by creating degrees of distance… from the Army, from his companions:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘<i>I sought an interview with the Captain in charge of our Company and asked to be allowed to revert to the rank of Private, but he refused.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I wanted no rank, no responsibility except to myself. Rank entailed being careful, steady, a good example, even though a Lance Corporal was everybody’s lackey… I longed to lose that stripe and be a carefree nothing.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> But, with pleasant fellows in my Platoon, on the whole, and a new mood now upon me – occasioned by living among strangers – I could behave in a relaxed manner, laugh without restraint at even the corniest joke, and make a few cheeky comments about people around me (usually taken in good part). The underlying bitterness remained in me, though, and stoked up the fire of reckless humour which ruled out thoughts of a serious nature and ensured that nobody would wish to attempt serious conversation with me – while roughly the opposite of my style in the old Battalion, this resulted in a sort of coarse popularity which pleased me. Consequently, I quickly earned for myself a soubriquet I liked, to wit, The Pisstaker.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Entertaining, so not unpopular, but detached… his feelings for this new Battalion drifted this way and that through May and June – ‘<i>I gradually got to know some of my fellows and to like several of them’</i>, but then,<i>‘I still felt like a stranger with this lot, though by this time I knew, and was known by, a fair number of men’</i>. But it may be that, averse as he was to rank – full Corporal by now and Intermittently acting Sergeant as the much respected RSM seemed to like the cut of his jib for some reason – he found himself and rediscovered his proper Tommy connection with his fellows via another of his unorthodox bits of low-level leadership.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Before July 1, one of the Battalion’s more hazardous tasks at the Front was to go out into No Man’s Land at night and dig the advanced trenches they needed to launch an attack. Having led a few patrols out there, he reported to an officer that, to do the job properly, his men needed extra food and drink around midnight. The response was that they should save some of their supper. Sam fumed:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘<i>None of this would please our chaps – good workers if looked after, but capable of skilful toil-avoidance if displeased. I felt they were not being well treated and would be resentful. Yet, somehow, some work must be seen to be done. So I let it be known that if they did a good three hours graft, starting from our time of arrival, then the rest of the night could be taken easy, given that each man should grab a tool and be busy as soon as he heard my voice, for my coming would be a warning of the officer’s presence, doing his rounds.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Each night I found it necessary to conduct two or three of these hurried scrambles, talking loudly, even giving the occasional jab or shake to a slow waker-up. This meant we shifted a reasonable amount of earth and the men’s sense of grievance subsided – a satisfactory outcome, and I felt good because I had become acceptable to and even popular with a Platoon of men among whom I had so far felt like an interloper (apart from also being much younger than most of them).’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">With regard to July 1, when the Kensingtons suffered 59 per cent casualties and Sam and his Company sat in an advanced trench all day, unable to move, steadily depleted by the artillery bombardment, feeling frustrated, then horrified by the sufferings of their fellows, then shocked into numbness, then guilty at their impotence… I can’t glean anything relating to comradeship except in terms of the wounded and, later, the dead they brought in that night and for the next three or four nights. One, Charlie, was a former Fusilier friend of Sam’s, so then the overwhelming, incomprehensible grief of it got personal and intimate for him as he said goodbye to the blank face looking up from a shell hole…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> The battle continued, of course, through to October, the Kensingtons on the Front for nearly all of it, though they moved further south eventually. But I think my father didn’t realise that he really had found his place with the Battalion, that he had become a comrade among comrades, until August when he returned from a week’s home leave – his first for 18 months – and caught up with the Kensingtons on a break from the front line near the village of Millencourt-en-Ponthieu, Picardy, before moving south to the Leuze Wood area.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Sam arrived at their new camp on foot and alone, after crossing the Channel and hitching lifts with several Army lorries:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘<i>But this provided me with a most warming experience as I strolled into the town. Our lads, who had themselves arrived only a few hours earlier, were billeted in dwellings and outbuildings at various points along the main street. Groups of them lay about on the wide grass verges on either side of the roadway and, at intervals as I walked, fellows who knew me invited me to join them and each in turn insisted I took a swig from their water bottles – all charged with the same liquor, to wit, cider. I was greatly surprised, first, that so many people knew me and, second, that they should offer me a drink. Their kindness warmed and enlivened me just as much as the rather strong cider.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> The insistence of one chap in particular that I should drink with him certainly startled me, though I was careful to conceal it. I’d known him from time to time since the beginning of the war – a short chap, head rather big considering his lack of height, bright blue eyes in a usually red face. He’d joined a different Royal Fusiliers Company, but circumstances occasionally brought us together.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> However, I’d never felt happy or secure in his company. Sometimes, if you attempted to share a joke with him, the thing would go wrong, he’d see some personal adverse implication in it. For no reason that I could see, the red face would go redder, the eyes would glare and he’d be all set for a scrap. I hadn’t chatted with him for some time, and I had not known until that moment that he, along with some others, had been transferred to my present Battalion. Maybe he felt somewhat of a stranger in this new set-up so even my face was welcome. He certainly insisted I should share cider with him.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> From there on, my progress along the road had something of a triumphal air about it. A wave here, called to join a group there, swigs from bottles well filled with the local cider; all this camaraderie took the edge off the regret I felt about leaving family and friends to return to a life I had come to dislike, deep down inside.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> But one could never remain very miserable in company with those soldiers. Every group had its natural-born comedian. Although hardship, filth, and genuine physical suffering took their toll of one’s natural optimism, the fellow who showed his true feelings and really looked unhappy or just plain dejected got short shrift from his comrades. Far better, and certainly to one’s advantage, to show nonchalance of spirit, best expressed in the few words “What the heck?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> On I went until, with greater pleasure than ever, I found myself back among the lads I had soldiered with before the Sergeant thrust the unexpected pass into my hand.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> As I moved around, it was great to be greeted by almost all of them with words and looks of something bordering on affection. At the time I’d left them, I had been their acting Sergeant, though wearing only two stripes on my arms and those only there as a result of irresistible pressure from the big man, the Regimental Sergeant Major. But I felt no need to keep up “a position” – something usually incumbent on non-commissioned officers.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> … Probably because of my youth, I wore my modest rank lightly and still relished the comfort given by the comradeship of the men around me. I do believe I would have been hurt more by an accusation that I was too strict than that I was behaving in too easy a manner. With some such understanding between us, I always found the essential needs of discipline easily procured or, rather, willingly granted by our men.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">After a month more of front-line action, Sam’s age was revealed – still 18, when the battlefield limit was 19 – and to his mingled delight and guilt, the Army sent him back to the UK for a year. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> There the previous pattern repeated itself: friendships, not comradeship. Transferred from the Kensingtons to the Essex Regiment, he spent much of the year based in Harrogate, Yorkshire, oddly enough. With his best pal there, “Mac” McIntyre, a very civilian story unfolded. All fine until they got together with two girls, did some (very innocent) “walking out” which ended in due course – after which Mac got very angry with Sam, the explanation being that Sam had got the girl he really fancied. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Worse things happen in war zones, of course, and the Army sent Sam back to the serious stuff in December, 1917. Again solo, no info on where and when he might join his Essex 2/7th Battalion, until March he did odd signalling jobs around Arras wherever Brigade HQ sent him. Then, as far as I can tell from his Memoir and the 2/7th War Diary, he more or less bumped into the Battalion, including a group of his fellow Signallers when they moved into a billet in the city’s then ruined prison. One of them proved his next true comrade:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘<i>Neston, only slightly older than me – he clinched an immediate friendship by shaking hands heartily, taking me to his kipping place on the floor of this spacious hall, and inviting me to chuck my clobber alongside his. He lived in Hampstead, he said, he’d been in France for several months, and so far, it appeared, he hadn’t made any particular pal since he joined C Company.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I didn’t tell him, of course, but never before in all my Army experience had I been welcomed to an assignment by a friendly handshake. Having one willing mate already easing my way, I could look at the chaps around me with no new-boy-asks-for-acceptance feelings, and know that acquaintances with some of them would develop to that small extent necessary for living and working in fairly close proximity.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Just once more I must hark back to my first Battalion and the brotherly regard for one another felt by most if its members, which endured long after that terrible war finished. Even those one did not like among them, one disliked more with feelings of disappointment than of hatred. Why? Perhaps because we all came together in the last days of a period when, along with all the law-abiding blokes and their ladies, even the bad lads who spent occasional spells in prison and the professional harlots and their customers felt deep down that they belonged to a great nation to which they gave their loyalty – without giving the subject much thought.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> But then the stress of war proved overwhelming; when conscription replaced volunteering, it quickly dissipated local, county and even national loyalties because men were sent hither and thither regardless of their origins. Well, whatever the explanation, the truth I felt and experienced was that, after several years of war, the men around one counted for little – with the odd rare exception.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Maybe you sometimes find my father contradictory in recalling his feelings? I do. But I guess I don’t insist on consistency. I suppose war life was like that…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Remarkably, in retrospect, all the significant events of Sam’s comradeship with Neston happened on March 28, 1918 – the eighth day of the German Spring Offensive when the 2/7th were ordered to fight until the last bullet to cover a strategic retreat. As Signallers they took the midnight message and tried to discuss it with their Company commander, but he was disintegrating into a funk, so they took their own decisions from then on – as, notably, did the rest of the company, with their officers <i>hors de combat</i>one way or another (dead, wounded, panicked). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> During the night, the Signallers found their lines dead:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘<i>Neston and I decided to check the line down to Battalion HQ… We wasted our journey, though, because the HQ shelters were empty; having sent that awful “George” thing, they must have packed up and moved back to some pre-arranged place. That left us feeling naked and nervous, to put it mildly…</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Dawn proper. “Stand-to” time, so up on the firing-step we climbed. Neston on my right, an oldish man I didn’t know on my left… I now felt sort of mentally stunned and a looker-on, as it were, at the heaving destruction, wounding and killing on both sides of me for as far as I could see. Still no targets for my bullets, no outlets for my pent-up fears… if this continued for much longer I guessed I’d explode from within, regardless of enemy shells.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I told Neston of this feeling, putting my mouth against his ear. He may have understood but, anyway, that much physical contact achieved something, for as we looked into each other’s eyes we returned to a normal human condition in which it was possible to give some thought to the fears and wishes of someone other than oneself. The animal concentration on survival, self-preservation no matter what happened to others, was thereafter easily set aside… “Stick together no matter what happens,” was the unspoken, but well understood agreement born and confirmed when we two stopped acting mechanically amid all that din and horror and probed for something worthwhile in each other while Old Man Death waited to put his clammy hand on us.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">When, as ordered, the Battalion had fired every bullet, Sam and Neston went back to the Company HQ dugout to convey their final message together by the only method remaining to them:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘We found our basket and the pigeons all intact. The message we two devised had to be brief. It read, I believe, as follows: “No ammunition left. Almost surrounded by the enemy. Good-bye.” There followed details of our Company and Regiment.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Excited by the novelty of the situation, we took turns to hold a bird while the other inserted the quite tiny roll of fine, thin paper into the little sheath attached to the ring on its leg. Then we climbed the steps back up to the trench, flung the lucky birds upwards and watched them circle then fly to the rear of our position.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">After that, they began to hurry rearwards…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘<i>… a few yards behind our trench, we slid into the protection of a shell-hole and had a brief chat. I reminded my pal about the message with its code word “George”, meaning we must not leave our position for any reason… Time passed. No one came our way. We heard only an occasional burst of machine-gun fire, usually from our support trench… We made our decisions, I to rejoin our lads, Neston to make a dash rearwards. We shook hands and parted.’<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Obviously, Sam’s decision is the strange one. The fighting’s done. No point in hanging around. I think my father must have been too shaken to think straight – by the terrors of the day, I mean, the shelling and, particularly, a thunderbolt revelation that struck him, while in automaton mode shooting “target” Germans, that they were human beings with families… Anyway, he felt no resentment about Neston’s different decision. He just stood up on the trench parapet, awaited death by bayonet… and found himself a POW instead.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> And that led to further quite particular, very sporadic experiences of comradeship. Some of them arose from brief encounters with German soldiers behind the lines for one reason or another: in Sancourt, Somme department, the soldier on leave from the Front who who walked past the barbed wire fence, spotted Sam, and suggested he write a German field card home and he’d post it – which eventually informed his parents that he wasn’t “missing” but a POW; the old-soldier who guarded Sam’s group on a train from Saargemund to the Black Forest and got talking in broken English, German and French and told him, piecemeal, “We must never do this to each other again”; another soldier on leave, down south in Hügelheim, near Mühlhausen, who gave half-starved Sam a saucepan of boiled potatoes and made him think, “<i>War… to hell with it – this lad who seemed so much younger than me, would probably be in the slaughter shambles on the Western Front any day now”.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> These spuds then proved Sam’s <i>entré</i>to a syndicate of three POWS – the others called Wally and George – who pledged to share with each other all extra food they could snaffle, scrounge or steal. This came up because the terrible truth was that desperate hunger drove most POWs to a degenerated state where they would fight one another for any morsel. Comradeship destroyed by base instinct and despair. So the three tried to recreate it in a narrow way by defending any booty they came across.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Mostly stuck to their pledge except when George got a Red Cross parcel <i>‘avoided Wally and me, took his prize into a corner, and hid it from our sight’</i>. But after a partial guzzle, George thought better of it and, tearfully, brought them the remains: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘<i>Well, he really was still part of our small family at that moment, so good old Wally did the reassuring bit and our oldest member, who just then looked more like our youngest and naughtiest, spread out on the floor what remained of his parcel’s contents.’</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Here then a subdivision of comradeship that made allowance for grinding circumstance and embraced fault, even betrayal, to allow forgiveness. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> The next variant on the theme Sam encountered, like the kindness of the German soldiers to a POW, occurred between strangers of different nationalities, yet men who shared the front-line experience of hell on Earth. It happened after Armistice and Sam’s long, solo walk west from his final prison camp in Lorraine – weak and not thinking straight, he wandered away from Wally, George, and the other POWs he set out with. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Around November 20, he was taken into a French military hospital in Nancy. The first evening, after crawling to a toilet, he had what he described as a “breakdown” – sobbing uncontrollably for a while until he gathered himself and crawled back to the huge open ward full of wounded French soldiers:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘<i>I crawled up the stairs and then, unable to stand, crawled again on hands and knees towards my bed… where, as always, someone I’d never met before appeared and helped me; a French soldier, he got me up on to the bed. We conversed using French, German and English words and many gestures. We knew what we were telling each other perfectly and, during the following days, that good French soldier, Paul, and I became good friends.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I was then 20 years old, he about 30. A man of infinite kindness and patience, he forbade me to leave my bed except to use the “</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">seau<i>” or bucket. I must call him when in need and say “</i>Portez le seau<i>”. A patient himself, but almost recovered from his disability, he thereafter made his care of me almost a full-time job…<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> However, the picture of that blue-clad crowd remains clearly in my mind; there could be but one explanation for their cheery self-help and mutual regard for one another’s welfare. Under stress of warfare, general tension made men most regardful of their personal survival and available comforts. But fighting had stopped, risk of imminent injury or death had gone, and soldiers could now allow themselves to relax and enjoy all those little things which, for them, had passed unnoticed when life itself was an uncertain possibility.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> While not a real member of their community, I could feel their happiness and daylong pleasure in this new way of living as they sat about or lay abed or went about their little bits of business. They’d be back in the city or down on the farm very soon; if they had survived a long and awful war, then coping with peace conditions would be simple. That sort of ease and hope pervaded the place.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Quiet Paul would mix with the crowd from time to time, then return to tell me about some detail he’d picked up. Most of this I understood from our partial language and gesture system, but if it was too difficult I would signify partial comprehension by facial expressions and he might have another go or use the familiar “sanfairyann”</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(5)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">as we British soldiers pronounced it and the French didn’t. We compried all right.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(5) “Sanfairyann”: British soldierese for “<i>Ça ne fait rien</i>,” “It doesn’t matter”.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">After a few days, a woman from a new Nancy RAMC hospital came round to reclaim the British soldier she’d heard about and off he went – the familiar abrupt end to a wartime comradeship:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘… Really sorry to leave Paul without being able to walk outside and get to know him away from the medical setting, I had to say goodbye too hurriedly when the RAMC Corporal came for me. In a trice, the contact with French friends was broken and lost forever.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Appropriately enough, the final excerpt and story of this FootSoldierSam blog sees Sam reversing roles on some of his short-lived late-war comradeships. Sam ended his service down in Sussex, guarding German POWs – which, as intended, saw him pass through an urge for revenge into acceptance of these ex-front-liners as, <i>de facto</i>, “just like him”:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘<i>One evening, when I was off duty, I heard music coming from somewhere in the house so I followed my ears to a room on a lower floor, tapped on the door and went in. There sat a German </i>Unteroffizier</span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(6)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">, spick and span in a fine-quality uniform. He played a mandolin and very well. I knew the tune, though I couldn’t name it; something from an opera I guessed. I told him that, as a boy, I had tried to play the mandolin and he offered to let me try. I managed only a very patchy effort at an old sob-song; he kindly smiled, although a groan would have been more appropriate.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I visited him occasionally thereafter and enjoyed his music. He talked of visits to a Berlin opera house and the rather stern-looking young man smiled more frequently as we became acquainted.’</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(6) <i>Unteroffizier</i>: non-commissioned officer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Eventually, Sam was invalided out of his concluding Dad’s Army-like Regiment because gut problems from his periods both in the trenches and in the POW camps caught up with him. But he wanted to say goodbye to his German … comrades, probably:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘<i>… before setting off for home, I called on my several German friends to bid them farewell, starting with the </i>Unteroffizier<i>in his little room upstairs. The rather lonely chap was touched that I had taken the trouble and showed it; although aware that his formerly great country had fallen into horrible disarray, he spoke of his yearning to get back to the Fatherland.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> A formal handshake and heel click reflected little of our mutual understanding that uncertain futures awaited both of us. He had valuable skills, I had none. There again, he had known people of position and influence, but where were they now? Revolutions destroy such connections, and he had frankly admitted that he might need good fortune to survive what would be a period of bloody conflict between the Old Guard and those who intended to grasp control of their defeated country.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I had described to him what I had seen around my prison camp near the Black Forest: the overnight disappearances of all commissioned officers, the substitution of black and white Iron Cross decorations and traditional Regimental cap badges with red ribbons and buttons, the red flags adorning every military vehicle. Like me, he doubted the turnabout was genuine. It could have been an instinctive and desperate attempt to kid the Allies that the German nation had not really wished to conquer Europe, it was just that wicked Kaiser and those terrible Prussians. Maybe, but my friend would have to find out the hard way. No “</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Auf wiedersehen<i>” for us, not a chance of ever meeting again.’<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">That last phrase proved telling. Comradeship for Sam in World War 1 operated in context. Take it away and… he never saw Neston again after their handshake in that shell hole; he met Wally and George twice each when he got home, they all promised to do it again one day and they never did.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> The only remaining constant of comradeship proved ot be his connection with his original Battalion, the 2/1st Royal Fusiliers, which he reminisced about so often in the <i>Memoir</i>. He attended their annual reunion regularly until 1963 brought the death of their beloved Gallipoli CO, Major Harry Nathan, by then Lord Nathan and a former Minister in Attlee’s post-WW2 government.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">All the best</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">– <i>FSS</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Next week: Back to Sam 100 years ago this week (give or take): a very strange experience – in a Sussex village, Sam finds himself and fellow ex-POWs in charge of… German POWs. A message from Winston Churchill, no less, advises that this will help them cast aside past grievances. But Sam’s thoughts turn to deadly revenge… <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote <i>Nobody Of Any Importance</i>, a <i>Memoir </i>of his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
FootSoldierSamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01449820798842961719noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545275143240244101.post-9898305201365963202019-03-03T00:30:00.000-08:002019-03-03T00:30:02.662-08:00Retrospective 3 – Sam on WW1 Army grub, front-line, onboard ships… with a POW menu thrown in: so, food, not so glorious food… or Definitely Not Masterchef!<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir(1)<i>– 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 </i>Memoir<i>, added documentation.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">For details of how to buy the <i>Memoir </i>or </span><span lang="EN-US">Gallipoli <span style="color: purple;"></span><span style="color: #161616;">& </span>Somme <span style="color: #8b5200;">&</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">Arras 1918/POW </span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">etc </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">mini-e-books click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=4897427382137035394;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=4;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">plus see reader reviews </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=6753328261534245137;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=1;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">and </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=8857004925280018109;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=2;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;"> and reviews from the Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=7620675943831341074;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=0;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">. </span><span lang="EN-US"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">For AUDIO excerpts click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/footsoldiersam" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #7c4000;"> Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nobody-Of-Any-Importance-A-Foot-Soldiers-Memoir-of-WW1/300782296758247" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">The war’s over at last – but Sam’s blog, Facebook page and tweets will continue until his </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir <i>concludes with the Centenary of the July 19, 1919, Peace parade in London…<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">Memoir <i>will always go to the British Red Cross – and the current running donations total as of February 1, 2019, is £3,979.66 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!)</i></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Dear all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">A hundred years ago this week, in the aftermath of the Armistice… The Paris Peace Conference proceeded with not much news emerging, but both President Wilson and PM Lloyd George returned to the table during the week, suggesting that something significant might be occurring…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> However, in the UK the most immediate events were riots by servicemen. The Kinmel Park Mutiny at Bodelwydden, north Wales (March 4-5) saw many of the 15,000 Canadian soldiers confined to this massive military complex rioting because they were restricted to half-rations, had no coal to heat their barracks, and had received no pay for a month. In part, the shortfalls arose from dock strikes. Eventually 25 men were convicted of mutiny and sentences to anything from 90 days to 10 years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Then, in London, the Battle Of Bow Street (March 9) flared up. Up to 2,000 American and British soldiers and sailors pitched into fighting police after two arrests for gambling on the street. Clearly, the root cause was impatience to get home and being kept waiting around with nothing useful to do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Post-war unrest also resumed in Germany with street-fighting in Berlin (March 3-14) and a general strike (3-6). Fresh rioting kicked off in Cairo too (9-11).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Meanwhile, war continued in Russia with a major conflict between the Whites and the Reds, about 100,000 on each side in total. The Whites dominated with their Siberian Army capturing Ohansk and Osa (March 4-8; about 870 miles east of Moscow), and, further south, their Western Army forcing the Reds to retreat to Simbirsk and Samara (6-10; 540 miles east of Moscow).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">[</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Memoir <i>background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe </i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">from Edmonton, north London,</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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), </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">… until </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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 Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied around Arras until mid-March when he ran into his own Essex </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">2/7th </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Battalion. They moved into the trenches near Fampoux 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 doing hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany and finally moving westwards to Lorraine – whence, the day after Armistice, his long trek towards the French Front began. He reached safety after tiptoeing through a German minefield (November 15 probably). Then began his recovery from chronic near-starvation – and a brief emotional breakdown – until, finally, on December 10, 1918, he returned to England and another few days in hospital before reuniting with parents and siblings, especially brother Ted, home on a week’s leave but suffering badly from gas damage. Civilian life offered Sam a warm welcome… until, in February, 1919, the Army called him back - though only to a “Dad’s Army” unit and, so far, a few weeks </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">de facto<i>holiday in Brighton…]</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Retrospective 3: As of February-March, 1919, my father, Private Sam Sutcliffe, Gallipoli, Somme, Spring Offensive veteran and ex-POW, found himself in Brighton – billeted in a Spartan dormitory near the top of a grand Palmeira Square mansion. Transferred to the Royal Defence Corps – an early Dad’s Army – for his concluding months in uniform, at this point he simply enjoyed “a month spent by the sea with nothing to do”… which he described comprehensively with just that phrase so, for want of concurrent 100-years-ago-this-week blog material…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> I’ve left him for four weeks in all until the powers-that-be come up with something useful for him and his mates to engage with (which they did). For now, a third themed-excerpts look back. Last week, it was a young Tommy’s experiences of “Sex and romance”… now it’s Army Grub or Bully-Beef Gastronomy or If I Ever See Another Tin Of Apricot Jam or If The Jerries Don’t Get You The Quartermaster Will and suchlike Tommy laments for what used to be his stomach…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> (Warning: another long read ahead – best take a packed lunch!)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Food played a big part in my father’s early life, in the Army and before. Born in 1898, he had a poverty-afflicted mid-childhood – that is, the family was wealthy in Manchester then, by the time he was two, suffered “ruin” and “came down in the world” as well as down to Tottenham and Edmonton, north London. The level? He and his, then, four siblings didn’t starve, but hunger gnawed at them. Here’s the most telling image of how young Sam felt it (this from the kid-to-recruit chapters which he wrote in the third person calling himself “our lad”, “Tommy” and such):<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘…when one day our boy saw a lad younger than himself sitting on the ground tearing up paper and eating bits of it, he asked him, “Why are you eating paper?” “Because I’m hungry,” said the boy. Our lad thought, “Perhaps it would help if I could do the same”. He tore up some paper and chewed it, but, oh, it tasted horrible. He never resorted to that again and he didn’t hear what became of the little boy who had been eating quite a lot of it.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">The situation worsened with his father not getting paid for agenting work done, then unemployed, before he lowered his sights, took a bottom-rung office job and began the family’s long climb to modest financial equilibrium. Hence, this great day, marked and celebrated with food and ceremony:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘That week when Dad received his first pay packet was long remembered because on the Sunday, very unusually, their mother lit a coal fire in the grate of the kitchen range and they baked rather more potatoes than usual and boiled a small number of haricot beans (hard when bought, they had to be soaked for 24 hours or so before cooking). For this occasion dishes they hadn’t used for some time were set out on the table. One for the potatoes, another for the beans, and a larger one for the joint. Mother placed it at the end of the table where father sat. He carved it most carefully, small portions for the children, of course, but the taste of that meat in addition to the beans and the potatoes was a treat.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">By the time my father had to leave school – at 14, like his older brother Ted, for lack of money to continue his education – poverty had receded to a degree (the while, one new child, Edie, thrived, and one-year-old John and 12-year-old Sidney died, leaving five children in all). Sam got his first job at a walking-stick maker’s near Old Street, and was delighted to find a pal from choir, Reg Curtis, worked nearby. It meant they could have lads’ lunches together:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘Reggie knew of one or two places to sit and listen to music and singing for half an hour. He also knew the places where, for a penny, you could get a large cup of tea – one, part of a chain called Lockharts (bless the promoter of them), where just buying a mug of tea entitled you to sit there and eat the sandwich lunch mother had prepared for you. Rest and refreshment for a penny… Another place Reg introduced Tommy to was known as the Alexandra Trust, where hundreds of people went for cheap food. And it was cheap – apart from the tea, a large, toasted teacake cost a penny too.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Apart from the pleasure of cheap, ample nosh – especially when you’ve known harder times – in his early teens Sam’s perspective did come to include a good look at “how the other half lived” in terms of comestibles. He found his second job (1912-14) at tin-mining company Lake & Currie’s HQ near Liverpool Street station. As office boy, he was deputed to arrange the catering for the directors’ in-house business lunches – leading to this sumptuous experience/insight:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘A day or so beforehand, Tommy had to visit the supplier to hand over the order – often at a famous restaurant and bar over in Cheapside called Sweetings where he observed really prosperous City businessmen, bosses all, who wouldn’t even spare the time to sit down to have their lunch. These toffs, as Cockneys called them, clad in fine morning suits, lined the long counter, munching and drinking their ale or whatever they favoured. The smell of all these delicious foods pleased Tommy; he loved to stand there and look and breathe it in. White-hatted waiters dressed up as chefs carved succulent slices of beef or ham.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> When the customers finished eating, they would just throw down some silver on the counter and walk out — no question of bills or talking about the cost…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> In addition to the special drinks and foods the restaurant supplied, Tommy had to buy certain cheeses and a special type of coffee. This task took him to a shop of the old style where soft cream cheeses hung from the ceiling in muslin bags… Fortunately, in due course, Tommy would get the chance to do more than look at all this enticing provender.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> When one of these feasts had concluded, the bosses would take their guests to a club… Often, when they left Mr Lake’s office Tommy went in to clear up before the caterers came to collect any utensils and crockery they had provided. But he’d pause to inhale the fumes of cigars and cigarettes, the aroma of all this good food – and of an appetising cocktail they regularly took called gin cup* which they drank from small, silver tankards, a sprig of a small mauve flower with a yellow centre floating in each one.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> And, until the men from Sweetings arrived, Tommy could eat and drink anything left over – often quite a lot. Quickly as he could, he’d run through the menu. The lovely cream cheese, the crisp little rolls, some meat, ham or tongue or beef, a little salad, and then, of course, the gin cups had not always been emptied so he sampled them as well. It was very good. And one further pleasure he would save for later; some of the senior partner’s Turkish cigarettes – made for him by a chap in Burlington Arcade – would be left lying on the table and Tommy, who sometimes collected parcels of them from the tobacconist, felt free to take some of them if he wished. For a brief while, the boy would think of himself as a man. And fare like a lord.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">* Gin cup: gin with mint, sugar and lemon juice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">No culinary change occurred immediately after he joined the Army (September 10, 1914) because he lived at home during the initial squarebashing phase of his 2/1st Royal Fusiliers training. But soon they moved down to Tonbridge and lived with families in the town. “Tommy”/Sam and billet-mate Churniston struck lucky. Mr Fluter managed the local print works and lived in sub-posh plenty laid on by Mrs F. Exemplified by the first night’s dinner:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘“Everything’s ready,” she said. “I thought we’d start off with good old English fare. Roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and apple pudding to follow.”‘<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Then the packed lunches she provided to support them in their work, digging part of the southern ring of trenches (built to protect London from putative invaders), proved enough to… well, feed an Army:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘Came the Monday morning, the air clear and pleasantly chilly. Tommy and Churniston expressed their surprise and delight when Mrs F laid out the food she had prepared for their first day’s digging. She had wrapped fine, white, table napkins round large, meat pasties, marmalade turnovers and lots of sandwiches. Wonderful food, lovingly prepared and packed. Each of the boys had sufficient for four men…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> ‘When the lunch break arrived, he soon realised he would not be able to eat all the fine food Mrs F had packed, so he put about a third of each pasty to one side, wrapped them in newspaper, and hurried along to find his brother in G Company. Ted gladly accepted this addition to his smallish packet of sandwiches. “If my landlady keeps up this level of grub supply I’ll be able to pass on some tasty bits most days,” Tommy told him. “If she ever asks me about the quantity I’ll assure her not a crumb is wasted.”’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">So, by the time “Tommy”/Sam first confronted real Army cuisine, he did have parameters of comparison beyond the basic-decent of home and working-men’s caffs. It happened on the bad ship <i>Galena </i>(real name <i>Galeka</i>, my father being a systematic purveyor of [transparent] aliases). As they rocked and rolled out of Southampton into a huge week-long storm, like most soldiers he soon became a choosy food critic:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘He clung to a rail, amazed to see and feel the forepart of the ship rise high, then plunge… And so the thing he had been fighting for several hours took possession of him and his loss was the fishes’ gain.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> All the same, when he saw men tottering towards the hatch bearing large dixies and bags of food he followed them down below. Hot tea got rid of the chill and, that morning, there were loaves of warm bread and tins of Irish butter. But the butter proved to be very rancid, so Tommy helped his mouthfuls of dry bread down with swigs of tea.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">After a couple of days he got over his seasickness and spent a lot of time away from his Company’s horrible hold way below decks. But he felt he must sometimes return to fill his stomach from time to time to avoid dry-wretching nausea:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘With many men still very ill, plenty of grub remained for those who could face the stew of tough meat and undercooked potatoes. Each of them had devised their own methods to eat their food before the ship’s violent motions spread it over table, trousers and floor, but usually this involved filling their enamelled, iron plates then, with both hands, raising them to lip level, tilting carefully, and swiftly drinking off the liquor. Solids could then be forked up with ease, though not much enjoyment.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> The brothers, with memories of simple, tasty meals enjoyed at home, realised the difficulty of cooking for hundreds of men. But they compared this meal with dinners at Scout camps prepared over open, trench fires; Ted expressed the opinion that the rotten cooking on their ship was all that could be expected if it was superintended by that evil-faced curmudgeon appointed Lieutenant Quartermaster. “Satan with a waxed moustache,” said Ted. Indeed, later events proved that to be a not ungenerous description.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">He soon came to ponder further regarding the system that got the victuals to them and facilitated “Old Wax Whiskers’” villainy:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘Strong tea, often taken with hunks of bread and watery jam, usually passed for breakfast. That jam wouldn’t have fetched tuppence a pound in a grocer’s shop; issued in tins and made by a firm seldom heard of before or since that war, it needed no spoon, it ran like water.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Even the boy could guess at the sort of profits the villains made and, in idle moments, soldiers discussed what they would like to do to the manufacturer and the people in authority who placed the orders and, no doubt, shared his gains and guilt.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> For some reason, the same low standards did not apply to Army biscuits, as they were called. Tommy believed that just one firm supplied the square, white, easily chewed biscuits – very different to the brick-hard squares referred to earlier. Proud of its product, the company baked its name, Jacob’s, into each biscuit – and men rejoiced when they were given them. For the rest, as far as Tommy could see, anonymity concealed the shame of their victuallers. If soldiers’ hopes have been realised they all live in a hell where the diet consists solely of their own provender.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">When they reached Malta, their first meal on dry land – at St George’s barracks, in barren countryside outside Valletta –received a more tolerant welcome than it might have, but still occasioned some PBI eye-rolling:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘The Corporal despatched two men to the cookhouse carrying the shiny bucket and bowl, and their return brought cheers from the happy men even though their burden consisted of the usual potatoes with tough, stewed meat. On this occasion, they required only quantity to fill the aching void and, indeed, there was plenty for all. They enjoyed that first meal in the barrack room in a happy mood of banter and speculation about the future.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> “Get that lot down you,” said Corporal Ash. “Then the orderlies will take the pans down to the cookhouse and, when they’ve scrubbed them out, they’ll be issued with tea and hard biscuits and that will be all the grub for today.” The tea was good but the biscuits presented a problem again, although they definitely came from a different source to those provided aboard the </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Galen<i>a. About three inches by three and a half inches, thick, dark brown and very hard; the strongest teeth could make no impression on them. Soaking in tea failed to soften them.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Ewart Walker, ex-journalist and very knowledgeable, spoke of a huge reserve food store maintained underground in Valletta… Over many years the food store had been maintained at a level sufficient to feed the population of Malta for the duration of a six-month siege. Walker… estimated that these stony biscuits could well have been placed below during the Napoleonic Wars. Their hardness and their repulsive dark appearance lent weight to his theory.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> All attempts to eat them had to be abandoned, although an enterprising chap with a hammer and small chisel did chip carefully away at some of them to make what he sold as frames for photographs.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">** The Granaries, Fosos in Maltese, lie under Publius Square/Pjazza San Publiju in the Floriana district of Valletta.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Well, Army grub certainly had its comedic side, but it could have serious consequences when Tommies (or troops in other Armies, of course) came to feel it as an act of disrespect – from the British Army in an institutional amorphous sense, from the upper-class officers who ruled them, from the country they had volunteered to serve… according to taste. Here my father (incidentally experimenting with a first-person passage) shows how the Tommies grievances led to a small mutiny: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘The food remained the one faulty part of the organisation. Whenever the men discussed the subject, they cursed that beady-eyed rascal [the Quartermaster]…. He was seldom seen around the barracks and general opinion held that his job had scared him. Such an unprepossessing person would be fair game for more experienced supply officers. But dozens of men in the ranks at that time possessed more ability than that reptile to do the job of quartermaster in a responsible manner.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> “Imagine,” thought Tommy, “what strange sort of caterer would so bungle his ordering that men’s breakfasts in a hot climate would consist of strong cheese and onions boiled together?” This occurred on two or three days of each week for a period. It appeared a vast amount of cheese had been stored so carelessly it partially melted. And obviously some bright lad had bought a large consignment of Spanish onions. So someone induced Quartermaster Muggins to take quantities of both. Hence, the repulsive breakfasts.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Corned beef might have proved an easy solution, but it bore no resemblance to that on sale in shops: delivered in large cans, dry and almost tasteless. Soldiers on the battlefield expected indifferent food, but a good quartermaster could surely do better than this for a Battalion in barracks.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">And so, when they moved from the barracks to a tented encampment (my father training as a Signaller by then):<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘At meal times, the orderly officer and a Sergeant visited the messes and the Sergeant called “Any complaints?” to which, normally, no one responded. It was assumed that a complainant would be marked as a grumbler and might suffer for his temerity.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> But, finally, one day several did complain – all greeted with a stony silence and a hostile look from the Sergeant. No improvement followed and, soon after that, around midday, from my raised situation in my Signals tent, I witnessed a couple of hundred men marching round and round the footpaths bordering the camp, led by a man carrying a leafy branch torn from one of the few trees in the area. They shouted slogans such as “Poor food, no work!”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Roused and, understandably, incensed by hunger, more men joined the protest. Little as I knew of military law, I felt certain the ringleaders risked court martial and severe punishment… the leader, a chap with wild, staring eyes, pursued his rabble-rouser role with infinite zeal and no apparent idea as to what the next move should be.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> A young officer made the decision for him. He appeared suddenly in front of them and gave a clear, sharp order, “Halt!” Without quibble, all the marchers obeyed. “Follow me!” he said, and turned and started marching — making himself the head of the column. And follow him they did, on to the road and out of my sight.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Later, I heard he had taken them all to a nearby large marquee in which a famous firm of brewers and caterers, official concessionaires, retailed food and drink. That place was the nearest thing to a canteen we had at the time. By cheque, the officer — Lieutenant Booth</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">***</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">— bought a large quantity of canned sausages, bread and biscuits and organised their fair distribution to those present. He also undertook to put the mess complaints to the Colonel and told the men to disperse quietly.