Sam in the Gallipoli blizzard’s aftermath; through awful misfortune, his sniper-dodging tricks lead to tragedy when an even younger boy tries to copy him…

For details of how to buy Sam’s full Memoir in paperback or e-book & new excerpted Gallipoli episode mini-e-book & reader reviews

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… maybe the kind of phase that originated that not irony-free phrase “all quiet on the Western Front”. The summaries note only a German Army attack north of Artois repulsed (November 27) – not to say that men weren’t dying daily on both sides. In the East, the Russian Army continued its winter turnaround with a series of victories over the German at Tzaremunde (Latvia, 23), Yanopol (Ukraine, 24) and Pinsk (Belarus, 28). They succeeded much further south too, defeating Turkish and Kurdish forces at Karaj and Yengi Iman in Persia (26).

    The 4th Battle Of The Isonzo between Italy and Austria continued, but the Italian Army took Rovereto (in Trentino, 23) from Austria – which promptly called for German assistance.

    But the greatest events took place in less-remembered parts of the conflict.

    On November 25, the Serbian Army, assailed by a combination of Bulgarian, German and Austro-Hungarian Regiments since October 7, finally cracked and fled in full retreat through Albania, sustaining terrible casualties because of the weather more than the fighting – the Siberian blizzard that swept Gallipoli afflicted the Balkans too.

    And in Mesopotamia (Iraq), after a series of British Indian Army victories over the Ottoman along the Tigris, a sudden reversal saw the previously disregarded Colonel Nureddin lead his men to hold back a fresh attack at Ctesiphon, 16 miles south-east of Baghdad and then chase their foes 100 miles back to Kut.

    Meanwhile, in Gallipoli, at Suvla Bay, 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), had to concentrate above all on dealing with the weather… as did the Turks, no doubt. For a time, only snipers persisted in “fighting”…

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week, in his Memoir my father wrote about his own experience of the great Gallipoli blizzard of late November, 1915 (in the rhythm of the Memoir I had to start covering it a week early); venturing down from his two-man 24-hour hilltop Signals post to seek food from Battalion HQ when he and gloomy colleague Harry Green “looked like dying quite soon”; discovering his 2/1st comrades huddled together in the open –forced out of their trenches by floods of melted snow and.

    Reluctantly accepting the Quartermaster’s best offer of two biscuits and a handful of tea to last him and Green “for an indefinite period”, he returned to the hilltop and found Harry had foolishly taken his boots off and was “a right mess” – he soon fell into delirium. Sam phoned Brigade HQ for a replacement, reused the tea repeatedly (dodging snipers to fetch melted snow from a nearby disused trench), and handled Signalling duties solo for the next 48 hours until stretcher-bearers and a replacement reached them:

‘My feet felt uncomfortable, but I didn’t remove my boots then, nor for a week or more afterwards. Later, back in Egypt, my already brown toenails turned gradually darker and at intervals fell out, but sound new ones grew in their place.

     A gradual thaw set in and, as moving around became easier, I learnt more of the tragedy the smaller number of us now remaining in that benighted place had survived. Many men had drowned in flooded trenches from which they could not escape quickly enough or had fallen into when they took a step in the wrong direction in the dark. Others died of the cold – a few had laid hands on jars of rum sent up for distribution as tots for all, then drunk themselves insensible and perished in the freezing winds.*’

Even so, up on the hill, life reverted to “normal” – except for one terrible incident:

‘The sun shone briefly most days, growing warmth dried out our heavy coats, and life became far more bearable to me. Especially because my new companion on the hill turned out to be that shortish man of Swiss origin I have previously described**, he who was more patriotic than most British-born soldiers – and after all our tribulations, he still felt the same about his dad’s adopted country. He even made excuses for the failed author/poet who had, by some accident, become the Commander-in-Chief of that unfortunate Army*** and composed lyrical dispatches for home consumption in his comfortable cabin way out at sea.

     After that wasteful Ramadan**** bombardment I had no further fears that the enemy would ever launch a big attack on us, and now I felt convinced that our depleted force would never have a go at him… so all one had to do was be careful to stay alive, until someone told us to get the hell out of the wretched place.

     Attached once more to the regular Essex***** boys for rations, we fared well. And I had my disused trench for water – it remained several feet deep for some time. However, fetching it became risky because a sniper had spotted my movements as I darted hither and thither to fox his aim.

     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…

     So you can imagine my sorrow when two Essex men laid a boy on a firing step just opposite my hole, pointed to a wound in his chest, and told me the lad had attempted to copy my water-getting dash in broad daylight. Probably he didn’t bother about foxing the sniper either. He belonged to the Hampshire Regiment, but an Essex man had watched his progress, seen him wounded, and with a pal had risked death to drag him in.

     I phoned Brigade HQ for stretcher-bearers, but doubted if the lad would live – the bullet had pierced a lung. We fixed his field dressing over the entry wound, but I dared not move him to search for the exit, which may well have been a gaping hole. As I tried to keep him warm and give him support such as I could in response to those frightened eyes, I felt quite old in spite of my mere 17 years. He – the first wounded man I’d had to deal with – was even younger than I.

     The stretcher-bearers were gentle with him; I knew only too well they would have to climb out of trenches in several places where a stretcher could not be accommodated; in full view of the Turk, they would have to rely on his clemency.

     Thereafter, I stayed away from the watery trench and made do with such water as the machine gunners could spare for me.’

* Strong For Service, H Montgomery Hyde’s biography of the 2/1st’s then commanding officer Major Harry Nathan (later a lord and an Attlee Government Minister) says 280 men “drowned” in the mud produced by thawing snow and rain at Gallipoli.

** Peter Nieter from my father’s trainee Signallers group on Malta (see blog 45, 17-05-15) – except that, first time round, he called him “Miter”; given my father’s fondness for aliases, I don’t know whether either version of the name is “real”.

*** He means General Sir Ian Hamilton.

**** HQ informed British troops that Ramadan triggered this bombardment and my father had no reason to know otherwise, but it was entirely the wrong time of year, as noted in blog 70, 8-11-15.

***** The Essex Regiment machine-gun team they shared the hilltop with.

All the best – FSS

Next week: Sam and Peter’s final onslaught on the Turks – through the medium of song; Sam, suddenly summoned to Divisional HQ, finds himself luxuriating on steak and onions for a few days! And the hilltop Signalling duo get a surprise, eccentric visit from General Beauvoir De Lisle himself!

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!