For details of how to buy Sam’s full Memoir in paperback or e-book & new excerpted Gallipoli episode mini-e-book & reader reviews see eight-hand column – all proceeds to British Red Cross
Dear all
A hundred years ago… today the Siege
Of Przemsyi, a fort in Galicia, ended when the Russian Army overwhelmed the
Austro-Hungarian garrison after 133 days (115,000 Russian casualties, 86,000
A-H dead, 110,000 wounded and/or surrendered); with the British invasion of
Gallipoli telegraphed by the aborted naval bombardment, on the 25th General
Otto Liman Von Sanders took charge of Turco-German forces in the Dardanelles
and, more significantly than he knew, appointed Mustafa Kemal (later Atatürk)
commander of the 19th Division. And, for the first time, on the 28th, A German
submarine, the U-28 sank a British
passenger ship, SS Falaba – 100 out
of 240 onboard died because they were given too little time to get the
lifeboats away. (This event had a strange sequel: in 1917 U-28 became the only
submarine ever sunk by a lorry; it surfaced to shell a cargo ship called SS Olive Branch(!), ammunition in the
hold exploded blasting a lorry on deck high into the air… and it landed on the
U-28.)
Meanwhile,
to his surprise, my father Private Sam Sutcliffe’s 2/1st
City Of London Battalion, Royal Fusiliers – 1,000 volunteers, including
16-year-old Sam’s brother Ted, 18, and their two mates from Edmonton, north
London, Len Minns and Harold Mellow – began to discover the ins and outs of
life in the Maltese sun.
FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
When
they sailed from Southampton with no word of their destination, they’d presumed
it would be a trench on the Western Front pretty damn quick – though,
admittedly, the Army would need to supply them with both rifles and a little
marksmanship training en route, something notably absent from their
preparations up to that point (square-bashing and digging they’d done in
spades, so to speak).
Well, last week Sam noted that, at last,
shortly after their arrival at St George’s Barracks on Malta, they were issued
with rifles, albeit the old “long” Lee-Enfields rather than the “new” 1907
model. And training (of a sort) in their use, did ensue – for now, mind you,
nothing that involved actually firing them. As my father wrote in his Memoir
(new readers NB, Sam was still writing in the third person and calling himself
“Tommy” at this stage):
‘… daily programmes
kept the troops active from 6.30am to around noon and from 2 to 6pm. Beyond
those fairly strict morning and afternoon work sessions, the rotaed extra
duties as orderlies and guards rarely came Tommy’s way; he never discovered
why. Perhaps perks and privileges about which he knew nothing attached to those
jobs. He was quite satisfied anyway; constant marching and stamping around the
barrack square, hoisting and lowering the heavy rifle, and learning the
peculiar style of bayonet fighting they practised hour after hour in constantly
increasing temperatures amounted to just about as much as he could manage.’
Sam’s comical account of that “peculiar style
of bayonet fighting” comes up in a later episode. But in those limited rest
periods, the Fusiliers looked around to see how they might take their leisure
during what for most of these working-class men, including my father, would
prove to be their only visit to the Mediterranean in a lifetime (indeed,
although he lived until 1987, Sam never “travelled” abroad except in World War
1). Anyway, up in their semi-desert area some miles north of Valletta, they
could see the sea from the barracks windows. Tempting, except that…
‘The Army forbade swimming in the nearby sea at that time of
year; there was a theory that some sort of organism proliferated in the water
during the early months of the year and it caused Mediterranean Fever, whatever
that was. An old wives’ tale left over from the Victorian era, many men
asserted. But orders had to be obeyed.
In any case, the
coast near the barracks was difficult to approach: large areas covered with
rocks surrounded by what looked like hardened lava, its burst bubbles creating
sharp points, painful to walk over barefoot. If the origin of those formations
was indeed volcanic, they must have survived just like that for many thousands
of years. But Tommy heard no opinions expressed as, apparently, nobody knew or
cared. Still, on good days, it was pleasant to strip off for a while and dangle
your feet in the water – although, looking down, Tommy could see rocks beneath
the surface so jagged and spiky that a wave pushing you against them might
cause injury.’
Of
course, it’s very unlikely that any of these lads, coming from various levels
of poverty in London, had ever had a holiday in the modern sense, but if any of
them thought that, for a bit, this might be it, Army grub could always bring
them back to reality…
‘Whenever the men discussed the subject, they cursed that beady-eyed
rascal so much in evidence on Tommy’s enlistment day*. 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.
“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.
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.’
* “Tommy”/Sam vividly describes this
much-loathed figure (also responsible for the disgraceful food on their 10-day
voyage from Southampton) in the chapter about signing up at RF HQ in
Bloomsbury: ‘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.’ And he got another seeing to before the Battalion boarded their ship
at Southampton – a voyage marked by more disgraceful food, you may recall: “Pale parchment sort of face, small
wicked-looking eyes… Just one expression on that horrible face — it said, “I
hate you”.’
All
the best –
FSS
Next week: “Tommy”/Sam feels comradeship
growing, yet still fears exposure for the lie he told when volunteering under
age…
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