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Thus, a situation, which could have resulted in imprisonment and punishment for decent, but desperate soldiers, was settled quietly by a good man who had some regard for human feelings and failings and not so much regard for the book of rules.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Some good did come of the mutiny-that-wasn’t. Lieutenant Booth, who had a flair for organisation, accepted a job which would often intrude on his off-duty periods; he was given authority to inspect food stores, to check cooked meals before they were issued to the men and generally to look after the men’s interests regarding quantity and quality of foods. Perfection was not achieved, but sufficient improvement elicited praise from some former complainers.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">*** “Booth” is my father’s alias for Harry Nathan (1889-1963), who gained promotion to Captain quite early in the Battalion’s Malta sojourn and that autumn, in Gallipoli, became a Major and Battalion CO. A biography by H Montgomery Hyde called <i>Strong For Service</i>, quotes an August, 1914, letter from Nathan to his mother wherein he notes the importance of giving the troops “green vegetables, but they are not provided by the government”; Hyde also quotes Nathan blaming the poor provision for the troops in Malta – including the wounded already being shipped from Gallipoli – on Field Marshall Lord Methuen (1845-1932), Governor and Commander of all Forces on the island (February, 1915-May, 1919); Nathan wrote that he protested about all this officially and often and sometimes hoped “my remonstrances had a momentary effect”. Much later Nathan became a Minister in Attlee’s post-WW2 Labour Government.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">In August the Battalion sailed to Egypt. There, “Booth”/Nathan as Quartermaster proved the value of talking to the Tommies, who would forgive much if given a rational explanation. For instance, in their camp outside Cairo he told them:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">‘…</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">the meat we had just eaten – or not – was very tough, but nothing better could be bought for love nor money. The sweet potatoes that went with it were strange to us, but there were no ordinary spuds to be had. So he proposed to spend the additional funds [chiselled out of the Egyptian Government apparently] on canned goods, meats if available, otherwise fruits from a big importing company. A sound businessman, he looked after our interests carefully.’</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">In late September they moved on – a troopship carried them north to… they knew where, though they were never told. This instigated their introduction to battlefield “iron rations”:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘… a bag of small, hard biscuits, single packets of beef cubes, tea and sugar, and a can of Maconochie’s stewed beef</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">**** </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">– this last, one of that war’s great successes’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">**** My father wrote from experience, of course, and apparently without sarcasm here, but various sites reveal a critical consensus either abusing the Aberdeen-based victualler’s stew – “An inferior grade of garbage,” says one – or warning of noxious side effects: “The Maconochie stew ration gave the troops flatulence of a particularly offensive nature”.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Preparing for action also brought another characteristic of the prudent/fearful Tommy – grabbing up all available food items to ensure against shortage later:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘What bread I, and others around me, couldn’t eat, I stored in any space in haversack or pack. Stew couldn’t be so readily saved; surplus remained in the big dixies for return to the cooks and probable dumping overboard. But I picked out leftover pieces of meat, dried them off, wrapped them up tightly in an oilskin cap cover, and crammed this little package into my haversack.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">And… on the very night they landed at Suvla Bay, Gallipoli, a provisioning crisis did occur. Those emergency iron rations were gone before the night was out – because of my father it seems:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘I was in a full tizzy of excitement having been on the ship to expect immediate and violent action. However, when we stayed there [just above the beach] for some while, pangs of hunger became pressing – we had not eaten since early morning. In a fairly loud voice, which I hoped would reach our officer’s ears, I said I was starving. “Quiet!” came a reproof, but muttering spread along the line, confirming that others also felt empty. A word of mouth message passed from man to man brought a junior officer over and he explained that no rations had been issued since we left the island harbour. Rightly or wrongly, he agreed that we should start on our iron rations.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Fortunate the ridge concealed us, for we were soon lighting our little methylated stoves to heat water in our mess tins. Into this we dropped beef cubes and some of the small, hard biscuits. With this below our belts we felt stronger. I set about chewing dry biscuits as well. A swig from my water bottle, and I felt twice the man.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Perhaps that mistake was down to the admired “Booth”/Nathan. Whether or not, he soon fixed it:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">That first morning we had cause to bless Lieutenant Booth, the enthusiastic young officer who had replaced Quartermaster wax whiskers. He did his job of feeding and clothing us with complete dedication and, during the hours of darkness, had applied his energy to bringing forward from the beach some of the stores unloaded from the lighters. Volunteers distributed food. They gave each of us four rashers of bacon and half a loaf of bread, small paper bags of tea and sugar, and a tin of condensed milk.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> One volunteer from each group of four holes was allowed to hang the occupants’ eight water bottles over his shoulders and make his way back to a clump of trees and bushes behind which sheltered a mule-drawn water cart.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Still we huddled there unmolested. We could hardly believe our luck. The mess-tin lid with its fold-over handle made an efficient frying pan and most of us still had the methylated-spirit heaters. I fried the rashers, soaked up the fat with bread and ate that up, then boiled about half a pint of water and dropped some tea, sugar and milk into it. It was good, I felt very much better and happier after that meal.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">But Suvla Bay standard meals proved far less satisfying or nourishing. The Tommies weakened rapidly, in body and, consequently, morale – again, they felt disrespected:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘Rough seas meant poor rations, slack organisation of supplies back at the bases resulted in monotonous repetition of the same food items, as with the already mentioned apricot jam and hard biscuits – the oft-abused corned beef became, at times, a welcome luxury. If some bully beef came our way we felt stronger, the nourishment taking effect rapidly in our debilitated bodies. If a piece of bread and a chunk of cheese filtered down through the hands of all those who organised supplies to the ranker, the lowest level of Army life, then there was much slow, careful chewing and such pleasure evinced as would warm the heart of whoever had consigned the delicious grub to such humble men. Unfortunately, long gaps lingered between such treats.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> With the best will in the world, our officers could not attain efficient feeding and welfare of their men under active-service conditions. They had not received the necessary training and it was easy to let things slide, to let the willing workers overtax themselves while slackers lurked in places they believed safe spots. A good officer would see that every man had his share of what’s available; not many of ours took so much trouble, probably because they themselves were overcome by discomforts and lack of rest and sleep.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Hard to ‘to live under such conditions and maintain your intelligence or even your sanity’, Sam wrote. So what did the more resourceful do? Scrounge. My father spent most of two months in a trench/hole on a hill overlooking the Turkish lines with one other Signaller for immediate companionship, splitting the 24 hours, seven days a week, between them. But their neighbours, regular Essex Regiment machine gunners, decided to do something about the dietary monotony:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘… country lads, very shrewd – 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.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> 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. I marvelled that two men could have hauled it such a distance.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Generosity to comrades was part of the faith of these Essex farm men, so they included me and my helper [then a glum fellow my father calls Harry Green] 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.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> 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.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> 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.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">After that respite, more privations followed. In the (literally) Siberian blizzard of late November, of course many froze to death. The already creaky food provision system broke down. Up on the Signallers’ hill, Sam reckoned that ‘having no protection from the terrible cold, Green and I looked like dying quite soon’. He slid and stumbled down to Battalion HQ. An acting Quartermaster Sergeant told him the Essex lads should feed them – which they couldn’t. Then he relented and gave my father ‘a handful of tea and two hard square biscuits, this to feed two men for an indefinite period’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Shortly after that, he did get a short break down at Brigade HQ where his suspicions about the Army food chain proved true:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘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.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Meanwhile, I felt the benefit of this luxury, my spirits rose again, I smiled, even laughed occasionally.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">By mid-December he’d moved back to the hilltop. Then evacuation to Lemnos, relief, guilt at taking part in such a defeat – that’s what my father felt – and then a couple of days’ worth of joy. By Christmas, they’d collected all the accrued parcels from home, including those sent to the 80 per cent of the Battalion (800 out of 1,000) killed in action or shipped out with wounds or illness. The officers decided to share out the whole lot on Christmas Day: ‘cakes, biscuits, Christmas puddings and sweets, such a plenitude of good eatables’ (plus two dixies full of beer!).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Come the small hours of Boxing Day, the warm glow turned to horror when the RSM peremptorily woke them and told them to get back down to the Mudros docks. A ship awaited them and soon they made a night landing at V Beach, through the battered hulk of the <i>River Clyde</i>. While they remained there only until January 6, and did take a few more casualties, the most notable feature of their “help with the evacuation” – the reason for their second Gallipoli trip – turned out to be… eating treats. That is, sharing in the delights normally reserved for that “other half” (always a small minority in truth, of course):<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘Our Signals group landed a lovely job which consisted of going to a large dump near the beach and gradually dispersing its contents: canned and bottled food and drink intended as extras for officers – anything that would keep well in cans, boxes, cartons, with smoked items in cotton wraps, also biscuits, some cakes and sweets, wines, beers, but not much in the way of spirits. We loaded these good things on to small mule carts.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> A very fair way had been devised to consign them to the troops in equal quantities. Those up at the Front got the first deliveries, naturally. The officer in charge at the dump had records of all the units in benefit. We could only work at night, but during breaks for rest, or while awaiting transports, we were allowed to eat and drink. Chicken, asparagus, Irish bitter from round brass-coloured tins, Schweppes lemon squash or Seltzer water, thin lunch biscuits and other luxuries… for a brief period our small, but fortunate group guzzled these lush items.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Quite fairly, we were not allowed to take anything away from the dump for our own use; but we would be entitled to a share of what was delivered to our Battalion. In fact, we Signallers hadn’t the gall to accept our share when it was offered since we stuffed ourselves to capacity during the night and, in daytime, only wanted to sleep. But we did work with a will on the job – and so shortened its duration, unfortunately.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> A few days after our disembarkation at V Beach, around midnight someone called out “It’s New Year’s Eve!” and a special search produced several bottles of what may have been cider, although some called it champagne. We didn’t know which, but heartily toasted each other and anyone else we fancied, before renewing our onslaught on that marvellous giveaway job.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">After that second evacuation, via a four-month R&R stint in Egypt, the Battalion was despatched to France. In Rouen the proud remnants, to their bitter chagrin, found themselves broken up and scattered to other outfits on the Somme Front. Sam ended up with the Kensingtons in the Hébuterne/Gommecourt northern sector. Despite the profound disappointment of losing his old comrades, he did acknowledge that here on the Western Front the common soldiery got much better care and attention from the Army – hence, one less reason to moan!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘I soon recognised that this Battalion was run by men more skilled in caring for and providing for their rankers than any I had encountered earlier. A Quartermaster Sergeant, a Sergeant Cook, and some well-trained men worked miracles with the rations to produce meals of a quality I’d seldom experienced in front-line soldiering. They had several mobile field kitchens, comprising large boilers, food store boxes, fuel containers, fire boxes under boilers with tubular chimneys and so on, along with two-wheeled vehicles, usually pulled by mules, which allowed cooking to proceed while on the march. According to circumstances, they either stayed behind to work and caught up with us later, or moved with us in the column, or went ahead to our destination if our progress was slower than their wagons could achieve.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Always, a substantial hot meal and good steaming tea arrived when needed – well, except when “enemy action” occasionally disrupted their praiseworthy efforts. The Quarter-bloke, a tall, strong, purposeful man, a tower of strength and efficiency, often achieved near-miracles under terrible difficulties. For men who, for hours, had endured exposure to rain, cold, shot and shell to unexpectedly be given a mess-tin full of hot stew or tea with bread was to restore our faith and hope and courage – the very knowledge that others thought about our discomfort, even misery, and had been kind enough to do something about it heartened us.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> None of the messing about with bits of rations here, no cooking puny portions in a mess-tin over a small spirit burner – often producing nothing worth eating. No going for days with nothing but hard biscuits, jam and a small allowance of water…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Observing this, and other matters of organisation, I came to understand that, here in France, with the war obviously going to be a long one, the British Army conducted it rather on the lines of a business.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Some encomium. However, he did still encounter meannesses and privilege translates into damaging inequality. With the Kensingtons, Sam was promoted to Corporal. He detested any kind of command over his fellow men, but when he had it he tried to exercise it fairly, like his shining light “Booth”/Nathan. Here he talks to his Company officer about the nutritive difficulties of men out digging advance trenches in No Man’s Land overnight – he had to regularly lead such a patrol:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘<i>I told him of the men’s need of food and drink around midnight – to which his only suggestion was that, as the men were required to sleep during most hours of daylight, they should save bread, cheese and such for a meal during the night; water would have to suffice for drinking.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> None of this would please our chaps – good workers if looked after, but capable of skilful toil-avoidance if displeased. I felt they were not being well treated and would be resentful. Yet, somehow, some work must be seen to be done. So I let it be known that if they did a good three hours graft, starting from our time of arrival, then the rest of the night could be taken easy, given that each man should grab a tool and be busy as soon as he heard my voice, for my coming would be a warning of the officer’s presence, doing his rounds.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">On rations generally, my father proved game to ask the awkward questions, if not to any obvious effect:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘… we often said, it was all right for those bastards at Army HQ about 50 miles back. With their maps, plans, and schemes, battle was probably no more than a game to them, to be played between 10-course meals.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Indeed, solid rations such as bread, butter, cheese etc, were distributed through “the usual channels”, that is, a recognised pecking order as they passed from Division Headquarters, on to the Brigade, to the Battalion and finally to us, the Company. When, in the front-line trenches, the bread allocation they gave me to share out amounted to rather a small portion per man, I found it pretty disgusting — because I was handed my own Corporal’s ration for the day separately and that was a half-loaf. I questioned this with the Sergeant controlling the distribution, but he insisted this was all correct, since those responsible for others did more work and must be maintained in a fit state to do it.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Otherwise on the Somme – May-late September, including July 1 of course – food ceased to be a constant source of concern and complaint. No joy either, though drink could prove an enhancement when his Battalion was relieved of front-line trench duties for a week or so and billeted in a French village: “<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘…at that moment, champagne was a good buy because the owners of one big house had decided they couldn’t carry on living in that dangerous area, finally abandoning the hope, long shared by many in that region, that the Allies would soon drive the Germans back to the Rhine… So, imagine: champagne at 2.50 francs the bottle, brandy cognac about 5 francs, curaçao about 8 francs, coarse red wine 50 centîmes</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">*****</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">. The red wine I didn’t favour. A few weeks previously I had drunk two whole bottles during an evening, and become tipsy in a sad, sour way… whereas a steady tippling session mainly on champagne yielded a night of unbroken sleep followed by an awakening to a clear head and a feeling of well-being.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">***** One online account says the British Army’s exchange rate in France was fixed at the rate of 5 francs = three shillings and seven pence for the month of July, 1916. Alan MacDonald’s <i>Pro Patria Mori </i>says the more discerning soldiery enjoyed the <i>estaminets </i>of Souastre, just behind Hébuterne, because they flogged Veuve Clicquot champagne at 9 francs.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">In late September, Sam’s age came to light – 18, still under elegibility for the battlefield – and he went home for a year, albeit via a stint at the Harfleur British Army camp where, by what you might call delicious irony, he worked in catering.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> On his return to France from December, 1917, he experienced the same Western Front efficiency with regard to victualling that he’d seen in 1916 – with one pleasant addition: ‘I viewed with amazement and pleasure the sight of water pipes and taps in the rear trenches – the like of that had never been dreamt of in earlier days’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> However, the regime of steady nutrition ended abruptly on March 28, when, in the Fampoux sector of the battle against the Spring Offensive (outside Arras), his Essex Regiment 2/7th Battalion was sacrificed to cover a retreat and he became a POW. With Germans in the Army and at home rapidly approaching starvation levels because of the Allies’ naval blockade, prisoners got worse than short shrift. For Sam, the relentless diet became clear on his second day in captivity, even though he fell into the peripatetic groups of prisoners shuffled around behind the lines in northern France, then southern Germany, pausing in many different locations for a few weeks’ forced labour:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘Nourishment for that second day as a prisoner had consisted of a litre of coffee substitute (mainly roasted and crushed acorns) and a piece of sour, dark-brown rye bread, which yielded two slices. I was to become familiar with these items during the coming months. The only daily addition to this, now that we had entered some kind of makeshift war prisoner camp, was a litre of stewed root vegetables – swedes, turnips and mangoldwurzels – doled out every evening. Some old horsemeat may have been cooked with them, but none came our way; the under-fed Germans saw to that.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> This diet just kept me alive. Now, even in these earliest days, I too started to become hollow-eyed, emaciated.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> First priority was to acquire an empty tin can in which to collect your liquid rations. I managed that quite soon and, with a penknife which had eluded the Germans who robbed me on the battlefield, I began shaping a spoon out of a piece of wood.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Finding some potato peelings one day, I washed them at a stand-pipe in the ex-factory building, put them in my can and filled it with water, gathered wood shavings, straw and odd bits of floorboard for a fire, cadged a light and cooked them. Without any seasoning they tasted awful, but down they went.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Occasionally, he got the chance to supplement his eating with something good when a passer-by showed compassion – some boiled potatoes, a fruit pie once. But mostly the variations and keep-you-alive additions came only from what the POWs could scrounge. Anything. The worst maybe what his pal Wally got hold of while working in a piggery:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘… he managed to slide his hand into a trough and pull out some dark-coloured meat which, on close study, appeared to be liver. It smelt unsavoury, but we wiped it and ate the revolting stuff. So robbing pigs of their swill was now our aim in life – though I have since suspected we were laying up stores of health troubles for future days.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">My father may well have been right. His final “interesting” gastronomic experience of World War 1 occurred after November 11, 1918, when, following his long walk back to France from his final POW camp, he was twice nearly killed by good-willed people with no experience of dealing with near-starvation. The first example, immediately after he – a skin-and-bone tottering rag of a man by then – crossed the French front line somewhere south of Nancy:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘I was given one of those long French loaves and a mug of hot, sweet cocoa. Replete and secure at last, I slept… until, at some time later, I awoke, scarce able to breath.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> 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.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> 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.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Still, once he, helped by French, British and American medics, got the hang of the problem, he thrived again, filled out, began to feel normal, enjoyed slap-up meals and parties with friends and family… But the stored-up problems did re-emerge and, in fact, directly caused his eventual discharge in May, 1919 – by then he had transferred to a Dad’s Army-style group engaged in guarding German POWs down near Arundel:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘In Sussex, the fat – even a burgeoning dewlap – which happiness and good living had prematurely bestowed on me in the months after my return to England gradually disappeared. In fact, my face partially reverted to its prisoner-of-war gauntness; food had seemed so wonderful after previous deprivations, but in time my voracious appetite waned, abdominal pains returned and irked me and, despite my efforts to bear in mind all the blessings now available, a dullness settled like a blight upon me.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I resisted it constantly, pressed it down inside me. I attempted normal conversation and persevered with laughter, but it was all difficult. The officer who regularly inspected the prisoners and premises, granted my request for an interview and was understanding when I told him about these things. He sent me to see an RAMC doctor at the local Headquarters and the results of his tests led to an appointment with a Medical Board. Doctors there probed my abdomen thoroughly and somewhat painfully, then recommended my release from the Service “having become physically impaired”.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">So he had. Aged 20. He did recover again to live a full life and a long one – he died at 88 in 1987. But gastric problems troubled him intermittently and he always wondered whether the rectal cancer which afflicted him – and he survived – in his 50s was triggered by the whole WW1 experience. He did first show signs of debilitation and intestinal troubles in 1917, his year “out”, which saw him spend a month in a Sheffield military hospital… but who knows?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> In sum, whatever the upshot of all this WW1 Tommy-as-foodie reportage, it certainly does suggest that Napoleon wasn’t wrong when he came out with that old saw about an Army marching on its stomach… <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">All the best</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">– <i>FSS</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Next week: While Sam enjoys that “</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">month spent by the sea with nothing to do but polish our boots and buttons”, the Blog Retro 4 theme is… not what I planned and trailered, which was “A Tommy’s eye view of the enemy”… because, thinking about it, I got more interested in “Comradeship”, how Sam and assorted pals or, anyway, companions kept one another going in appalling conditions with narry a therapist in sight…</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote <i>Nobody Of Any Importance</i>, a <i>Memoir </i>of his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
FootSoldierSamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01449820798842961719noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545275143240244101.post-67970834566055059442019-02-24T00:30:00.000-08:002019-02-24T00:30:03.020-08:00Retrospective 2 – sex and romance and a WW1 Tommy: young Sam’s “love life” as an innocent abroad struggling with temptation… <div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir(1) <i>– 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 </i>Memoir<i>, added documentation.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">For details of how to buy the <i>Memoir </i>or </span><span lang="EN-US">Gallipoli <span style="color: purple;"></span><span style="color: #161616;">& </span>Somme<span style="color: #8b5200;">&</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">Arras 1918/POW </span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">etc </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">mini-e-books click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=4897427382137035394;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=4;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">plus see reader reviews </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=6753328261534245137;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=1;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">and </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=8857004925280018109;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=2;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;"> and reviews from the Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=7620675943831341074;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=0;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">. </span><span lang="EN-US"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">For AUDIO excerpts click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/footsoldiersam" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #7c4000;"> Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nobody-Of-Any-Importance-A-Foot-Soldiers-Memoir-of-WW1/300782296758247" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">The war’s over at last – but Sam’s blog, Facebook page and tweets will continue until his </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir <i>concludes with the Centenary of the July 19, 1919, Peace parade in London…<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">Memoir<i>will always go to the British Red Cross – and the current running donations total as of February 1, 2019, is £3,979.66 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!)</i></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Dear all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">A hundred years ago this week, in the aftermath of the Armistice… While the Peace Conference in Paris trundled on with the worker bees doing the details, PM Lloyd George and President Woodrow Wilson, among other leaders, attended to business back home – France’s PM Georges Clemenceau doubtless still preoccupied with recovering from the bullet between the ribs he took from a would-be assassin on February 19. Of course, other assorted disruptions continued (low-key compared to world war, but variously significant for the longer-term future).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Among the forces’ mutinies and industrial actions flaring up around Europe, the La Canadiense electricity company strike in Barcelona was in the first fortnight of its 44 days (February 21-April 6) en route to establishing an eight-hour day by law for the whole of Spain.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> The latest post-war election, in Finland (March 1-3), emulated the results from most of the others with a Social Democratic Party win.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Meanwhile, in Russia the first congress of the Communist International opened at the Kremlin (March 2) – and Bolshevik troops continued to press Allied forces back 140 miles south of Archangel (March 1-2; the city itself 765 miles north of Moscow).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> In the far east, Entente ally and top-table participant in the Peace Conference, Japan, found itself in domestic trouble as Korea launched the Samil resistance movement against occupation and declared independence (March 1).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">[</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Memoir <i>background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe </i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">from Edmonton, north London, </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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), </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">… until </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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 Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied around Arras until mid-March when he ran into his own Essex </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">2/7th </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Battalion. They moved into the trenches near Fampoux 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 doing hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany and finally moving westwards to Lorraine – whence, the day after Armistice, his long trek towards the French Front began. He reached safety after tiptoeing through a German minefield (November 15 probably). Then began his recovery from chronic near-starvation – and a brief emotional breakdown – until, finally, on December 10, 1918, he returned to England and another few days in hospital before reuniting with parents and siblings, especially brother Ted, home on a week’s leave but suffering badly from gas damage. Civilian life offered Sam a warm welcome… until, in February, 1919, the Army called him back - though only to a “Dad’s Army” unit and, so far, a few weeks </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">de facto<i>holiday in Brighton…]</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Retrospective 2: As of February/March, 1919, my father, Private Sam Sutcliffe, Gallipoli, Somme, Spring Offensive veteran and ex-POW, found himself in Brighton – billeted in a Spartan dormitory near the top of a grand Palmeira Square mansion. Transferred to the Royal Defence Corps – an early Dad’s Army – for his concluding months in uniform, at this point he simply enjoyed “a month spent by the sea with nothing to do”… which he covered comprehensively with just that phrase so, for want of concurrent 100-years-ago-this-week blog material…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> I’m leaving him for four weeks until the powers-that-be come up with something useful for him and his mates to engage with (which they did). For now, a second themed look back. Last week, it was “Fear and the battlefield”. Now, “Sex and romance”… which actually adds up to just as long a blog as last week’s record-breaker – and just as unpredictable I should think, as Sam presents himself candidly as ever, rather than easing into you-know-what-soldiers-are macho clich</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">é</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> So an army marches on its stomach – see next week’s food-themed excerpts – but what the troops do with their desires for sex and love, both or either, is far more random, a matter of individual circumstance and, to some degree, choice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> But NB, no actual sex is described in this blog! It’s not my father’s bid for the WW1 50 Shades Of Grey market:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">My father, born in 1898, got his first lessons in sex from observing the animals – horses mostly – who thronged the streets of north London in the early 1900s when he was growing up in Edmonton… and the surrounding fields come to that, as his suburb was on one of the city’s fast-expanding fringes at the time. At the same time, like most little boys he wriggled through his first glimpses of romance in tentative flirtations with equally bemused little girls – one of which came around again in his adolescence as you’ll see.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> But the earliest teen-romantic-front experiences he mentions, which decisively shaped the young Tommy he became, were powerful repressives in very different ways. First, a casual dalliance which never proceeded so far as even a first kiss: at 14 or 15, when he’d started his pre-war job as an office boy at a tin-mining company office near Liverpool Street station, his two-years-older brother Ted introduced him to two girls [NB: this and other pre-Army excerpts come from the early chapters of the <i>Memoir </i>where Sam wrote in the third person calling himself “Tommy/he/our lad” and so on, while aliasing brother Ted as “George”]:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘One of them was the daughter of a greengrocer and she liked talking about the family trade. The other worked in an office somewhere…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> They met the girls on several other occasions, but at that time Tommy had no interest at all in the greengrocer’s daughter, so he didn’t see any more of them until a Sunday afternoon just after dinner when mother, who’d apparently heard some sound, hurried to the front door, opened it and, after a moment, started shouting. The boys slipped over to the window and saw the two girls standing in the road. They had called to ask if George and Tommy would be coming out and mother was ranting away saying that her sons wanted nothing to do with them and she’d see that they didn’t have. “You shameless hussies, throwing yourselves at young lads like my sons!” she yelled – “hoossies” in her Manchester accent, Tommy always remembered the sound of it. “Clear off, before I give you something to help you on your way!”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> It was embarrassing. Well, George was more incensed than embarrassed and, thereafter, he took care to keep his friends, both male and female, away from their home. Out of such things are the seeds of dissension and dislike sometimes sown in families. A growing chap like that getting treated as a child… But I’m afraid that no protests on his part would have deterred the mother from acting in that way.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">If that incident nailed down embarrassment as an undermining element of his relationships with girls, the advice he got from his main mentor outside the family, vicar/choirmaster/Scoutmaster/music teacher Mr Frusher, proved a not altogether positive counterbalance. In the pre-war period, this Renaissance man taught the boys shooting and first aid (with particular attention to wounds) and invited the older ones to join a discussion group which included sex-and-morality education:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘…On these occasions, Mr Frusher even led discussions of men-women relationships. Discouraging romantic notions without deriding them, the elderly, bachelor teacher continued where the school lessons in anatomy and physiology left off. “Frankness in these matters kills morbid curiosity,” he would say. He explained the sex organs – particularly the female genital parts always omitted from the school’s anatomical charts.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> In a sensible way, he described the feelings contact between the sexes could arouse, the actions and the results that would follow: the girls in trouble, the unwanted babies; the worry, regret, fear; the difficulties which beset a young man who has fathered a bastard. He drew this picture so impressively the lads were never likely to forget. In fact, he constantly impressed upon them that sexual intercourse before marriage was wrong, a crime, it must never even be considered, let alone indulged in.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> He instructed them about another aspect of sexual development too: masturbation. He told them what a habit it could develop into, assumed they had never done it – correctly in most cases, thought Tommy – and assured them that if they never started they would never be bothered by the habit. What he used to call “night losses” – about which most young men know something – would, he believed, have an ill effect on a lad. But they could be averted, he said, if you didn’t sleep on your back. This could be achieved, he recommended, by tying a cotton reel or bobbin round your waist and placing the uncomfortable object against the spine.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> But, beyond such practical matters, he wished the lads to grow up as what he called “gentlemen”. The girl being so constituted that marriage and child-bearing were the most important things in her life, she would generally submit to a man’s desires – after a certain amount of caressing had taken place – in spite of any advice she may have received. Mr Frusher’s conclusion: the man – stronger, physically and mentally – had a bounden duty to accept responsibility and ensure that nothing occurred, when the girl was in his care, which he could not freely reveal to her parents. The final word had a memorable simplicity to it: chivalry.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Coupled with lessons in physiology and home nursing, both part of advanced training for all Boy Scouts, this early debunking of the sham romanticism so prevalent in those days did help the boys. Furthermore, the Scout Code they had sworn to included the words “To be pure in thought and word and deed”</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(2)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">; sticking to it became a settled part of their life and conduct. Tommy remembered all these things in the company of the girls with whom he occasionally formed friendships. Some may have thought him reticent or slow, but all realised that, at any rate, he was safe…’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(2) The tenth article of Scout Law, added in the 1911 fourth edition of Baden-Powell’s <i>Scouting For Boys</i>.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">So now the first almost-girlfriend – and connection back to naughty childhood games:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘… one evening, as he got on the train to go home as usual, a voice called out his name. It was Bessie Dibbs… He hadn’t seen her for several years since, as children of eight or nine, they’d played postman’s knock at a Christmas party… Tommy seemed to recall that Bessie had picked him, he couldn’t imagine why – then the two would leave the room to kiss and cuddle (if agreeable) while those left behind giggled and then, on the couple’s return, made saucy comments on what they might have got up to out in the hallway. Now here they were, 15 and meeting again.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">She sat beside him and they talked as much as they could in a crowded compartment full of people smoking. They alighted at the same stop, of course, and walked together until their ways parted. But when they said their good evenings, Bessie suggested Tommy might let her have his firm’s telephone number so she could ring him up for a chat. Rather weakly, Tommy agreed. A day or so later, she called and he was very glad he happened to be on the switchboard to pick it up.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> The next time, though, Sergeant [the company’s Commissionaire i.e. the office boys’ boss] answered, and when Bessie said she was a friend of Tommy’s, he somehow changed his voice to produce an imitation of Tommy which Bessie found credible and he chatted away calling her “darling” and “sweetheart”, while Tommy sat on a stool beside him, blushing and unable to do anything about it — although, from what he heard, Bessie didn’t sound too displeased. Well, Sergeant loved to embarrass the boy.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> On his next homeward train journey sitting with Bessie, Tommy noted the appearance she had of being well-fed, well-clothed – everything right in her world. Then he appraised himself: his home-made grey mac, the cheap suit beneath it, the cheap shoes. Comparing the obvious difference in circumstances between himself and the girl, he knew he would have to break away before he got in too deep. That wasn’t easy for a naturally shy lad who wasn’t too good at expressing his feelings. But he did tell her he hadn’t called her sweetheart, darling and so forth, it was all that Sergeant up to his games – and that they’d have to discontinue their walking home and talking on the phone. Although they did see each other from time to time after that, it must have been quite apparent to Bessie he was not the lad she’d thought him to be.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">You can see that, added to the usual embarrassments as multiplied by his mentor’s words regarding morality and chivalry, Sam carried a load of I’m-not-good-enough which seemed to restrain or confuse him most acutely in relationships with girls – readers of the full <i>Memoir </i>will know its origins in both poverty (especially through his parents’ shame at “coming down in the world”) and his sense of inferiority to beloved brother Ted, reinforced by his mother’s scornful comparisons. It was so undermining that when, at 13-14, Sam followed Ted as top boy in his last year at school, Sam thought the teachers got it wrong and marked him on Ted’s afterglow, you might say, rather than his own abilities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Well, that’s it for his pre-war romantic life – and so far so innocent.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Of course, the basic sexual (and loving?) needs of the soldier abroad in wartime lead (led?) in only one direction – towards prostitutes. I think the best way to address my father’s encounters in this area is to bring them together, from one “exotic” location to another.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> After enlisting at 16, in September, 1914, he trained in London (living at home) and then Tonbridge (apparently staid as you’d imagine), before sailing away to Malta where further training saved them from actual fighting from February to August, 1915. But, aside from the male citizenry’s own requirements, it was a historic garrison island. So after a week or three, Sam’s pal Hayson suggested they do that laddish tourist thing, “taking a look” at the Valletta Red Light District, the Strada Fontana back then…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘Tommy too felt something adventurous about the idea. Perhaps seeing how the business was conducted without apparently looking at the whores. When they found the Strada, they saw that the houses – small and terraced – were all to their right. “We’ll keep to the left side of the street along by the wall,” suggested Hayson.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> This they did, talking as they walked, hoping that their guarded glances to the right passed unnoticed by women whom they could see standing on the pavement by their front doors. Rather old most of them looked to the boy. He’d seen mothers of chaps like himself standing chatting to neighbours at their front doors back home who looked no older than most of these women – and they certainly didn’t shout coarse invitations such as “Come on, darky ginger” and “Very nice, very cheap” in loud, harsh voices. After which, when the lads took no notice of their offers, came the insults: “English soldier no good, no money,” “Territorials plenty beeg preek and no money,” “Give him bottle of milk – call yourself a man!” and so on.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> So the adventure lost its savour. The youngsters’ uselessness was so obvious that women way ahead of them took up the shouting. Although they continued to the end of the street, their walk almost became a run and they felt lucky to escape without injury. Probably the women could tell from long experience when they were being inspected as curiosities.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Tommy learned later – through a visit where he actually did wait for a friend without using the establishment’s services himself – that each house was controlled by an old woman who performed certain necessary duties beyond her nominal job title of “cook”. First she took out the customer’s penis and cleansed it with a swab dipped in water and then in Condy’s Fluid </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">[standard British disinfectant of the time]</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">which she kept in a bucket in the corner of the room. Then, in full view of the customer – by way of guarantee, up to a point – she performed a cleansing of the whore with the same fluid. The “cook” also attended to payment: one shilling for the use of the woman and a penny for herself.’</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Humiliation then. Often a key element in a boy’s sexual development… <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Unsurprisingly, nothing germane occurred during his time in Gallipoli – could it have been a rare “theatre” of war without a woman in sight, at least on the Allied invaders’ side of the trenches? But when his 2/1st Royal Fusiliers remnants evacuated Suvla Bay and then V Beach they got an R&R spell in Egypt, January to April, 1916, initially near Alexandria. There, on a day out with a pal called Miller, Sam eventually came to understand the scummiest set-up he ever ran into:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘… penniless, we two swells wandered around the town, which we rated less interesting than Cairo. As we strolled aimlessly, a boy joined us. Probably nine or ten years old, he wore a dark-grey Norfolk jacket – popular casual wear for males of all ages at that time – shorts and, below the knees, hose with turned-down coloured tops and short-sided boots; a white shirt with a knitted, striped tie completed his neat outfit. He spoke good English, though with a strange accent – soon explained when he said he was Russian. At that tender age, he was already tri-lingual, French being his favourite, he explained.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> When he invited us to visit his home, we felt pleased and excited. The prospect of spending an hour or two in civilian surroundings fulfilled a longing – a desire to return, however briefly, to the old life at home – about which we seldom spoke for fear of being dubbed soft…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> The boy led us to a flat on the first floor of a fairly large block. He introduced us to his three sisters, small girls, probably aged between 12 and 15. Their fairly large room was furnished with one or two chairs and three small beds. Uncertain, but not embarrassed, I sat down. Miller did likewise and we attempted polite conversation, but were completely defeated because the girls spoke only French.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> In England the old teapot would by now have been brought into service to ease developments, but I knew French folk favoured coffee. None was offered, though, and the girls sat around, smiling and sharing remarks and giggles between themselves. I had felt real pleasure on entering this plainly furnished yet clean flat, but now the boy had vanished and, without him as interpreter, we were sunk, no valid reason to remain. Standing up and looking at each girl preparatory to leaving, I decided they were plain as to looks and, though tiny,</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><i>may perhaps have been a little older than I had at first supposed.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Out on the gallery, from which a staircase led downwards, I glanced at the wall behind me and noticed a brass plate beside another front door. Doctor So-and-So, it said. Seeing one of the girls still standing outside the flat we’d just quit, I called out “</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Pourquoi<i>‘Doctor’?” Her reply supplied the answer to several questions I’d been asking myself. The baby voice shouted “Doctor Cunt!” So then I realised that these children were prostitutes, the Russian boy their tout, and some fat, filthy swine using them to enable him or her to live comfortably during a war which brought death and disease to millions of people.’</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">If, on that occasion, Sam hadn’t even understood what he was dealing with until he’d made his exit, his next confrontations with professional sex left nothing to the imagination. In Rouen, late April, 1916, waiting to find out whether their depleted Battalion would be reinforced or disbanded, he and a Tommy called Haines visited the cathedral, then entered an apparent <i>estaminet</i>:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘Inside, though, I saw no bar, only some marble-topped tables and chairs. Then, unprompted, an electric bell rang, a door opened and in marched a line of eight or so women dressed in gowns of various colours. Facing us, they threw open these gowns and stood there, obviously inviting inspection and selection. None of them was young, some as old, I judged, as my mother. I hope I didn’t show the revulsion I felt. I expected my companion to get out with me right away, but instead he pointed to one woman. She stepped forward and he departed with her.