Sam becomes a Signaller – and discovers how well his Boy Scout skills fit the military

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Dear all

A hundred years ago… while the big news close to home remained the aftermath of the Lusitania sinking (May 7), ruinous battles continued on the Great War’s many worldwide fronts (including Africa where the South African Army took Windhoek, capital of German South-West Africa, May 12).

    In the east, Russia, Poland and Austria-Hungary clashed at Gorlice-Tarnów (May 1-June 22), Jaroslaw (10-14) and Konary (16-June 23).

    On the Western Front while the Second Battle Of Ypres and the Second Battle Of Artois proceeded (until May 25 and June 18 respectively), General Haig tried something significantly different for the British Army in the Battle of Festubert (15-25). Apparently adopting standard French tactics, he took to “attrition” – preceding a Poor Bloody Infantry advance with an extended artillery bombardment of 60 hours and 100,000 shells. The outcome: 3,000 metres gained when a third of that was anticipated! Casualties: British 16,600, Indian 2,500, Canadian 2,200, and German 5,000…

    At Gallipoli, with failure not countenanced for months to come, the two sides called an armistice to bury their dead (May 11), and in the Helles sector near Krithia the Gurkhas captured Cape Tekeh (12, ergo “Gurkha Bluff”, 60 casualties).

    Meanwhile.... six months on from their enlistment in September, 1914, the 2/1st City Of London Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, including my father, under-age volunteer Private Sam Sutcliffe (still just 16), his older brother Ted (18), and their pals from Edmonton, north London, trained on in Malta with no indication of where they were bound for nor when. …

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

For the last couple of weeks Sam’s been talking about seeing the sites and testing his innocence via a visit to the Red Light District and so on. Now he’s back to barracks – St George’s, in an arid area north of Valletta – and the serious business of developing his military skills.

    This is a significant moment for me as his editor, though not so much for readers I’m sure. Having started his memoir in the third person, calling himself “Tommy”, when Army days began he started venturing into first-person “I” mode, then retreating again – well, this passage is where he finally goes the whole way. He didn’t explain and I don’t know why, though I wonder if it was a matter of seeing the young boy Sam as a separate person he observed in memory, whereas the now-emerging “man” felt like the self he still recognised in his 70s when writing the Memoir…

    He recalls:

‘What were termed “Company orders” would be posted on a board outside the Company office, and the men expected to familiarise themselves with the contents. One such notice I read with great joy: it announced that, now all ranks had completed basic training, a Signals Section would be formed. It invited men having some knowledge of semaphore and Morse Code to volunteer for transfer to the new section. Tests would precede acceptance.

     My name went in pronto, I passed the fairly simple general knowledge and signalling exams, and in no time – though with some regret at leaving my pals and roommates of several weeks – there I was with a new group of lads sharing one of those pleasantly cool barrack rooms fronting on to the roofed and shady sidewalk alongside the Barrack Square. Inevitably, we had much in common; most of us owed our special knowledge to recent or long-past membership of the Boy Scout movement.’

In the May 3 blog (number 43) I pulled in a quote from the childhood section of the Memoir to show how the moral teachings of Sam’s vicar-choirmaster-scoutmaster-music teacher Mr Frusher ensured that he resisted the blandishments of a nice, though probably “professional” Maltese girl. Well, here’s Mr Frusher again – this time as an inadvertent proponent of the Boy Scouts’ role in preparing boys for war.

    This passage occurs just after Sam/”Tommy” left school at 14 because his family couldn’t afford further school education for him:

‘[Frusher] 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.’

A couple of years later, when he joined up,  Sam/”Tommy” clearly understood the connection between Scout activities and the Army. My father recalls his alter ego thinking:

‘“It’s possible that I’m the youngest in the whole Battalion. But in two or three subjects it’s likely I’m more proficient than many of them: things like shooting, simple drill using semaphore signals with flags, and the Morse Code with flags, lamps and buzzers or tappers — all thanks to old Frusher and the Scouts.”       Tommy never mentioned these matters to his comrades because he knew what their reaction would be: remarks expressing all shades of feeling from amusement to outright derision, depending on the former occupation of the commentator. The “workers” would jeer and the “white-collar boys” would register amusement or toleration for an I-intend-to-improve-myself boy. If of a radical liberal persuasion, they might even express abhorrence for the regimentation of children. One seldom heard outright approval of Scouting expressed, except perhaps by some members of the religious organisations to which the Scout troops were loosely attached.’

But back to the 100-year-old present:

‘The Corporal in charge of the new section, was probably 22 years old, the rest of the chaps between 18 and 20 (not counting me, still 16 until July). He told us we would be spared most of the square-bashing and repetitive drilling which had so far been our lot. On exercises and manoeuvres we would take responsibility for maintaining communications between Company and Battalion Headquarters and, on Brigade exercises, between Battalion and Brigade as well. We thought we were on a soft number at first but, as organisation progressed, demands on us increased.

     Our Corporal Catland had the appearance and manner of a dedicated peacetime soldier; the peak of the cap perseveringly bent downwards and moulded till the eyes were only just visible, the trimmed moustache, the unsmiling face, the smart military gait at all times, on or off duty. We had to find out what brought him among us; no suggestion of the Boy Scout about him. So where had he learnt his signalling? Answer: as a GPO* telegraphist among other things. But the Guardsman-like bearing? From the Boys Brigade** the very antithesis of Baden Powell’s lot. None of us could even begin to look like Corporal Glossyboots, so no warm co-operation twixt us and him ever. Above him was Sergeant Cullen, also, it transpired, a GPO man, but from a higher stratum; he usually remained aloof, relaxed occasionally, and proved himself a damn good teacher.’

