Dear all
A hundred years ago this month… like tens of
thousands of young British men, my father Sam Sutcliffe, 16, a working lad from
Edmonton, north London, had volunteered to join the Army and was just starting
to learn the basics of soldiering. At the same time, joining up involved a whole
lot of goodbye to all that — “all that” being the ordinary life of “nobody of
any importance” as Sam described himself in the opening paragraph of his World
War 1 Memoir.
Meanwhile,
the war both spread and intensified. Doing modest research as my late father’s
editor, I keep coming across events I knew nothing of via history at school or
media documentaries or “folk memory”.
For example,
I’d had the impression that the German Army completely overran “little Belgium”
in the first few weeks, encountering hardly any resistance. Not true at all.
Tomorrow is the centenary of one key battle starting: the Siege of Antwerp —
the Belgian Army defending their second city, with French and British support. They
surrendered on October 10 (63,000 Belgians captured and/or interned, 2,300
Brits captured), but fell back to the River Yser where they held the line and
never took another backward step, ensuring that the western part of Belgium
remained unoccupied until 1918, when it became the basis for their push to
recover their country.
Well, as
ever, that’s the big picture. This is how one London boy muddled on through the
nuts and bolts of “doing his bit”…
FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
Sam, his older brother Ted, and their pals Len and
Harold all had jobs in the Liverpool Street station area - they travelled in
every morning by train from Edmonton Green. But when they all decided to join
up they just didn’t turn in to work for the first couple of days and they knew
they had to tell their employers what they were up to. A personal appearance
was the only way; poor-to-modest homes like theirs didn’t have telephones in those
days and the iconic British red public phone boxes didn’t come to the streets
of London until 1920.
Worrying constantly
that his signed-and-attested lie about being 19 could be exposed at any moment,
Sam decided he had to pay his duty call on Lake & Currie, the mining
company for whom he’d worked as a junior office boy since soon after leaving
school at 14. This is how it went — noting for newcomers that Sam, in this
first part of his Memoir, wrote in the third person and called himself “Tommy”:
“Having
parted with his brother by Garlick Hill in Queen Victoria Street, Tommy
strolled into Cannon Street. Already this familiar area seemed to have finished
with him. From belonging there — he really had come to like the old City — he
now felt rejected. Not working there, he had no business to be there.
He turned off by the pub on the corner and
walked downhill, towards the river, glancing left and right at the familiar
brass nameplates of the firms occupying the old buildings. And so into the
small square and the building where he had so recently worked. ‘Had worked’,
past tense already. Up the old stairs and into the office, carried along
speedily by excitement born of fear about what might happen and a desire to
face it all and have done with it. Just a few words from the Company Secretary
to the Battalion commander about Tommy’s true age and he’d be in sore trouble…
‘Ah, there you are. Don’t tell me — you’ve
got another job. Well, so have I. Do you remember I told you about the War
Office work I’d been booked for if war was declared. Well, I start on that next
Monday. What’s your news?’ So spake the Sergeant [Army veteran turned
Commissionaire/greeter in charge of reception and Tommy/Sam’s direct boss],
full of his coming change of work, but pausing just long enough for Tommy to
tell of his enlistment in the Army. ‘What as? Drummer boy or something?’ ‘No,
ordinary Private.’ ‘But…’
Here Tommy interrupted to tell of his sudden
increase in years and to beg the Sergeant not to speak of this to others in the
firm. Whatever his view of such a deception in ordinary times, the Sergeant
entirely reassured him now, perhaps because he simply had no interest in
anything but his own preparations for leaving.
‘Go and see [Company Secretary i.e. top
executive] F.C. Bull,’ he said. ‘Tell him what you’re up to. I’m sure he won’t
mind. Big changes are coming here. Most of us will be shoving off before the
year is out. War breaks up most peacetime arrangements.’
So, along to the Secretary’s office. The
customary tap on the door and the call to come in. The bustling little
businessman, always signing something, phoning somebody, or hurrying from one
office to another, sat quietly and listened to the boy’s story. He said
something like, ‘Well, I hope you’ve done the right thing. Strange times these.
Who knows what we’ll be doing in a month or a year hence? If the war ends soon,
all will be well. If not, this business for one will be finished. I wish you
all the luck in the world.’
He gave Tommy a gold half-sovereign. A
little overcome, Tommy had difficulty thanking him, but when that surprisingly
friendly man said, ‘Now you must come along and tell our Scottish director [Currie]
about this,’ he felt scared.
That man was huge and powerful. ‘He will
make me look silly,’ thought Tommy. He was very relieved when the big man
listened gravely to the Secretary’s account of Tommy’s enlistment. The
boisterousness which Tommy feared did break through briefly as the six foot odd
of tough, engineer manhood sprang from his chair, raised a mighty hand and
brought it down on Tommy’s back in hearty congratulation.
Then, when FCB shook his hand, the Secretary
insisted that he should visit the office again before leaving London.
Previously, Tommy had felt that few at Lake & Currie knew of his existence,
yet now he encountered this great kindness from the top. Saying his goodbyes to
the old Sergeant and others, he began to feel regretful that this part of his
young life was over. As he walked up the hill again towards the station, the
smells drifting up from warehouses and factories along the Thames below seemed
almost sweet, homely — qualities they had lacked when working among them was
compulsory.
When he got home, he handed his mother the
gold coin, worth 10 shillings. Very pleasantly surprised by this, she returned
him three shillings for fares and so on. ‘There’ll be more money soon I
understand,’ Tommy told her. She looked happier than she had done for many a
day.”
Sam/Tommy
had his droll way of observing his mother’s interest in money when her son was
about to go to war…
That evening, older brother Ted reported
rather different reactions to news of his departure – both angrier and more
positive – at the paper company where he worked:
“Ted’s
employer thought he had acted unreasonably, without warning or consultation.
However, he valued Ted’s services and committed to paper a letter stating that
he would re-employ him when released by the Army authorities. To this
generosity he added the gift of several pounds, expressing his personal view
that the war would be over by Christmas or soon afterwards…
All this made Tommy reflect again on the
differences in their situations. Clever, persevering and full of
self-confidence, Ted had a guaranteed future should he survive the war. Tommy
had only the near certainty, as related by F.C. Bull, that his employer’s
business would soon disintegrate because of the war.”
All the best — FSS
Next week: Sam/Tommy says goodbye to his
Scoutmaster-choirmaster-piano teacher — the mentor who shaped his youthful
character.
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