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I was in a dilemma, but made it clear by my actions that I wasn’t interested and the women marched out – all except one. By now I felt scared and ordered wine to propitiate whichever invisible person ran the establishment. It meant spending a couple of scarce francs, but provided time in which to think. I remember pouring myself a glass from the bottle, pushing it towards the woman and making signs that she should help herself… and when she had drunk that, insisting she had another glass. Some time passed, the awkward situation becoming ever more distressing for me. Relief came with the reappearance of Haines. I stood up, waved farewell, and was outside the place in a second.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Naturally, I protested about being let in for a rotten experience, but Haines laughed that off. He’d assumed I’d known what it was all about, whereas I would have expected a chap who wanted that sort of thing to choose a man with similar tastes to his own for a visit to the town. I recall asking him if he was married. He was, of course, so that accounted for his need of a woman to fill a wartime lack in his life.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Still the Boy Scout, one might say. Prudery, fear… though you can see there’s more to his attitude than that, I think, including his “revulsion” and attempt to suppress that feeling. Some Frusherish chivalry, some innate decency, some awareness of the women as people vulnerable to exploitation or abuse despite the “professional” offer? No doubt, he wasn’t the only lad caught in these tangled webs…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> My father recalled only one other encounter with a prostitute. Even though this occurred in late November, 1918, after his long walk to freedom from eight months as a POW, it still caught him on the hop. This happened in a village not far from Nancy, when he’d recovered somewhat from sickness and malnutrition. The RAMC hospital then caring for him allowed him out for a walk – he wore a blue French uniform at the time, which Sam reckoned may have had some effect on what followed:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘Walking along the main street, I noticed a woman, probably about the same age as my mother, leaning from an upstairs window. For no particular reason, I continued to look her way as I walked and when she waved and signalled that I should cross the road and join her, I did so.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> When I entered the open front door, I was faced by an open stairway made of rough wood and devoid of bannisters. At the top, I found myself in a large room almost without furniture, but the woman from the balcony now sat there at a sewing-machine. By signs, she indicated that I should seat myself on a box facing her machine. Having some vague idea that she had asked me into her home out of a kindly intention to perhaps offer me a cup of coffee, I sat and awaited developments. But she said nothing, resumed her machining, and thereafter ignored me.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Embarrassment kept me alternately glancing at her and looking away out of the window. Perhaps she was expecting somebody who could speak her language? Perhaps, maybe, I wonder, and such passed through my confused mind, but never a guess at what, perhaps, should have been obvious… With much relief, I heard footsteps climbing the stairs and, turning that way, I beheld a girl dressed in what seemed to be the most popular colour among French ladies at that time, namely, black. I observed that she had bare legs and feet and somewhat dirty, ragged clothes.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> She stood there, silent, and then I got the shock of all shocks; the machinist indicated that I should go with the beggar-girl (such she appeared to be) to a bed in the far corner of the room. Meanwhile, she, I assumed, would get on with her work and collect cash when I had been served by the poor girl. What a set-up, what a knocking shop! And what a customer – </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">sans<i>money, </i>sans<i>desire, and lacking even the strength to raise a stand. Apart from the fact that I had never had a woman and this would not have been my choice either of place or person…<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> So I walked out and thus concluded my unforeseen meeting with a Madame and her unwashed Mam’selle.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">I’ll bridge now from the world of commercial sex to Sam’s very occasional romantic-ish encounters and other stories that show his evolving view of girls and women in the always strange context of an adolescence lived almost entirely in war-time. This is an uncertain betwixt-and-between cameo from his Malta training period in 1915, one of his Saturday leisure trips from their barracks into Valletta. He begins with reflections on his comrades’ constant banging on about… banging:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘Bars, booze and women were the subjects on which they vied with each other to arouse envy of their frolics. In the brothel tales, their skill in gaining a price-cut from the madame by means of threat or persuasion must be admired by him, their manly performance with the prostitute duly purchased must merit applause…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Nonetheless, he found their tales could not inspire him to emulate their swashbuckling conduct. The one occasion when he wandered into a situation involving alcohol and sex led only to an embarrassing contretemps.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> On a hot Saturday afternoon, after the </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">karozzin<i>[horse-drawn carriage] arrived in Sliema, he bade farewell to his travelling companions at the Valletta ferry quay. The boat moved off and he stood alone, the dockside soundless, nothing and nobody moving. Siesta time for the Maltese, of course.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> He strolled, then entered a drink shop. The very dark-skinned, moustachioed barkeeper asked him to sit and, having the place to himself, Tommy selected an old armchair and felt like Lord Muck himself when a pleasant girl appeared, collected his beer from the proprietor – obviously her father – and brought it to him. She sat in another armchair beside him, they chatted and he probably bought another beer.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Later, Papa suggested that they move into a room at the back – just an ordinary living room it was. Tommy spent some time with the girl and what seemed unbelievable in later years occurred, namely nothing of note. But a certain awkwardness gradually overpowered him; conversation became impossible and no help came from the girl, kindly and patient though she was. What role was he supposed to fill? A stolen kiss, a cuddle, a hand on her knee then further exploration? This and more would have cost money, he suspected, and he had little. Or was it supposed to be the start of an orthodox romance followed by marriage? He never found out. Given no other customers entered the bar during the whole time Tommy spent there, perhaps Pop was just desperate, business being so bad…’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Something like normal relations from here on, then – brief observations and anecdotes to start with, showing how Sam dreamed and thought about women. Here’s Malta 1915 again, Sam just 17 probably (his birthday on July 6), and stationed as a lookout on an ancient stone tower trying to spot German submarines or other vessels up to no good:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘One evening, when doing my stint, I relieved the boredom by watching an old man and a young girl working in their very small plantation not far off. A small building – one room or at most two – was their home. It must have been uncomfortably hot inside for, as twilight briefly warned of night’s approach, the girl came out, placed an old pillow on a heap of dried straw just outside the door of the hovel, and lay down.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Earlier, in full daylight, I had observed the poor, old, shapeless, black dress she wore; now it functioned as her nightdress. Our family had known severe hardship but here, on this lovely island, poverty seemed more out of place. Yet I perceived advantages which were hers: she would not have to endure periods of bitterly cold weather and occasional days with no fuel to provide any warmth; if, at times, she and granddad had no money to buy food, they could always find something to eat on their own land – a sugar melon, a few grapes, or a hunk from one of the huge pumpkins growing in the plantation – and, withal, they had the blessed warmth of the sun most days of the year.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> If the possibility of sharing her natural couch occurred to me, it must have been immediately rejected. The soiled, probably smelly, old dress, the dirty, bare, horny-soled feet and the easily imagined, unwashed body must have been powerful deterrents, but in any case the principles regarding correct human relationships instilled by dear old Frusher still held strong magic for me… And there was the old man.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Now France, post-Egypt R&R, heading for the Western Front, the three-day train journey his Battalion took in April, 1916, from the dockside in Marseilles to the huge British Army camp outside Rouen – with pleasant pauses en route:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘The beautiful greenness… I couldn’t describe the pleasure it gave me. Grass, green acres of it. Trees – copses, woods, forests of the lovely things. Until I saw all this beauty I didn’t know I’d been missing it. And another kind of vision on show to us could stir a young man’s pulse to extra activity – the sight of a European girl with white and pink complexion, brunette and blonde, as opposed to sallow or dark tan with near-black hair.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> At the time all these differences aroused thrills of appreciation in me. So when, on one occasion, I inadvertently stepped from the train almost into the arms of a girl, words failed me. When she indicated she would like a tunic button for a souvenir (one of the few words we both understood) I cut one off with my jackknife pronto – in exchange for a kiss.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Yes, a kiss! Hang on to your hats, dear readers…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> But no such sauciness in this next passage, quite the opposite in a sense. However, I’ve always liked it and remembered it. It sees Sam (still 17), a few weeks later, on standby in a village called Souastre 4.7 miles west of the Somme front at Hébuterne/Gommecourt, waiting to join his new Battalion, the Kensingtons, and appreciating a woman in whom he sees no allure at all:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘Just the sight of females, from time to time, made the place seem homely. Not that any attractive girls lived there, though many must have graced the place before filthy war and rape, or the risk of it, drove them elsewhere… I still retain a mental picture of a youngish woman behind whom I walked a while as she drove three cows along a lane: her hair coarse and matted, she wore a man’s cap, an old, dark-blue, military tunic much too big for her, a knee-length skirt of mud-coated, dark cloth – below which her thick calves were clothed in British Army long pants, with grey Army socks and heavy, Army boots on her feet. A boy such as I was then could feel sympathy not untinged with amusement, but I imagined she would remain totally safe from the lustful cravings of even the most sex-deprived old soldiers. That apart, she was a good’un just to be in that place so near to the front line, at risk from long-range enemy guns, trying to keep the little farm going while her men were away.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">After that he passed three months around the front line, including the July 1 horror, and quite credibly during that period his <i>Memoir </i>never mentions the slightest thought of sex. But in August, at last, he wangled his first week’s leave at home since January, 1915 – and had a proper teenager experience, albeit curtailed by the necessity to get back to France:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘Hours at home, walks around the old, familiar places, the two shows – everything great, freedom unlimited was mine. Until I came face to face with a girl I’d known slightly at the church. How she’d grown… in a little over two years, visibly expanded in all the approved places. She had the then fashionable method of using the eyes; you looked directly at her, but she appeared to be focussed on a point just above your head. Very effective, especially if the eyes were a brilliant blue.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> We walked and talked, I self-consciously, she being the first girl I had been alone with back in London, even in the street. On a free night I took her to the pictures, to a really go-ahead place where, to add music to the silent films, you didn’t have just a pianist but a small orchestra. Tea and French pastries afterwards – already well on the way to the Devil.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> With another meeting arranged I felt compelled to tell my mother about the girl, the renewed acquaintance, and see the disappointed look on her face – my short remaining time at home must now be spread around more thinly. I really regretted this, although excited about having such an attractive girlfriend. Life had become quite a heady, dazzling affair. Plenty of cash, all the hours of the day and part of the night at my disposal… no one to give me orders, no Jerry to sling shells at me.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> As the precious break neared its conclusion, I felt a sadness which I threw off by reminding myself that some time still remained. I took a final walk with the girl, part of it in open country… seemingly unconnected to that horrible war.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Suddenly, on that dark moonless night, criss-crossing searchlights illuminated the whole sky, wide beams terminating in big, circular blobs of light where they encountered clouds. This unwelcome display of London’s air-raid defences coming into action brought my thoughts back to reality with a jerk. No enemy planes appeared and no anti-aircraft guns fired, but my feeling of security, one of the boons of this holiday, now vanished. No place, after all, completely without risk of enemy attack in some form.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> We two walked to her home, lingered outside awhile, kissed and parted with promises to write to each other.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">However, via another “wangle” orchestrated by the two Sergeants he travelled with, he got an extra day added to his leave:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘By way of a bonus, I went off for a last look at my favourite haunts. How came it then that I finished up by a canal at a spot on the opposite bank to a factory in whose offices worked my girlfriend? No hope of contacting her during working hours, yet I wrote a note to her, wrapped it around a stone and waited. Soon I saw a girl walking from one building to another and called out to her, then threw my message across the water. She picked it up, straightened out the paper, read it, then waved reassuringly I thought. She did deliver it, I learnt at a much later date.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">But then, how about friendship? Friendship with a woman! By a stroke of luck, the war brought him that for a couple of months he remembered all his life. At the end of September, 1916, he left the Somme front because his age “came to light” (a letter from his father to Lloyd George, would you believe?). At 18, still under the low age limit for the battlefield, Sam gladly accepted the offer of withdrawal from combat for a while, got posted to Harfleur camp and became buyer for a semi-official caterer there. And so he met Marie-Louise Baudlet, a grocer’s daughter and English speaker who helped him with such unfeasible translations as “apple turnover”:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘She wasn’t pretty, but quite attractive, dressed in severe black with white trimmings. She probably looked older than her years, bright, smiling eyes. She made me welcome… I soon had a friendly working arrangement with Marie-Louise… I never failed to call in on Marie-Louise, first thing in the morning. I never saw her except in the shop, at the counter or the cash desk; I sat on a box and she on a stool… Marie-Louise seemed the absolute soul of propriety. Moreover, she had a fiancé, a French officer who was away at the Front…’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Soon the Army posted him back to England and he transferred to the 2/7th Essex Regiment, although located mostly in Harrogate. There, more normal ups and downs of the teenage kind proceeded as his emotional development, surely arrested by the weird exigencies of war, crept towards normality.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> First, in the great snow of January-April, 1917, he and a pal called McIntyre met two girls out sledging. Sam took the helm, crashed it, and the girls’ kind reactions to pain and injury bonded the two pairs together for some weeks:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘It was in the natural order of things I guess that, when the girls were once more up and about, we went for a walk with them. I recall one Sunday afternoon, striding along briskly in the cold air, they guided us out of town to some rather beautiful open country and, at one point, into a wood of wintry bare trees. There a daft episode caused much amusement.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I found myself carrying the smaller girl on my shoulders while the somewhat beefier Mac was loaded with the other quite hefty wench – and a race down a wooded slope started. My partner and I travelled some distance before we raced under a low-hanging branch and, unable to duck sufficiently, she finished up with it under her armpits and dangled there, while impetus carried me forward till I fell. There was much laughter as I lowered her from her situation of suspense.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> She was an attractive little girl, very likeable, and for a while we became quite close friends, while Mac, as often as he could, called at the home of the other girl.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> But then, walking in the town one afternoon, I was amazed to see my girl’s sister on the arm of a soldier. I knew she was married and her husband serving in France. She saw me as quickly as I saw her. An awkward moment, awkward enough to prevent me from calling at their home</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><i>any more. So that brief acquaintanceship petered out.’<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Blushful morality and inexperience – aside from the Gallipoli and Somme kind – he couldn’t shake them. But just a little later that winter, the snow still deep on the ground and spring blizzards to come, he came closer to true romance’s full flowering. Very close. And yet, of course…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> It happened when a meningitis scare took him to an isolation hospital (as a carrier not a sufferer). There – probably Lodge Moor Hospital, Sheffield – he caught a severe dose of German measles. And hit it off with night nurse Flo:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘… she prepared a bath for me every morning, an hour before she was due to go off duty. She had other patients to see, but she spent as much time with me as she could without, as she said, risking a complaint from the women in the ward next door.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> She liked to sit by my bed early in her shift and talk or listen – more of the latter than the former, I now suspect, since most young men think they know it all. Then when duty demanded that she move on, she would bestow a hearty “goodnight” kiss on me and depart till around 4am when, in those post-Florence Nightingale days, the round of washings and bed-makings had to begin – and, no doubt as part of her therapy, a well-delivered kiss would rouse me and have me heading for my bath while she attended to sheets and pillows.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> While the thought of going beyond these little embraces never reached anything pertaining to what is today called sex, this little nurse, Flo, certainly became a very effective part of the super treatment I received; lithe, petite, and with almost tiny, rabbit teeth showing below her shapely upper lip. From the first, she was, in my book, just the type my dear old mentor Frusher would have me protect from her own generous weaknesses. I recalled anew his instruction that a gentleman would not permit a lady to do anything she would be reluctant to talk about with her mother.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> His influence had to control and hold me back one morning in particular. Before any apparent activity began in the corridors outside my room, Nurse Flo came in, kissed me even more warmly than usual and stood looking down at me as I lay there. So I sat up in bed, put my feet down on the floor, and looked at her, trying to read her thoughts, fears, intentions. Her face paled, she stepped back from the bed and threw open the doors of the large cupboard behind her. She stood there concealed, she must have hoped, from observation, pale-faced and trembling. “No, no, don’t,” she said, as I stepped towards her. And I had no intention of taking advantage of her reaction to natural forces. Certainly, I had the feeling of a needle irresistibly drawn to her magnet. I believe I got the correct message, I believe I thought quickly around the situation, perhaps guessed what was happening to her; I returned her kiss, grabbed my bath towel and went for my morning splash.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> The moment passed, I had my bath, and we were good friends. So much so that she gave me her address near Sheffield, with the hope that we might meet there sometime. With hindsight I can see that she must have thought me a dull dog, but the very fact that I was so safe in sometimes extremely intimate circumstances may have offered some compensating features for her.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">The safe, dull dog again. You can feel how, looking back at all this, on balance he felt he did the right thing, even if the least exciting outcomes ensued. A lad of his time and his specific background. As ever, he never assumed he was typical, rather the reverse in fact, and knew that his “chivalry” was never the whole story – that Frusher also still governed his conduct via (sensible) fear of consequences. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> He did see Flo again, that summer, when he returned to Sheffield, Wharncliffe War Hospital this time, with the first bout of gastric trouble and general physical malaise arising from months of privations in the trenches which was to recur throughout his life. Same story again, it seems, much as they liked and attracted one another. So far and no further for Sam and an interestingly downbeat conclusion from him:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘Nothing exciting happened, but again these close contacts with civilians still living normal lives found me very appreciative, though always uneasy somewhere inside.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">There remained one further “close call” from his period in uniform, though not the war itself. After his return from France in December, 1918, and a spell of rest and recovery, the Army transferred him to the Royal Defence Corps and deputed him to a group of ex-POWs whose task was to guard German prisoners still detained in the UK. He reckoned that the notion this would soon chip away any residual hatred worked well for him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> But to return to my theme, in his free time he’d walk the three miles from the POW camp in the village of East Preston, Sussex (near Arundel) to Littlehampton.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘More than once, when I wandered into Littlehampton, I found myself walking behind a girl quietly dressed in a calf-length, Navy-blue overcoat. She usually turned right, as I did, into the High Street, at the far end of which stood the YMCA. Then, every time, she would walk straight past the building and I would climb the steps… beginning to feel curious about her and where she was going.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Everything about her suggested a degree of respectability which would preclude interruptions to her progress from a poor soldier such as myself. As she walked, her bearing regal, she looked neither right nor left. Her right arm swung sort of diagonally, finishing behind her back. Her left hand held a large handbag carried with arm fully extended and rigid. A Captain maybe could make an advance of some kind, or even a Lieutenant, but me, no. Till late one afternoon…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> She must have despaired of anything coming of the haughty act and this time when I followed her along the High Street – by chance as ever – she stopped in her tracks, turned round, confronted me and smiled. “You’re not going to duck into that dump again, are you?” she asked. Of course, I quickly adjusted my thinking and promised never again to do that if she was likely to be available.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Nothing exciting came of it, but we met often, walked around the district and usually called at a country inn for a couple of drinks… <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I treated her with the respect due to one of her obviously high moral standards. But when, on one of our pub visits, she told me she enjoyed my company best when I’d got a couple of whiskies under my belt, I wondered if I was perhaps overdoing the gallantry.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">So, once more, his prudish ways pulled him up short:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘I still walked out once or twice a week with my formerly prim, arm-swinging bird, but I sensed that my slow rate of progress towards something more intimate made her impatient – especially on one fine, warm summer’s evening, when she led me to the rear of a haystack where we rested among the sweet-smelling stuff, and she encouraged me to explore so far uncharted areas by telling me about her wartime goings-on.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I learned that a coloured American soldier, one of many billeted in the district during the final months, had lived in her home and become very much one of the family – to such an extent that, as an accepted part of household routine, each morning he took a cup of tea up to my girlfriend in her bedroom. He stayed talking to her while she drank it and so subtly extended the length of his visits that no one noticed when a quarter of an hour, or sometimes even more, passed before he joined the others at breakfast.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Eventually, there came a time for him to join her between the sheets. She enjoyed this morning ceremony, and tried to get me at it – even with hay for a bed and the risk of the farmer arriving at an interesting, if awkward moment.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Difficult to put my finger on the real reason for my reluctance to co-operate… Being number two to the Alabamy bloke was one thing anti, a black man in bed; a clash of some sort there.</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">But the teachings of my pre-war mentor, Mr Frusher, the vicar, piano teacher and Scoutmaster, still held much influence within me; never take advantage of a woman’s natural urge to have the egg fertilised, he would say… I also felt chagrin about being such a rotten judge, believing that what my eyes saw was necessarily the truth. The pretty little hat, the waisted, calf-length, Navy-blue coat, the white gloves the dainty step, and that swinging arm. Demure propriety personified…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> At the time, without giving too much thought to any of these matters, I decided to quit.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">I should add that, writing in his 70s in 1972-6, he recognised that what he’d thought as a 20-year-old about the black soldier was racist. But he reported his unease honestly as the point of view of a lad who had hardly seen and never known a black man and, as his editor, I decided not to bowdlerise his recollections in the <i>Memoir</i>, nor modernise his words by applying modern standards (for instance, when he wrote, “coloured” had not yet become an insulting term viz the US civil rights/equality campaign called then and now the National Association For The Advancement Of Colored People).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> But that was Sam, out of uniform after four and half years and still a virgin. Who’d have thought? True, though. And, given that we talked about more or less everything, back in the ‘60s as he told me these stories, I can report a happy ending.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Once he was able to start a normal adult life, start work – as a market trader, a draper, in partnership with his younger brother Alf – and just get on with the everyday, he began going out with girls. Pretty soon one of them, realising he needed (shall we say?) a push, took advantage of him being laid up in bed with a minor illness, paid a kind visit, jumped in with him – and set him on the road to sexual and romantic fulfilment. He married my 22-year-old mother in December, 1939. They deferred children for the duration in case Hitler won – and busied themselves with ambulance driving and first-aiding throughout the London Blitz. I was born in 1947. Sam and Mona stayed together and loved each other until he died in 1987, aged 88, and she lived on for another ten years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">All the best</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">– <i>FSS</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Next week: While Sam enjoys that “</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">month spent by the sea with nothing to do but polish our boots and buttons”, the Blog Retro 3 theme is Army grub on the front line: food, not so glorious food… or Definitely Not Masterchef!</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote <i>Nobody Of Any Importance</i>, a <i>Memoir </i>of his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
FootSoldierSamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01449820798842961719noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545275143240244101.post-35330782155206474552019-02-17T00:30:00.000-08:002019-02-17T00:30:11.065-08:00Retrospective – the terror of war: how Sam, a front-line Tommy at Gallipoli, the Somme and Arras, felt and dealt with fear…<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir(1) <i>– 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 </i>Memoir<i>, added documentation.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">For details of how to buy the <i>Memoir </i>or </span><span lang="EN-US">Gallipoli <span style="color: purple;"></span><span style="color: #161616;">& </span>Somme <span style="color: #8b5200;">&</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">Arras 1918/POW </span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">etc </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">mini-e-books click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=4897427382137035394;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=4;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">plus see reader reviews </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=6753328261534245137;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=1;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">and </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=8857004925280018109;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=2;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;"> and reviews from the Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=7620675943831341074;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=0;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">. </span><span lang="EN-US"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">For AUDIO excerpts click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/footsoldiersam" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #7c4000;"> Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nobody-Of-Any-Importance-A-Foot-Soldiers-Memoir-of-WW1/300782296758247" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">The war’s over at last – but Sam’s blog, Facebook page and tweets will continue until his </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir <i>concludes with the Centenary of the July 19, 1919, Peace parade in London…<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">Memoir <i>will always go to the British Red Cross – and the current running donations total as of February 1, 2019, is £3,979.66 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!)</i></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Dear all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">A hundred years ago this week, in the aftermath of the Armistice… With President Wilson and PM Lloyd George back in the US and UK for the month, the Paris Peace Conference went low-key as “working” bodies like the Supreme Economic Council got stuck into the slog of detailing post-war relationships – within the array of Germany-crushing and Empire-securing parameters the Allies’ leaders had set out. On the fringes, “unofficial” organisations such as the Inter-Allied Women’s Conference, which ran from February 10 to April 10 pursued their own angles (in their case total lack of female representation).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Otherwise, it turned out to be assassination season.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> The big hit failed when, on February 19, French PM Georges Clemenceau took a bullet between the ribs from Emile Cottin, generally described as an anarchist who objected to Clemenceau’s alleged role in strikers at aviation factory being fired on the previous year, although at his trial he proclaimed himself a Bolshevik protesting Clemenceau’s attitude to Russian soldiers post-war (allegedly sending them to Africa when they wanted to join the Communist forces back home). The “Tiger” wore the bullet for the remaining ten years of his life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Elsewhere, German nationalist Count Arco auf Valley succeeded in gunning down Bavarian Premier Kurt Eisner, socialist and leading monarch-overthrower, with the possibly unintended consequence that days of rioting in Munich led to the establishment of the Bavarian Soviet Republic, at least for a while. And over in Afghanistan, Emir Habibullah Khan had his 18-year reign ended by a shot from Mustafa Seghir, some say a British-paid Indian spy – if so, a fine show of ingratitude for the Emir’s maintaining neutrality throughout WW1 despite heavy pressure from Turkey and Germany.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Aside from that, assorted fighting continued around Europe, especially between Prussians and Poles in the then German province of Posen, between Poles and Ukrainians around Lemburg/Lviv, and the Allies and Bolsheviks on the north Russian, Murman front.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">[</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Memoir <i>background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe </i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">from Edmonton, north London, </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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), </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">… until </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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 Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied around Arras until mid-March when he ran into his own Essex </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">2/7th </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Battalion. They moved into the trenches near Fampoux 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 doing hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany and finally moving westwards to Lorraine – whence, the day after Armistice, his long trek towards the French Front began. He reached safety after tiptoeing through a German minefield (November 15 probably). Then began his recovery from chronic near-starvation – and a brief emotional breakdown – via the ministrations of French, British and American military doctors and nurses in Nancy and Rouen. Finally, on December 10, 1918, he returned to England and another few days in hospital before he was allowed home and reunited with parents and siblings, especially brother Ted, home on a week’s leave but suffering badly from gas damage. Still, civilian life continued to offer Sam a warm welcome… until, in February, 1919, the Army called him back - though only to a “Dad’s Army” unit and, so far, a few weeks </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">de facto<i>holiday in Brighton…]</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Retrospective 1: As of February, 1919, my father, Private Sam Sutcliffe, Gallipoli, Somme, Spring Offensive veteran and ex-POW, found himself in Brighton – billeted in a Spartan dormitory near the top of a grand Palmeira Square mansion. Transferred to the Royal Defence Corps – an early Dad’s Army – for his concluding months in uniform, at this point he simply enjoyed “a month spent by the sea with nothing to do…”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> So we’ll rejoin him in four weeks when the powers-that-be come up with something useful for him and his mates to engage with (which they did). For now, then, a look back at his war in thematic terms. I’m going for “sex and romance”, “Army grub” (or Tommies marching on their stomachs), “a Tommy’s view of the enemy” – and first up, “fear and the battlefield”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> It’s turned out to be the longest FSS blog ever, so out on some comfy shoes. As always, no claims that Sam represents a “typical” Tommy, just the one, himself. But I hope you get something from it:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Putting together this overview of Sam’s emotional experience of war’s terrors, I was first struck by how often his <i>Memoir</i>’s early chapters – the story of his childhood and early teens – referred to fear. The diverse causes included: feeling alone as a new boy in London (after the family moved down from Manchester when he was three), the sufferings of poverty (especially raw hunger), his mother’s ridicule (she took out on Sam some of her bitterness at their “coming down in the world”), uncertainty about girls and sex, the tyranny of early bosses, the multiple threats of war anticipated (shortages, German invasion). I really don’t know whether this added up to more than the average amount of fear kids feel – or perhaps unusual honesty about such matters, presaging more of the same when he became a fighting soldier.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> But then after the nations of Europe played head tennis war declarations during August, 1914, and the initial battles brought some reality to the “all over by Christmas” blather, he notes that </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">“Everyone knew it was not going well, and flickers of fear disturbed even reasonably optimistic people” and “fear of a long war grew”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">. This period provoked in him – and multitudes of others – nervous doubt about whether to join up or not. And after he did enlist, on September 10, 1914, for months he’d often quake about possible exposure of his attestation lie “to the King” that he was 19, rather than 16.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> No doubt, though, the mortal fear of death or injury is of a different order to any of the above…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> It touched him first for a few hours in February, 1915, when his 2/1st Battalion Royal Fusiliers were sailing from Southampton to Malta. Still in the Atlantic, a U-boat alert saw them all ordered below decks – Sam’s H Company in a hold way down in the depths – lights low, feeling trapped… and the terrible “fear </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">that, if a torpedo struck the ship, the imprisoned crowds of men would not stand a chance of surviving”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> The next step occurred after seven months training in Malta had lulled the men into a sense that, for them, it might never happen. The order came to prepare for another voyage, its ultimate purpose marked by the issue of active-service paybooks. This might not strike you as momentous, but Sam recalls:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘The last page was printed in the form of a will. It was not obligatory to use this, but it would be useful in the event of a soldier’s death.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Death? A certain tension built up inwardly at the possibility thus openly presented. In the excitement of the early days of the war, the remote prospect of being killed or wounded had appeared an acceptable risk which all Britons must face, and an early dispatch to the front line would probably have settled the issue before one had very much time for contemplation of all the possibilities…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> An inner resistance to all forthcoming horrors would be necessary to conceal the truth about me from my comrades – I was actually scared windy, as it was termed, but I must remain the only one aware of this. While behaving as normally as possible, I would maintain this preparedness for any dire possibility, always be one step ahead of the enemy who happened to have the bullet or shell with my name on it<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Thereafter, although I joined in fun and games and general conversation with those around me, I never fully relaxed. The perpetual awareness of danger, which wild creatures display at all times, became part of my way of life – my defence against the risks which would soon beset me. Having settled into this new animal-instinctive preparedness, I could do my work and, when necessary, exercise the petty authority of my one stripe with ease, realising that at least some of my mates must be feeling a bit of tension, a twinge of anxiety.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">In fact, they landed at Alexandria, Egypt, and didn’t sail north for Lemnos until late September. But that journey, with everyone knowing the ultimate destination, had the butterflies fluttering while his cooler self tried to get a grip: “</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">the taut, nervous condition, brought on by anticipation of what I feared, had me scheming about any steps I could take to improve my survival prospects”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Pausing for a few hours in Mudros harbour, Lemnos, he strategised further: “The thing not to do was stay silent and look gloomy – that way you would be labelled ‘windy’ and lose all your pals. You had to consider that others might be feeling worse than you, but they didn’t let it show. So it may be that battles fought inwardly to preserve the good opinion of one’s fellows made possible some of the bigger victories on the battlefield…” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Soon, in a smaller vessel, they set off for Suvla Bay and, as they approached, for the first time in his life – the same applied to nearly all of his comrades – he heard weapons fired in deadly anger:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘… on land rifles fired continuously and artillery lit up the blackness, each flash followed by a bang, a shriek or a strange whine which often increased in volume then ended up in a big explosion. Guns were being fired with intent to kill and here was my first experience of warfare…</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">A howl became a shriek, then a shattering explosion – and a short silence was followed by numerous thuds as what had gone up came down on the nearby beach. While still at sea I heard for the first time that sad, though urgent call, “Stretcher-bearers!” A tightening of the gut and clamping together of the jaws accompanied an inner alarm which then and many times afterwards seemed to produce an acid-like smell on hands and other parts of the body…</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Whether excitement or fear brought it on I don’t know, but I suddenly felt terribly hungry. Then I recalled that I had not eaten since early morning. Nor, as far as I know, had any of our men. Someone had blundered. Or was it usual to land troops on a battlefield with empty bellies?’</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">So still at sea, he discovered the reality of “the smell of fear” – emanating from his own skin. That’s what he called it and the feeling, plus aromatic accompaniment, came to him for the next three years every time he got within earshot of a battlefield. He never commented to me on whether others shared this odoriferousc phenomenon, no doubt some pungent mix of sweat and adrenaline. Yet all through the beach landing at night under shell and rifle fire, the first deaths of comrades, and then the four months of futile skirmishing that followed, like the majority of Tommies – it seems almost miraculous to confidently assert this – he won the “battle fought inwardly”. He held his “windiness” in check to such an extent that, as a Lance Corporal Signaller at this stage, he was able to take care of more vulnerable companions in his charge, ushering two of them to the exits (i.e. a hospital ship back to Lemnos) in diverse circumstances.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> More startling to me, his son, is that he even became a (fairly controlled) risk-taker, a quirk which resurfaced from time to time later. Here he’s describing a scene from December, 1915, after the notorious blizzard, which did have just one beneficial effect - ending the water shortage. On the hilltop he occupied with serial Signals assistants, a ready supply of melted snow lay in a nearby trench… if he could get to it:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘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…’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">He concluded the Gallipoli section of the <i>Memoir</i>, as the Battalion remnants (200 out of the original 1,000) sailed away from V Beach on January 6, 1916, with a further reflection on the nature of his fears and the importance to the individual Tommy and the collective of keeping them to yourself:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">What a blessing that fears and doubts don’t make a noise as they move back and forth inside your head; companions might hear them and then you’d never convince them you are unafraid, a brave fellow and all that sort of thing. They’d know the truth about you, the last thing you’d wish for.’<span style="color: #262626;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Via an R&R sojourn in Egypt – at Beni Salama, on the west bank of the Nile and the edge of the Sahara – from January to April, 1916, the 2/1st ended up at Rouen, France. There, to the survivors’ bitter chagrin, the Army disbanded the Battalion and scattered them among the regiments preparing to take part in the great Somme attack (not that it was advertised as such, of course – or not deliberately). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> By early May, Sam found himself in another London Regiment Battalion, the Kensingtons. He joined them at Hébuterne, opposite German-occupied Gommecourt, after which their northern sector of the battle was named. Lower-key fighting occurred all the time, of course, so his sweat glands resumed their smelly work, but he drew consolation for this recurrenceof general dread from an odd bit of 17-year-old soldierly logic: “</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">a shaft of hope, almost of joy, for I remembered that here [in contrast to Gallipoli] no sea lay behind us, that in periods of rest from front-line trench life we would withdraw some miles away from all noise, wounding, or sudden death, and enjoy relief from our fears and these unnatural living conditions”.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> During the preparations for the “wonderful occasion” of the great attack, one of his observations showed how the Tommy cannon fodder ruminated on their remote leaders’ strategies and their capacity for increasing the general level of anxiety if they appeared careless (meaning, careless of the Tommies’ fate). When they trained on replica trench systems 13 miles back at Halloy, Sam reflected: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">I was such a windy bugger that, had I been in charge of that Division, I would have insisted on the mock battlefield being camouflaged when not in use, but that only illustrates the difference between a scary little Lance Corporal and a hearty, red-face General. If our High Command had thought on similar lines to those worrying – the infantrymen – the attack would have been postponed for a while, some diversions organised in remoter parts of the Front, followed by what would then have been a surprise attack on the Somme. A surprise, that is, to our force as well as Jerry’s. We’d been talking about the damn thing for weeks and the enemy probably knew as much as we did about it.’</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Back in the line, he led nightly excursions to dig advanced trenches in No Man’s Land – the sort of event he’d joke about as underwear-threatening and so on (he never mentioned his sphincter actually letting go and, in old age at least, he was a man of rude candour about such matters so I think he would have). These operations certainly had all concerned operating on the brink of panic, while at the same time able to summon up that almost out-of-body calmness evidenced by the strange objectivity implied in Sam’s account here – until, that is, an officer’s order permitted them to do what would have come naturally from the outset and run for it:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘Soon, all of us were hard at work – and the noise we made was frightening. Only too well aware that we must soon be heard and seen by Jerry, we picked and shovelled like madmen… Fortunately for us, enemy reaction did prove slow and when, eventually, their wrath descended, we squeezed down into the hollows we’d dug and found we did have a few protective inches of earth above our precious bodies.</span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Machine-gun bullets spattered around me and I marvelled that I should lie there, hear and see them striking, yet remain untouched. But our semi-trenches afforded little protection when light field guns joined in and their shattering whizz-bangs filled the air with noise and flying metal. One could only hug Mother Earth and wait for an order to retire, which didn’t come.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I heard the occasional muttered request for “Stretcher-bearers!” – brave fellows indeed, themselves not immunised from injury or death by their labours of mercy. Brilliant flickering Verey lights fired by the Germans revealed all movements; when one hovered near you, you froze no matter in what posture. I always looked down to conceal the whiteness of my face, though more in hope than conviction.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Later, after the firing had died down, the order “Dig like hell!” was passed along. We complied until, after a while, we reaped a further rich harvest of bullets and shell which compelled our officer to order a retreat. We stood not upon the order of our going…’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">July 1 itself was the only war experience that, in part at least, defeated Sam’s powers of recall and description when he looked back to write in his 70s. What he did get down is powerfully sparse, but I get the sense that he was stunned, almost numbed, by the scale of terror and destruction – that he and most of his comrades reached the point where fear and other emotions merge into trauma. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Personally, he got stuck in a front-line trench, in a steadily depleting Company A led by Major Cedric Charles Dickens, the novelist’s grandson, whose messages back to Battalion HQ only a few hundred yards behind him (quoted in Alan MacDonald’s extraordinary account of the Kensingtons at Gommecourt, <i>Pro Patria Mori</i>) included the report that he had “</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">spent 6 hours watching the trenches destroyed and his men maimed and killed by the thunderous bombardment of the German howitzers” and, towards the end of the day, “I have, as far as I can find, only 13 left beside myself. Trenches unrecognisable. Quite impossible to hold. Bombardment fearful for last two hours. I am the only officer </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">left. Please send instructions.” </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> He finally got the order to withdraw after 3pm – my father had become separated from the Company by then and stayed the night in the front line with a few others, mulling and counteracting a sense of guilt and impotence about his and their performance:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘When the kilted lads advanced, their numbers decreased alarmingly with every forward stride. Meanwhile, our own advanced position was being blown apart piecemeal; pockets of survivors lost touch with their leadership and the nearest NCO had to make decisions… If he could only see ahead that our first line of attack was destroyed before capturing its objective, that its members lay dead and wounded on the ground ahead or grotesquely draped over the enemy barbed wire which our bombardment should have destroyed, then when should he take his small force over the top?