Sam and pal Peter’s final onslaught on the Turks – through the medium of song; then, after month of lousy food, Sam’s summoned to Brigade HQ and finds himself luxuriating on steak and onions!

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Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… apart from a big artillery exchange along the Western Front on November 30 (to no particular purpose it seems), lower levels of attrition took over for the winter. Likewise on the Eastern, although in Latvia the Russian Army had further success at Illuskt (November 29), but they were “repulsed” by the Germans at Dvinsk and Lake Babit (December 5).

    Further south, two costly conflicts ceased. The 4th Battle Of The Isonzo ended inconclusively (December 2), exhausted by the severity of both casualties and the weather after a climactic battle at Tolmin (now in Slovenia) – since November 10 Italian casualties had totalled 49,500, Austro-Hungarian 32,100. And the relentless invasion of Serbia by German, Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian forces concluded (December 4) with the Serbian Army driven out through Albania, the survivors shipped across to Corfu (they suffered 30,000 casualties, their foes’ being described as “light”).

    Accordingly, the French Army supporting the Serbs pulled back into Greek Salonika (December 2) where fresh British troops joined them (December 4).

    Meanwhile, in Gallipoli, at Suvla Bay, the remnants of the 2/1st City Of London Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, including my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London (still under-age at 17), gradually recovered from their sufferings in the November blizzard…

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week, my father was still in that Suvla hilltop Signalling post/hole, working his two-man, 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week rotation of duty and sleep. In the wake of the Gallipoli blizzard/floods, with no water available from HQ, he revealed the blasé bravado which, in the battlefield, can overcome the cautious inhibitions of the most circumspect character – which he had generally been through childhood and early teens – when he dodged sniper bullets to fetch buckets of snow from a neighbouring trench.

    Then he experienced the horror of realising he had, inadvertently, led a lad even younger than himself to his death; the boy dashed for water without emulating Sam’s stop-start tricks and took an almost certainly fatal shot through a lung.

    Still, battlefield realities and comradeship did not encourage dwelling or brooding, especially in the company of his old Malta-days friend Peter Nieter (who’d replaced poor, frostbitten Harry Green):

‘Returning confidence due to better feeding, certainty that the campaign was fizzling out, and the buoyant nature of my newly arrived mate, resulted in moments I could only describe as merry.

     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 had been feeling that the small number of people of my Battalion who still remained after the blizzard* must have forgotten my existence, but a week or so after Nieter’s arrival I had pleasant proof that this was not so. A replacement for me suddenly appeared at our hole on the hilltop and I received instructions to join the Signals Section at 88th Brigade Headquarters until further orders.

     Sorry to leave Nieter, but flattered and excited, I made my way to the ravine which sheltered HQ. There, they had built small but comfortable offices for administration and communication. Low, wooden buildings with earth-covered roofs on which the local weeds and grasses grew. Hopes that I would live in one of them quickly died the death when I was conducted to a nearby hole covered by a groundsheet roof, and told I could set up house there.

     Thankfully, it was dry, but it was sited beside the junction of two footpaths, and I quickly discovered that the position had been honoured by an enemy sniper. He had one of those tripod-rifles fixed on the point where the paths met; at intervals, a bullet smacked into the ground about a foot from one end of my hole**. As the new boy, the privilege of avoiding sudden death by a sniper’s bullet automatically became mine. But the pleasure of working in a warm, covered structure, properly seated, with cooked food and big helpings of hot tea, more than compensated for the sniper targeting my sleeping quarters.

     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.

     Meanwhile, I felt the benefit of this luxury, my spirits rose again, I smiled, even laughed occasionally. Fully occupied on duty, when not working I hung about in one or other of the small HQ buildings as long as possible. Then, in my hole, I could sometimes remove my tunic, shirt and vest and destroy all the body lice I could find, replace these garments then take off my trousers. With candle ends scrounged from the office, I could burn off the filthy things infesting the inside seams of my trousers, crush the devils in my long pants and have a couple of days free of the continual biting.’

Given a few days of “luxury” in his new hole, my father heard more and more stories of what had befallen the rest of the Battalion, down at beach level, during the blizzard:

‘Well into December, the weather generally remained pleasant. That awful blizzard now seemed like a sad dream although I had my funny-feeling feet and brown toenails to remind me – as did the stories recounted by survivors who had fared much worse than I.

     A sight I’d missed in my rather isolated position on the machine-gun hill was large numbers of men in various stages of illness, many with layers of socks and rags over their frost-bitten feet, heading hopefully for the beach. How could such a suffering multitude be dealt with properly?

     The beach people must also have been rained on, then snowed on, then frozen and tortured by that Siberian blast if they dared to venture into the open. Then the sorry throng, with their frostbitten feet and hands, some already gangrenous, all of them short of food, descended on them and they just had to cope. What a commandeering of lighters and small steamboats there must have been. I, with my two biscuits and a handful of tea***, had seen almost nothing of these larger events.

     Suddenly, my brief, beautiful life at HQ ended with an order to rejoin Nieter on the hill; his helper – my substitute – had gone down with a high temperature and no one else could be found to replace him. Before I left the kindly men at 88th Brigade Signals, they gave me bread, some cold meat, bacon and a useful bag of tea.