* General Post Office: founded 1660 to run the mail nationally, but in the late 19th/early 20th centuries it also took charge of telegraph, telephones and radio.

** Boys’ Brigade: an international and interdenominational Christian youth organisation, founded 1883, it emphasised military discipline and physical exercise plus religion – Baden-Powell actually served as its Vice-President in 1903, then broke away to found the Scouts after his 1907 Brownsea Island experiment.

All the best – FSS

Next week: Meet the Signallers – especially little ladies’ man Peter Miter, the super-patriot with the mighty organ

Sam, you’re in the Army now, but… “Once a Boy Scout, always a Boy Scout”

Dear all

A hundred years ago… the British, French, Belgian and German Armies hammered each other on the Western Front while their new-fangled entrenchment tactics bogged them down, the British Indian Army set off for Mesopotamia, the Canadian Expeditionary Force sailed for England, the Serbs began their losing battle for Belgrade against German and Austro-Hungarian Armies — and in Edmonton, north London, my father Sam, 16, and older brother Ted, 18, had to face the Vicar, and tell him they had volunteered, joined the Army, and could no longer attend choir practice nor Boy Scout training sessions.

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

The Reverend Mr Frusher (an alias my father gave him in the book) influenced the brothers’ youthful development more than any other man — certainly more than their quiet, mild, rather defeated father did. From talking to my father a lot through my own teens (in the ’60s) and reading his Memoir’s extensive account of his childhood, my feeling is that he had a rather hangdog time of it because of sheer grinding poverty — until, encouraged by Mr Frusher, he started joining… the Scouts, the choir, a church discussion group, music lessons — all organised by the vicar (NB, new readers, in the first part of the book my father wrote in the third person and called himself “Tommy Norcliffe”):

“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 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 [a small church established literally as a mission to London’s poor]— was a mile and a half further away from Tommy’s house.

    … 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.”

For the vicar’s music classes, the children could only afford flageolets — “big brother of the tin whistle,” says Sam (who kept it about his person until Gallipoli, as you may read). However, a year or two on, Sam’s mother took in an old, out-of-tune piano for the parlour and Sam/Tommy determined he would tune it. A friend made him a key to fit the screw at the top of each string, Mr Frusher leant him an A tuning fork, and he set to work, day after day.

    When he was done, Mr Frusher came round and played the thing “with a degree of pain”, but so appreciated the boy’s efforts he offered him free piano lessons which proved so effective that within weeks Sam/Tommy debuted in front of his classmates playing “a popular piece of the day called Blake’s March… and Tommy’s performance became a regular feature of Friday afternoons for several weeks in succession.”

    Well, this long story needs concluding, but the vicar not only inspired Sam/Tommy’s lifelong and practical love of music — see the story of the “rifle-guitar” on the Western Front — but in those discussion groups he also educated the boys about sex and relationships, a topic neglected by schools then and for most of the century to come. His approach you might call chivalric-puritan. No sex before marriage, a gentlemanly refusal to exploit the consequences of “girls’ natural child-bearing urges”, self-denial of the joys of masturbation and, even in sleep, avoidance of “night losses” by tying a cotton reel round your waist so that if you rolled on to your back you would wake up before anything messy occurred.

    All this had a huge influence on Sam/Tommy’s conduct throughout the war, as you may read. Anyway, in sum, that’s why it was such a big deal when the lad realised that he would soon be saying goodbye to Mr Frusher and everything the vicar’s energy, dedication and moral deliberation had brought to his young life:

“… in all the excitement, [Tommy] 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.

    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 would have a few words with the governor, then walk out, severing the association of several years just like that.

    ‘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.

    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.

    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… 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…

    The meeting over, Mr Frusher called his seniors together, and told them of the brothers’ enlistment… 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.

    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.”

All the best — FSS

Next week: Military discipline takes hold

FootSoldierSam as a pre-WW1 Boy Scout

Out now! Nobody Of Any Importance: A Foot Soldier's Memoir Of WW1

Dear all

A hundred years ago today, war declarations were going off like gun-shots all over Europe and young men were wondering what might befall them - imagining glory, fearing pain and horror, trying to decide what they might do if… Certainly never foreseeing anything to remotely match the forthcoming reality.

Something people wonder about when considering the period before the war is the role and effect of various working-class boys' organisations in preparing the way for the remarkable rush of volunteerism that followed. My father, FootSoldierSam, was a keen Boy Scout and his full account of his childhood (Part 1 of 9 in his memoir) has a lot to say about the movement founded by ex-Boer War soldier Baden Powell in 1908. So:

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
Remembering that in this early phase of the book, he wrote about himself in the third person as "Tommy", this is what got his attention and drew him into joining the Scouts, in Edmonton, north London, some time in 1910: "At about this time, 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."

Thus entranced, he soon persuaded his parents - who were just emerging from the depths of poverty which had assailed the family during my father's childhood - to let him join. After growing up wearing rather odd homemade clothes, he loved the smartness of the uniform and soon the Scouts became part of the fabric of his life, particularly because the Scoutmaster, Mr Frusher, was also  the vicar who both ran the church choir and gave piano lessons (free to poor boys) which Tommy/Sam took up too. But above all he loved Scouting. And it gave him a whole new range of skills.

"Life had been hard and grim. Now very pleasant pastimes came to occupy many is 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… 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…

"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, believed that an older boy who elected to rebel against accepted rules of conduct would contaminate younger members and must be got rid of…  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…"

Later, my father recalls, he came to see the connection – more or less coincidental, he always felt – between these activities and the imminence of war: "Meanwhile, August of 1914 was not far off and a holiday with his Scout Troop an often anticipated treat to come.

"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[1] 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.

"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…

"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.

"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.

"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."

And a hundred years ago next week, for the British, what had long seemed inevitable became official: war.