…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Nothing was gained in our sector. Many good men were lost. Many normally strong fellows were reduced to trembling, inarticulate old-looking men…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> The wounded men who could not walk or crawl back from No Man’s Land were, in many instances, simply left there for hours following the failed attack because of the mentally and physically exhausted condition of their comrades who had survived.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I saw a Scot who, though not wounded, just sat and shook. His head nodded, his arms flailed feebly, his legs sort of throbbed, his eyes obviously saw nothing.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> One of our usually most happy and physically strong men was crying non-stop while violently protesting about something. He’d been buried up to his shoulders in earth and, even in that inferno, men nearby had paused in their advance to free him, yet he had this strange grievance.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> So, possibly, nervous shock afflicted everyone there to a greater or lesser degree, even though fear no longer weighed on us as earlier in the day…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> During the hours of darkness… A gradual return to usefulness replaced the varying degrees of stupor and inertia which for many were the invisible wounds following many hours of explosion and upheaval, shattering to eardrums and nerves…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> By dawn, most of us were ready to stop where we stood – crouched, rather – for under cover of dark we had searched for and found many wounded men, their chances of living diminishing with every hour in which they lay exposed with wounds untended.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> We felt that our work was very valuable and the joy with which injured men greeted their rescuers was reward indeed. Perhaps the failure of the massive attack had left us with a sense of guilt which the intensive rescue work relieved.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">After five months on the Somme, Sam suddenly got a break from the battlefield when it emerged that he was still under-age for fighting – 18 by then, when the low limit always had been 19 – and he gladly grabbed the opportunity to get away from all that for a year. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> After a transfer to the 2/7 Battalion Essex Regiment, he returned to France in December, 1917. But when he heard about his posting, on his last few days of leave at home he told his family something which must have both reflected his experience up to that point and, probably, to some degree affected his emotional state in the battles to come. He told them, “… I should be just one little man among all the mess and muddle, but that, for some reason I could not explain, I felt certain I would survive, even though, for a while, I might not be able to keep in touch”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> When the Spring Offensive struck, the 2/7th had just advanced into the front line at Fampoux, outside Arras. On March 28, at midnight, he and his Signaller pal Neston took the message that sealed the Battalion’s fate; an order to fight to the last bullet to cover a strategic retreat. I guess that would rather counter his new optimism. Certainly, it was another new setting for his feelings which, as the opening German bombardment rained down, he describes as a contradictory mix of blank trauma and sheer frustration:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘Shells of all calibres burst around us. I now felt sort of mentally stunned and a looker-on, as it were, at the heaving destruction, wounding and killing on both sides of me for as far as I could see. Still no targets for my bullets, no outlets for my pent-up fears… if this continued for much longer I guessed I’d explode from within, regardless of enemy shells.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I told Neston of this feeling, putting my mouth against his ear. He may have understood but, anyway, that much physical contact achieved something, for as we looked into each other’s eyes we returned to a normal human condition in which it was possible to give some thought to the fears and wishes of someone other than oneself. The animal concentration on survival, self-preservation no matter what happened to others, was thereafter easily set aside… “Stick together no matter what happens,” was the unspoken, but well understood agreement born and confirmed when we two stopped acting mechanically amid all that din and horror and probed for something worthwhile in each other while Old Man Death waited to put his clammy hand on us.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">But when the shooting started – when wave after wave of German soldiers raced towards the British trenches – he realised mechanical behaviour is exactly what the situation necessitated or, rather, seemed to impose:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘In the desperate situation and amid the unnatural excitement, nervousness, and recurring moments of fear then being endured, one thing was proved beyond doubt – namely, that the intensive training one had undergone at various times during the past four years had achieved its purpose; when the situation required it, I became a rifle-firing automaton. Loading – transferring a bullet from its position in a clip of five in the magazine to its position in the firing chamber by working the bolt back and forth – took only a fraction of a second; a moment to sight the gun correctly on a target; squeezing, not pulling the trigger – well, no time really. Result: a man killed, wounded horribly maybe, and so bereavement in some family, or else sorrow over a son made an invalid or a cripple for</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><i>life, all caused by one man’s impersonal automatic action.’<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">This last terrible awareness of having killed stayed with him for the rest of his life – hence his partly expiative work as a first-aider/ambulance driver in WW2’s London Blitz. And maybe it affected his instinctive, emotional actions an hour or so later, immediately before he became a POW.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> With all their Company’s ammunition fired, Neston and Sam went back to the Signallers’/Company HQ dugout and released carrier pigeons to take the news back to Brigade. Then they shook hands, Neston set off rearwards… and my father turned back towards the onrushing enemy. Fearlessly? Exhausted, for sure. Traumatised blank maybe. All fear spent perhaps. Or/and, underneath, still inexplicably confident of survival… The truth is I can’t and shouldn’t rationalise his every emotional move. He wrote about it as well as anyone could have. This is his account of those moments:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘A glance to the right made me abandon all hope of surviving. A line of Germans was charging in my direction, bayonets fixed on rifles, the job assigned to them, obviously, the destruction of any remaining opposition.…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> As the galloping line came closer I could see their faces, their features. Most of them boys like me. All thought of bravely taking on the German Army single-handed was absent. Inaction was my response. I just stood there and waited for it to happen – the hoped-for clean bayonet thrust and goodbye. I earned no medals that day nor any other day…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> At about two yards, I stared at two boys, one of whom would have to do the dirty work. Their fresh, healthy faces made veteran me feel quite old. Now. It must happen now. I concentrated on the nearest boy. All in a split second, he smiled, swung a little aside, his comrade did likewise, and they were all gone, bless the lovely lads.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">All the best</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">– <i>FSS</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Next week: While Sam enjoys that “</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">month spent by the sea with nothing to do but polish our boots and buttons”, the Blog Retro 2 theme is sex and romance, a young Tommy innocent abroad’s struggles with temptation…</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote <i>Nobody Of Any Importance</i>, a <i>Memoir </i>of his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
FootSoldierSamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01449820798842961719noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545275143240244101.post-71702564574286188172019-02-10T00:30:00.000-08:002019-02-10T00:30:01.488-08:00Sam and new ex-POW pals enjoy Dad’s Armying around Brighton, from promenading to What The Butler Saw on the Palace Pier to… a shock sighting of his revered Gallipoli CO, last heard of “presumed dead” at Vimy Ridge… <div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir(1) <i>– 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 </i>Memoir<i>, added documentation.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">For details of how to buy the <i>Memoir </i>or </span><span lang="EN-US">Gallipoli <span style="color: purple;"></span><span style="color: #161616;">& </span>Somme <span style="color: #8b5200;">&</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">Arras 1918/POW </span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">etc </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">mini-e-books click </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=4897427382137035394;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=4;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">plus see reader reviews </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=6753328261534245137;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=1;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">and </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=8857004925280018109;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=2;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;"> and reviews from the Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=7620675943831341074;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=0;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">.</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">For AUDIO excerpts click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/footsoldiersam" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #7c4000;"> Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nobody-Of-Any-Importance-A-Foot-Soldiers-Memoir-of-WW1/300782296758247" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">The war’s over at last – but Sam’s blog, Facebook page and tweets will continue until his </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir <i>concludes with the Centenary of the July 19, 1919, Peace parade in London…<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">Memoir <i>will always go to the British Red Cross – and the current running donations total as of February 1, 2019, is £3,979.66 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!)</i></span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Dear all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">A hundred years ago this week, in the aftermath of the Armistice… The Paris Peace Conference made conspicuous public progress while the negotiators felt caught up in chaos and worried about what they were doing, given lack of advance planning and the absence of German involvement in their decisions. Beyond the politicians’ formal deliberations conflict continued in many corners of Europe.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> The Conference produced the preamble to the Constitution Of The League of Nations (February 14) expressing general commitments to “international co-operation… peace and security” – proposed as a starting point towards more detailed agreements. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> In the course of the widespread striving for post-war order, in Germany they published a provisional Constitution of their own and elected a new President, Friedrich Ebert of the Social Democratic Party (February 11), while Austria and Georgia too elected their first republican democratic assemblies and reached the same conclusion – Social Democratic governments.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Meanwhile, Russian Bolshevik forces continued fighting the Allied invaders around Archangel (February 10), suffered a defeat in their incursion in newly independent Ukraine (12), began an attack on Estonia and lost a small skirmish with Polish troops at Bereza Kartuska (14; current Belarus) seen as a precursor of the Russo-Polish War which began months later.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> On the side, so to speak, in Ukraine Haidamaka Cossack paramilitaries massacred 1,500 Jewish villagers at Proskurov (February 15) and, in Albania, Yugoslavian troops slaughtered 432 in Rugova (16).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> The while, the US Senate rejected votes for women by a single vote (February 10).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">[</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Memoir <i>background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe </i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">from Edmonton, north London,</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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), </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">… until </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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 Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied around Arras until mid-March when he ran into his own Essex </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">2/7th </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Battalion. They moved into the trenches near Fampoux 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 doing hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany and finally moving westwards to Lorraine – whence, the day after Armistice, his long trek towards the French Front began. He reached safety after tiptoeing through a German minefield (November 15 probably). Then began his recovery from chronic near-starvation – and a brief emotional breakdown – via the ministrations of French, British and American military doctors and nurses in Nancy and Rouen. Finally, on December 10, 1918, he returned to England and another few days in hospital before he was allowed home and reunited with parents and siblings, especially brother Ted, home on a week’s leave but suffering badly from gas damage. Still, civilian life continued to offer Sam a warm welcome… until, in February, 1919, the Army called him back…]</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">February, 1919, Brighton: after January’s meetings with two old POW pals and a brief workers’-and-soldiers’-playtime party season when, in his Edmonton, north London neighbourhood anyway, “everybody was smiling at everybody else” my father Private Sam Sutcliffe got the call to return to the colours… after a fashion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> To his surprise as 20-year-old veteran of Gallipoli, the Somme and such, the Army transferred him to the Royal Defence Corps – which Sam also called the Home Forces and regarded as a Dad’s Army. With his new comrades, he settled into elegant digs in posh Palmeira Square – albeit furnished only with mattresses on low trestles… “luxury sleeping compared to POW conditions,” as my father noted:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘<span style="color: #262626;">I found myself among men all new to me, but that proved no hindrance to friendly exchanges of experiences. Returned prisoners like myself, they cared little for having to join the ranks of the defenders of home and beauty. Still, the war hadn’t officially finished yet, as some of them pointed out, and our soldiers could still be sent abroad if fighting broke out on one of the Eastern Fronts – but ole-timers like us, defenders of Merry England, could sleep soundly with no fears of being thrown again into a horrid battle in which somebody would be sure to get hurt.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> A month spent by the sea with nothing to do but polish our boots and buttons, and promenade along the front, or walk out on the Palace Pier and spend pennies on “What The Butler Saw” machines(2), did me a power of good. In fact, I began to really appreciate the wisdom of the men at the War Office who decreed that some special care should be taken of chaps like us. So… I devoted quite some time to inspecting the structure of the Pier, trying to guess its age and concluding that, in 1919, it and its amusements looked very old-fashioned and would, doubtless, soon be replaced by an up-to-date structure representing the Great New World</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(2) </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">promised by some of our more reckless politicians</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(3)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">One great surprise encountered there made me extra happy; walking in the centre of Brighton, I caught sight of our revered Major, the last commander of my first Battalion before it was disbanded at Rouen in 1916. I had, some time previously, been told that he was last seen at Vimy Ridge suffering from a bullet wound in his head and presumed dead</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(3)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">; but here he was, before my very eyes, driving an open car through the streets of this busy town.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I could not safely try to attract his attention, so I watched him pass and disappear up the crowded street. (When, in later years, he became a Lord, he still preferred that we few, his “old boys”, address him as “Major”.)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(4)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(2) For younger readers and older ones never exposed to the low entertainments of piers and arcades: What The Butler Saw was a film played on a hand-cranked mutoscope machine. The makers shot the original in the early 1900s, but I saw it in the early ’60s, slightly weathered but, I guess, still “erotic” as advertised. Apparently the “story” derived from a scandalous divorce case in the 1880s when a butler gave evidence that he’d looked through the dining-room keyhole and seen his mistress (in the other sense!) “Lady Campbell <i>in flagrante </i>with Captain Shaw of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade”. I think you needed to know that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(3) </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Although my father capitalised “Great New World”, it doesn’t seem to have been “a phrase”, so to speak. No doubt he cross-wired it with “Brave New World”, Aldous Huxley’s 1931 novel. The title had no specific connection with WWI but Huxley did. When aged 21, Huxley volunteered to join the Army in January, 1916, but was rejected because he remained half-blind in one eye from a disease he contracted in 1911. Prime Minister Lloyd George apparently made the actual political promise which has resounded ever since when, in a General Election speech at Wolverhampton on November 23, 1918 (quoted in <i>The Times </i>two days later), he said, “What is our task? To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in” – of course, this gained eternal life adjusted to “A land fit for heroes”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(4) <span style="color: #262626;">My father added one of his own Endnotes here: “Actually, some 57 years later, as I write in 1976, they have just removed the ‘What the butler saw’ and similar machines and sold them at fantastic profit at auction… and that old pier… is still earning money”; Palace Pier, Brighton’s third pier, opened in 1899, and remains in operation now (or as of Friday a week ago when, coincidentally, I was gazing at it from the prom).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(5) In December, 1916, at the start of Sam’s “year out” when he was found to be underage for the battlefield, i.e. still 18 – after Gallipoli and the Somme – back in London he talked with some recovering wounded soldiers from the Western Front who told him that ‘dear old Major Booth, of whom I’ve said so much – a comparatively young man really, of course – had been wounded in the head; it was assumed that he too had died<span style="color: #262626;">’ (Chapter 42 of the Memoir, Blog December 11, 2016). “Booth” was his alias for Major Harry Nathan, just 30 in February, 1919, CO of the 2/1st Royal Fusiliers in Gallipoli and until their disbandment on the Western Front in May, 1916. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> In <i>Strong For Service</i>, Nathan’s biographer, H. Montgomery Hyde, reports the Major’s own account of his wounding – in mid-July, 1916, a while after the initial Somme onslaught and massacre, a sniper shot him, his steel helmet saving his life, Nathan thought, although the bullet ‘went clean through the base of his head’. On July 24, 1916, from hospital, he dictated a letter home saying that ‘very considerable pain’ was decreasing. He convalesced – very slowly – at Palace Green Hospital For Officers, Kensington, and another hospital in Bournemouth, before being sent for additional psychiatric treatment for ‘melancholia’ at Craiglockhart War Hospital, Edinburgh, under the renowned trauma treatment pioneer Dr William Rivers (while there, Nathan met another Rivers patient, the war poet and decorated hero of the Somme, Siegfried Sassoon who was officially under treatment for shell shock/neurasthenia after writing a public letter to his commanding officer titled <i>Finished With The War: A Soldier’s Declaration</i>; Sassoon eventually returned to the Front, was promoted to Captain, then wounded near Arras in July, 1918, and returned to England; Dr Rivers is still renowned because of his portrayal in the <i>Regeneration</i>trilogy of novels by Pat Barker (1991-5) and the film adaptation of the same name (1997)).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> After 18 months convalescence, Nathan was invalided out of the Army with the permanent rank of Major. Still often in pain, but – says Hyde – more personally confident because of his treatment by Rivers, he proceeded to a career in public life (although always a working solicitor to some degree). </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">A Liberal MP for Bethnal Green North East from 1929, he switched to Labour in 1934 and returned to Parliament for Wandsworth Central in 1937, before stepping down to make way for Ernest Bevin (then General Secretary of the Transport & General Workers’ Union, shortly Minister Of Labour under PM Winston Churchill in the wartime coalition) – by way of consolation, being ennobled as Lord Nathan of Churt, and serving in the post-World War II Labour Government as Under-Secretary Of State For War and Minister For Civil Aviation; a Privy Counsellor from 1946; Hansard at </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: purple; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><a href="http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/people/colonel-harry-nathan/" style="color: purple;">http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/people/colonel-harry-nathan/</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(may prove hyperlink-resistant) </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">shows how he contributed in Parliament constantly down the years, until his death on July 31, 1963 (why he’s ranked “Colonel” in Parliamentary records I don’t know); his wife, Eleanor (<i>née </i>Stettauer, 1892-1972, MA economics and maths Girton College, Cambridge), was a member of London County Council for many years – initially a Liberal, like her husband she switched to Labour (and became LCC Chairman in 1947).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">All the best</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">– <i>FSS</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Next week: While Sam enjoys that “</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">month spent by the sea with nothing to do but polish our boots and buttons”, the Blog goes Retro in a thematic vein – first, Sam on how a frontline Tommy felt and dealt with his fears…</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote <i>Nobody Of Any Importance</i>, a <i>Memoir </i>of his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
FootSoldierSamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01449820798842961719noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545275143240244101.post-56611681999366001652019-02-03T00:30:00.000-08:002019-02-03T00:30:02.742-08:00February, 1919: Gallipoli, Somme, POW veteran Sam, getting used to the civilian’s life, strides about the neighbourhood with “intense joy in just being alive in that peace-conscious period”. But then… the uniform calls again…<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir(1) <i>– 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 </i>Memoir<i>, added documentation.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">For details of how to buy the <i>Memoir </i>or </span><span lang="EN-US">Gallipoli <span style="color: purple;"></span><span style="color: #161616;">& </span>Somme <span style="color: #8b5200;">&</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">Arras 1918/POW </span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">etc </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">mini-e-books click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=4897427382137035394;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=4;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">plus see reader reviews </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=6753328261534245137;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=1;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">and </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=8857004925280018109;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=2;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;"> and reviews from the Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=7620675943831341074;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=0;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">.</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">For AUDIO excerpts click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/footsoldiersam" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #7c4000;"> Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nobody-Of-Any-Importance-A-Foot-Soldiers-Memoir-of-WW1/300782296758247" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #0010ee;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">The war’s over at last – but Sam’s blog, Facebook page and tweets will continue until his </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir <i>concludes with the Centenary of the July 19, 1919, Peace parade in London…<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">Memoir <i>will always go to the British Red Cross – and the current running donations total as of February 1, 2019, is £3,979.66 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!)</i></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Dear all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">A hundred years ago this week, in the aftermath of the Armistice… while the power-and-land brokers at the Paris Peace Conference continued their deliberations/jockeying, post-war unrest “at home” grew hotter in many countries, defeated and victorious both.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> British Prime Minister Lloyd George found himself suddenly returning to London on February 8 on a day when 3,000 soldiers marched on Whitehall in protest at poor food and billets. The fixed bayonets of the Grenadier Guards turned them back. But this was only the latest eruption of discontent after the January Army mutiny at Folkestone and the heavy-industries strike in Glasgow which culminated with six tanks appearing in St George’s Square (February 3). The Scottish events were precipitated a) by an industrial dispute wherein the workers wanted their hours cut to 40 a week, from 47, at least in part to allow job opportunities for returning soldiers (they lost) b) by racist conflict on the docks where one seamen’s union wanted black Africans excluded from work.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Winston Churchill, by then Secretary For War, was charged with sorting out a problem generated by Lord Derby’s initial demobilisation scheme which meant men from key industries would be released first – but they had generally been the last conscripted, so long-serving volunteer veterans felt aggrieved. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Meanwhile, the newly elected German National Assembly opened in Weimar (February 6) while street fighting continued in Berlin (8; broadly, government forces versus Spartacists, their ideals fuelled by the effects of famine which had killed more than 750,000 Germans by December, 1918).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> In the Russian Civil War, the “southern Whites”, led by General Anton Denikin routed a Bolshevik force in the Northern Caucasus; taking 31,000 prisoners, they initiated a push towards Moscow. They had taken control of the area between the Caspian and Black Seas, conducting the “White Terror” pogroms en route because they saw the Bolshevik revolution as a Jewish conspiracy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">[</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Memoir <i>background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe </i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">from Edmonton, north London, </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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), </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">… until </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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 Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017).</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied around Arras until mid-March when he ran into his own Essex </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">2/7th </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Battalion. They moved into the trenches near Fampoux 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 doing hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany and finally moving westwards to Lorraine – whence, the day after Armistice, his long trek towards the French Front began. He reached safety after tiptoeing through a German minefield (November 15 probably). Then began his recovery from chronic near-starvation – and a brief emotional breakdown – via the ministrations of French, British and American military doctors and nurses in Nancy and Rouen. Finally, on December 10, 1918, he returned to England and another few days in hospital before he was allowed home and reunited with parents and siblings, especially brother Ted, home on a week’s leave but suffering badly from gas damage. Still, civilian life continues to offer Sam a warm welcome… for a while.]</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">February, 1919, at home in Edmonton, north London (at first): after January’s meetings with two old POW pals and a brief workers’-and-soldiers’-playtime party season when “everybody was smiling at everybody else… given jobs for all and everyone better off, as generally predicted… let the future take care of itself, drink and be merry…” (and flirt a good deal in his case, even with the married woman next door!).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Now, untroubled by the social uproar emerging elsewhere, his personal celebration of freedom from war continues. Though not for long…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘Wonderful days with never a care for the morrow… I put on weight and felt better every day, sleeping as long as I cared to… Sometimes, when I went out around Edmonton, I even wore a black jacket and grey trousers instead of my uniform. These civilian garments I had found in a cupboard and, since no one seemed to know who they belonged to and they fitted me well enough, I adopted them and Pa lent me a white shirt too, one with a stiff collar and a bright tie he had been shy of wearing.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Strictly, as I well knew, it was wrong of me to wear civilian gear, but Military Police did not patrol the outer areas of London, so risk of detection was negligible. Totally ignorant of fashionable, or even reasonable wear, I strode through well-remembered streets with a confidence born of intense joy in just being alive in that peace-conscious period, not at all bothered that some people stared at me more in civvies than when I wore my khaki uniform… Perhaps they still felt all young men should wear a Service uniform.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> So quickly had I become used to the life of freedom that, shortly after Christmas, it came as a heavy blow, to receive a letter ordering me to use “the enclosed travel warrant” and proceed to an Army depot at Preston Park(2), Sussex. Of course, I had to go.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> On arrival, I was told I had been transferred to one of the Home Defence Army Regiments</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(3)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">– manned during the war by older men and those otherwise unfit for service abroad. <span style="color: #262626;">I had thus, in the course of my youth, aged 16 to 20, run the whole gamut from too-young-to-fight to senility. They gave me a Regimental badge to prove I had been relegated to the Old Man’s Brigade – as they sang after the Boer War, “Where are the boys of the Old Brigade?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Still, after the transfer formalities at Preston Park, we were sent to Hove and quartered in one of those fine Regency houses in Palmeira Square(4). Everything constructed during that period still looked so strong, solid and reliable, habitable and useful – although our dormitory, of course, was unfurnished, the Spartan accommodation customary for rankers in those days. But we had mattresses on low trestles, three warm blankets and a pillow – luxury sleeping compared to POW conditions.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Wealthy folk with servants still occupied adjacent houses; we waved to white-capped girls when they leant out of back windows to shake dusters… or their pretty heads when invited to “Come over here, love” or something similar.’</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(2) Preston Park is indeed a park, 63 acres of it, within the city of Brighton. Formerly Preston Manor, it was bought for £50,000 by Brighton Corporation from owner, William Bennett-Stanford, in 1883, using a bequest from bookie William Edmund Davies. Before WW1 it housed a polo club and still does boast “the oldest working velodrome in the world”, opened 1877.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(3) “Home Forces” seems to have been one official title; they were launched in January, 1916; a web page no longer available described them as comprising “<span style="color: #262626;">men and boys who had not yet completed even a basic military training”; however, Ian Hook, of the Essex Regiment Museum specifies from their records that, during his last Army months, my father transferred to the Royal Defence Corps (see below the document Mr Hook was probably looking at – it’s a screenshot from the second page of his “Pension Sheet – Casualty Form” and, towards the bottom, notes Sam as “Posted 100th Coy RDC” on February 15, 1919). Formed August, 1917, with much the same functions as the Home Forces, the RDC comprised men too old or medically unfit for battlefield service abroad. My father certainly wasn’t too old, but he would have been deemed medically unfit because of all the recurring gastric trouble he experienced while recovering from his POW months – which had, in fact, begun and caused another hospital stint back in 1917 when he did his year out (of the battlefield) because he was then too young (so trench life at Gallipoli and on the Somme probably initiated his physical vulnerabilities). In old age, he did sometimes wonder to me whether all this privation in his teens triggered the near-fatal rectal cancer he suffered in his 50s which left him with post-surgical pain for the rest of his long life (he died at 88). No saying on that, of course…</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(4) Still handsome Palmeira Square (pix at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmeira_Square was built in 1855-70 by the financier landowner, Sir Isaac Goldsmid – titled <i>Baron de Goldsmid e de Palmeira </i>by the Queen Of Portugal (Maria II, known as “the Educator” or “the Good Mother”) in 1846 for his role in “settling a monetary dispute between Portugal and Brazil”, but more importantly a campaigner for Jewish emancipation in England and the first British Jew to be awarded a hereditary title (1841). To slightly correct my father’s architectural memory, the square’s style is officially “post-Regency Victorian/Italian”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">All the best</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">– <i>FSS</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">My father's "Pension Sheet – Casualty Form" from 1919<br />– see footnote (3) above for relevant details.</span></td></tr>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Next week: Sam and new ex-POW pals relish the pleasures of Sussex by the sea from promenading on the prom to What The Butler Saw on the Palace Pier to… a startling encounter with his revered Gallipoli CO, last heard of “presumed dead” on Vimy Ridge…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote <i>Nobody Of Any Importance</i>, a <i>Memoir </i>of his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
FootSoldierSamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01449820798842961719noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545275143240244101.post-26002672028735637552019-01-27T00:30:00.000-08:002019-01-27T00:30:09.666-08:00January, 1919: Sam, back in the old neighbourhood, sees that “with the war to end all wars ended everybody was smiling at everybody else and inviting new friends into their home” – so… post-war party time!<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir(1) <i>– 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 </i>Memoir<i>, added documentation.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">For details of how to buy the <i>Memoir </i>or </span><span lang="EN-US">Gallipoli <span style="color: purple;"></span><span style="color: #161616;">& </span>Somme <span style="color: #8b5200;">&</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">Arras 1918/POW </span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;"></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #8b5200;">etc </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">mini-e-books click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=4897427382137035394;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=4;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">plus see reader reviews </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=6753328261534245137;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=1;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">and </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=8857004925280018109;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=2;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;"> and reviews from the Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8545275143240244101#editor/target=page;pageID=7620675943831341074;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=0;src=pagename" style="color: purple;">here</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">.</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616;">For AUDIO excerpts click </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/footsoldiersam" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #7c4000;"> Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nobody-Of-Any-Importance-A-Foot-Soldiers-Memoir-of-WW1/300782296758247" style="color: purple;"><span style="color: #0010ee;">Here</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #0010ee;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">The war’s over at last – but Sam’s blog, Facebook page and tweets will continue until his </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir<i>concludes with the Centenary of the July 19, 1919, Peace parade in London…<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1d1d1d;">Memoir <i>will always go to the British Red Cross – and the current running donations total as of January 2, 2019, is £3,841.91 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!)</i></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Dear all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">A hundred years ago this week, in the aftermath of the Armistice… The initial excitements of the Paris Peace Conference (opened on January 18; League Of Nations announced 25) had faded as the nuts and bolts of reorganising the world on the basis of conquest and defeat started rattling towards conclusions which still bear on the way we are.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> But skirmishing – and worse – proceeded in many parts of Europe. After the German election on January 23 brought the Weimar Coalition to power, fighting between government forces and the Navy-sailor-led wing of the Revolutionary Communist Party continued through the week in North Sea port Wilhelmshaven (January 27-9).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> The extraordinary Czechoslovak Legion maintained its control of much of the Trans-Siberian Railway from Novonikolaevsk to Irkutsk (respectively 2,090 and 3,230 miles east of Moscow) to defend the supply lines for the “White” (as opposed to “Red”) government of Admiral Alexander Kolchak – then recognised internationally as leader of Russia, although what he held was the (massive) enclave of Siberia – against Bolshevik forces.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Meanwhile, under Bolshevik pressure, Allied forces, including British, retreated further towards Archangel (January 29; 765 miles north of Moscow, on the Dvina estuary to the White Sea – which had become a temporary political pun).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;"> Because of these ongoing conflicts and hazards, the British government announced bonuses for any men who would re-enlist to continue their service in the Army (January 29). These ranged from £20-50 for Privates, plus an initial two months’ paid leave with a weekly wage of £1 1s (£1 10p in today’s money or, inflation-adjusted, £53.19 – and inflation was revving at 10.05 per cent in 1919; that year average weekly wages in other lines of work included coal-mining 8s 5d, engine drivers up to £4 3s, dockers up to 7/-, bakers up to £3 10s).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">[</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Memoir <i>background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe </i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">from Edmonton, north London,</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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), </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">… until </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">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 Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied around Arras until mid-March when he ran into his own Essex </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">2/7th </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">Battalion. They moved into the trenches near Fampoux 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 doing hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany and finally moving westwards to Lorraine – whence, the day after Armistice, his long trek towards the French Front began. He reached safety after tiptoeing through a German minefield (November 15 probably). Then began his recovery from chronic near-starvation – and a brief emotional breakdown – via the ministrations of French, British and American military doctors and nurses in Nancy and Rouen. Finally, on December 10, 1918, he returned to England and another few days in hospital before he was allowed home and reunited with parents and siblings, especially brother Ted, home on a week’s leave but suffering badly from gas damage. Still, civilian life continues to offer Sam a warm welcome…]</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">January, 1919, at home in Edmonton, north London: after the last two weeks’ reunions and, unintendedly, final meetings with old POW pals Wally and George, my father Signaller Sam Sutcliffe deploys his period of post-war/imprisonment R&R to widen his social horizons and exploit – up to a restrained point – the romantic allure of the homecoming 20-year-old veteran. In sum, it’s party time!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">‘We discovered our next-door neighbours around that time. I believe they and my mother had already established nodding and speaking terms, but now, with the war to end all wars ended and all this relief from tensions breaking down people’s normal reserves, everybody was smiling at everybody else, greeting people they scarcely knew, and inviting new friends into their homes. Given jobs for all and everyone better off, as generally predicted(2), we could all relax, freely spend money saved against imagined disaster, let the future take care of itself, drink and be merry…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Accordingly, those neighbours put on a party and invited us. They had thrown open the doors dividing their front dining room and rear breakfast room to make quite a large space. But it was jammed with people.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I quickly became friendly with the husband and wife, Charlie and Hester, aged about 35, I guessed. Together, they had run the catering department at a huge Government factory throughout the war. Now, already, they planned to leave their jobs and open their own restaurant in the City of London.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> They knew many of their party guests – mostly female, plus two or three foremen and tool-setters – from serving them as factory canteen customers. Fine by me in my happy state, and I recall being surrounded by half a dozen women, older than me by a few years; they questioned me closely about rumours that soldiers in France used to line up outside brothels in places like Bethune and Calais. Really, I’d never seen such goings-on but – unwilling to change their looks of randy anticipation by revealing my ignorance – with meaningful looks, nods and winks, I encouraged them to tell me more.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> They’d all been earning wages many times higher than pre-war, the beer and spirits flowed freely, and I enjoyed my first, naughtily titillating contact with young women who, I learned, had often obliged hard-working men on night shifts with a bit on the side. In the early hours, during warm weather, they giggled, the factory floors stood almost deserted while the surrounding fields were both well-populated and, ultimately, productive…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Inwardly, I was shocked, and for some reason resentful, but I did my utmost to play the role of a man of the world(3).<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">The succession of parties we attended following that first gay effort made it necessary for my mother to invite lots of people to something similar at our home. In advance, she baked cakes and, on the day, prepared ample dishes of sandwiches.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I felt my part could be to provide the drinks. The ladies liked port wine, I was told, so I bought three bottles. Along with a four-quart crate of pale ale, one of brown, and about six pints of mineral water, it didn’t cost the Earth. In addition, my father produced two bottles of whiskey, and on the day several guests brought bottles of mixed cocktails, adorned with beautiful labels, but recipes unknown – plenty for all, regardless.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> About a hundred years old, our house had a lot of very solid woodwork, including folding shutters on all ground-floor windows and, as in next-door’s place, fold-away doors separating the two ground-floor rooms. With them tucked away, Ma could bring in extra chairs from the kitchen and bedrooms, along with a small table, cushions chucked down in odd corners… and still find space for the piano she hired for the occasion.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> I could see this first-time entertaining involved a deal of personal prestige for her, and I did my utmost to help things go with a swing. More used to such occasions, our new friends from next door pitched in too; Charlie played the piano and Hester sang songs popular at the time with a fair voice and a style which called for slurring from a low note to a higher one… That took a bit of getting used to.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> Because of long absence, I didn’t recognise much of their repertoire, but I gathered that, by then, song sheets at sixpence each brought the latest London music hall tunes to the suburbs at the height of their popularity. Bang up to date with one called Deep In The Heart Of A Rose(4), Hester put it over with great feeling and appropriate eye-play. I prolonged my handclapping beyond the general applause and won a luminous smile for myself… and a full repeat performance, which I hoped the others would enjoy. The clapping that time was not too prolonged, but next day Hester called, as was the custom, to thank Ma for “a lovely evening” and left for me – because I had evidently so enjoyed her rendering of that beautiful song – a card adorned with roses and the words of that heart-shattering number: “Deep in the heart of a rose/I’ll fashion a new world for you/With only your smile for the sunshine/Your lips for the morning dew/No hope for me but your smile/No…” But I’d better give it a rest there.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> After the lady had gone, Ma read it all to me and laughed long and loud, opining that Hester had fallen for me. That made me inwardly resolve to do nothing more that might challenge Charlie’s position. Great stuff though the song may have been in Hester’s estimation, I never heard it again(5).’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(2) Annual average unemployment rates for the war period went 1913 3.6 per cent; 1914 4.2; 1915 1.2; 1916 0.6; 1917 0.7; 1918 0.8; 1919 6.0; 1920 3.9; 1921 16.9 – and thence onwards in double digits almost every year until World War II. After 1940 it was single figures and not a single year above 4 per cent until 1975 with a run of years over 10 per cent returning only in 1981-7 (comparisons aren’t strict as counting methods changed repeatedly, but I guess the stats tell part of an interesting story reflecting on the land-fit-for-heroes aspiration and… contrasting delivery thereof in the extended aftermaths of the two great wars.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(3) Anything but a “man of the world” in that sense… For new or sporadic readers, I’ll mention that Sam managed to emerge from the war his virginity still intact – mainly because of his Scoutmaster/music teacher/vicar/mentor the Rev Frusher’s influence from his early teens (sanctity of sex within marriage, chivalry too). Sam satisfactorily adjusted his view and conduct fairly soon after the war as he reached 21 and the slackened disciplines of peace persuasively prevailed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(4) Deep In The Heart Of A Rose (1900) written by Sir Landon Ronald (1873-1938), Principal of the Guildhall School Of Music from 1910 and composer for London West End shows, and American-born lyricist Edward Teschemacher (aka Lockton, 1876-1940).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">(5) Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth did revive Deep In The Heart Of A Rose in 1949 according to </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="background-color: white; color: purple; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><a href="http://ow.ly/UCo230kUzQo" style="color: purple;">http://ow.ly/UCo230kUzQo</a></span></span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"> </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;">But maybe my father wasn't a fan.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">All the best </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">– <i>FSS</i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">Next week: Sam’s getting used to the civilian’s life – even though he isn’t one yet! He looks neat, talk about a treat, he looks dapper from his napper to his feet. And he strides about the neighbourhood with “intense joy in just being alive in that peace-conscious period”. But then… the uniform calls again…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote <i>Nobody Of Any Importance</i>, a <i>Memoir </i>of his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
FootSoldierSamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01449820798842961719noreply@blogger.com0