     This eased my return to the more Spartan existence up above and ensured a warm welcome from my sturdy Swiss Cockney. I found anyway that he had not fared too badly, having been authorised to draw rations from the resourceful regulars of the 2nd Battalion Essex Regiment.

     I also took back to Nieter a rumour, whispered to me as I left Brigade HQ, suggesting that our days on that foreign shore were numbered. The promise of release from our deprivation and danger, so useless, so purposeless, cheered us up considerably.

     Messages of instruction to various Companies around us passed through our hands and these confirmed our opinion that the end of the failed campaign drew near. Groups of men quietly withdrew, and those remaining had instructions to appear busy and show themselves more – but with reasonable care – to enemy observers. I heard that members of the Engineers Corps were working in the forward trenches, fixing fuses connected to detonators along the parapets.

     The Turks still lobbed over the occasional shell, their lazy snipers with their apparently fixed rifles still squeezed their triggers, perhaps from force of habit, but the earlier war-like spirit had departed.’

* One list of casualties for the original 1000-strong Battalion at the end of November shows 22 killed, 57 wounded, 445 sick (mainly dysentery, jaundice and frostbite). My father several times wrote that by the time they finally evacuated from Gallipoli they were down to 200 men or fewer.

** For a fuller explanation of the Turkish tripod snipers methods see Blog 66 11/10/15.

*** See Blog 71 15/11/15 for the story of how he’d had to beg these provisions “to feed two men for an indefinite period”.

All the best – FSS

Next week: A General visits Sam’s “hole”! And bellows at him for standing to attention! But to their great relief the Battalion is told to get ready for evacuation – in time for Christmas...

Gallipoli: Sam shows his Battalion he’s not dead yet … and finds that while he was in hospital, they’ve nicked his water purifiers! Then they send him to a hilltop signalling post…

For details of how to buy Sam’s full Memoir in paperback or e-book & new excerpted Gallipoli episode mini-e-book & reader reviews & info re upcoming readings from Sam's Memoir by his son Phil see right-hand column

All proceeds to British Red Cross

For AUDIO excerpts click Here  Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook Here

Dear all

A hundred years ago… this week, the horrible attrition of trench warfare continued with the French Army’s fizzling Loos-Artoise Offensive and withering 2nd Battle Of Champagne. And – strange detail, probably not widely known – on October 31 the British Army introduced steel helmets, but only on the Western Front (they never reached Gallipoli, or certainly not Suvla Bay where my father’s Royal Fusiliers were fighting).

    In the east, the Russian Army’s general retreat across (modern-day) Latvia, Ukraine and Belarus proceeded, but still slowed and sometimes interrupted by relentless resistance to the Germans in battles at Illukst, Uxkull and Chartorysk (all October 25), the Styr (27) and Dvina (28) rivers and Tarnopol, Galicia (30).

    Further south, the Bulgarian and German conquest of Serbia went ahead in orderly fashion with barely a setback, although a substantial French force landed in Salonika/Thessaloniki with some British and Italian support to further defend Greece against Bulgarian attack (the French-v-Bulgar Battle Of Krivolak, Macedonia, begun on October 17, still raged).

    The wider “world” aspect of the war saw more action in German colony Cameroons, where the French took Sende and a third British onslaught on the German’s northern fort at Mora petered out (October 30-November 4).

    Meanwhile, in Gallipoli, unannounced to the common soldiery, General Sir Charles Munro took command of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force 12 days after his appointment to replace Sir Ian Hamilton (much reviled by FootSoldierSam in Blog 66, October 11)… and, turning to those Royal Fusiliers at Suvla Bay, having landed on September 25, the thousand men of the 2/1st City Of London Battalion, including my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London (still underage at 17) and a couple of his pals, sort of settled into their first weeks on the battlefield… wounds and deaths from bullet and shell, the debilitating grind of poor food and disease, the constant endeavour to keep fear in check…

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week, while sleeping in his trench at Suvla Bay, my father got a centipede bite between his fingers and it turned so septic his arm swelled grotesquely to the shoulder and his left hand “looked like a frog”. After rejecting the idiot Battalion MO’s offer of No. 9 laxative pills, delirious, he tottered to a nearby tented RAMC field hospital on a hilltop. There he got the treatment he needed – which involved a gruesome process of lancing his hand and squeezing out bowlfuls of pus. After a few days, the doctor there cleared him to return to his Battalion.

    Sam writes:

‘As I walked down the hill, the awkwardness of my present position began to worry me. I had the vest, pants, socks, boots, and tunic trousers I was wearing when I left my post to seek medical help. Nothing else. No rifle. No pack… and it had contained all my personal belongings including a towel and soap, an unwashed set of underwear and socks, and my two bottles of water-purifying tablets.

     I had wandered off a fortnight earlier, suffering so badly from the poison that I hardly knew or cared what I was doing or where I was going. I had departed without authority to do so; that might be adjudged desertion from my unit – on active service, one of the most serious crimes a soldier could commit.

     I was convinced I had at least told my mates I was going to see the Medical Officer and perhaps one of them had told our Sergeant or an officer. Would old Number 9, our long, miserable streak of an MO, recollect my appealing for his help or was his memory as bad as his knowledge of medical matters?

     I hurried across the open country between the little Field Hospital and the beginning of the trench system without stopping a bullet or anything equally lethal. When I slipped down into a communication trench leading towards the front line, I soon encountered a chap I knew and liked, named Whiting. He gave me all the news as he’d heard it. The part of it concerning myself proved both reassuring and disappointing.

     The pals I’d left behind had more awareness of my trouble than I’d suspected. They had given the appropriate NCO lurid details of my condition – the throbbing, twice-its-normal-size hand and arm – and he formed the opinion that, even if I did not die, I would be put aboard a hospital ship and would not return to my unit. It happened that, because of a lack of senior NCOs, this Sergeant suddenly found himself in charge of supplies for our Company. So he decided that my tablets should he distributed among our chaps in the front line to help keep them free of the dysentery that was knocking out so many men.

     This Sergeant’s surprise at my reappearance matched his dismay when I demanded those precious water purifiers. Nevertheless, he ordered the return of all those not used and, eventually, I recovered a fair quantity of them.’

With his ongoing existence demonstrated and the lifeline of those water purifiers (a gift posted to him by his parents) restored to their rightful owner, he expected to resume previous routines with his Battalion comrades in the shallow and flaky front-line trenches. Instead, a surprise change of location ensued:

‘I didn’t actually rejoin my Company, because a request had come through from Brigade Headquarters for a Signaller to be sent to a hill with a commanding view of Turkish positions. There, to provide some protection for our men in forward positions, they had decided to bring together all the machine gunners from the four Battalions constituting the 88^th Brigade. This Brigade, part of the famous 29^th Division, was composed of regulars, the good old soldiers who made a career of serving their country in peacetime as well as in war. I felt proud to be allowed to join them, for I had seen how much better their organisation was than ours.

     I found my way to the machine gunners on the hill. Below us, in places, I could see the trenches of our forward positions; quite a network had been constructed by now and I ruefully admitted to myself that the steam had gone out of the whole operation, the purpose bogged down in holes and trenches.

     The machine gunners could give useful fire cover to our chaps down there should they be attacked. But why should the Turk bother to attack? He must have concluded by now that the British had failed in their original objective and that, if he came forward to drive us into the sea, he would suffer many casualties and gain only a useless strip of land. Leaving us where we were to face a winter in terrible conditions was the better strategy; we would have the awful burden of trying to get supplies ashore in bad weather to troops who had, in many cases, fallen victim to sickness and depression. Meanwhile, the Turks could withdraw some of their men to reinforce their other fronts.

     As a Lance Corporal, with one man to assist me, my job was to maintain communications with 88^th Brigade Headquarters. Clearly, that meant one man resting, one on duty. I talked over the possibilities with my helper, and we decided to try doing four hours on and four off, night and day. We occupied a square hole, about six feet each way, with no roof. A short trench joined it to the main trench along the top of the hill. This was to be my home. Although on a hilltop, these trenches had been dug into the same soft, layered rock as those first holes we’d worked so hard to excavate down near the beach, so their unstable walls constantly flaked away.

     My first Signaller mate there* was a pleasant chap, quite a philosopher in his way, probably my senior by four or five years. He 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. A good worker too, meticulous in his time-keeping, he woke quickly during the night when the luminous dial on my watch told me four hours had passed and I nudged him to take over.

     At that point, you placed the headphones and microphone in the other man’s hands, briefly switched on the torch to show him that the combined phone/Morse signal instrument with its buzzer key, earth pin and single landline, and the message pad and pencil were all handy. Then you swapped positions in the hole.

     On duty or resting, at night you arranged your thick, rubberised groundsheet so that you rested on half of it and pulled the other half over your legs for protection from the cold or rain. When writing down any messages coming in, the groundsheet also came in handy to screen the heavy-duty torch beam.

     But it was all very difficult and uncomfortable.

     Even though the autumn weather in that little strip of Turkey remained dry – pleasant, really – we learned that four hours on, four off, meant we never had a satisfactory sleep. So we experimented with two on, two off, eight on, eight off, every arithmetical combination we could think of to cover the 24 hours. Nothing really worked.

     When you took over after whatever interval, your mate, released from that crampy corner of the hole we lived and worked in, should have felt free for some hours of beautiful sleep – but was he? On duty, you must want to go to the bog some time, so your mate had to wake up and take over. During the day, you would need nourishment, so your mate had to procure it, and very often cook it on our small meths heaters. Actually, we catnapped day and night and just made the best of a terrible existence.

     The resulting fatigue, along with poor diet, was reducing us to shadows of ourselves.’

* Called Bill Jackson, of whom more next week…

All the best – FSS

Next week: Sam does Bill Jackson a kindness – he ends his war ­– but gets glum Harry Green as his new hole-mate… still, the Essex machine gunners scrounge a beef feast!