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Dear all
A hundred years ago… while the
Russian Army lost ground to the Germans (July 24, Rozan and Pultusk, Poland)
and the Austro-Hungarians (19, Krasnik, Galicia, 21, the left bank of the
Vistula, Poland), among many to and fro actions on the Western Front one of the
worst conflagrations began at Le Linge (July 20-October 15, in the Vosges west
of Colmar) where 17,000 French and German soldiers were to die, with gas and
flamethrowers frequently deployed.
In
Mesopotamia the British took Nasriya from the Turks and in German colony
Cameroon the French occupied Lomie (both on the 25th). In Gallipoli, attrition
continued, with no further major actions until August – but on the 19th the
House Of Commons learned that between the April 25 landings and June 30 British
forces had suffered 42,434 casualties.
Meanwhile...
the thousand men of the 2/1st City Of London
Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, training interminably, it seemed, in Malta, had
moved to a tented camp in a paradise of a place, Ghajn Tuffieha, on the north-west coast.
Mostly London poor boys – including my father, Private Sam Sutcliffe, his
older brother Ted (both underage volunteers, still 16 and 18 respectively), and
their pals from Edmonton – the Battalion relished this unexpected tourist side
of the war experience… while waiting for reality to bite. Given the casualties
they’d seen shipped in, and subsequent funerals they’d observed at their
previous encampment beside Pembroke Cemetery, they felt fairly sure reality
would be called Gallipoli…
FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
Last week, parties of four to six Signallers –
Fusiliers mixed with new arrivals from the Maori Pioneer Battalion – had begin
a series of one- or two-week postings to defence points around the island. So we
left Sam on top of a 17th-century Knights Of Malta lookout tower at Salina Bay,
across from Ghajn Tuffieha on the north-east coast, paying close attention to
the activities of a local farmer’s daughter on a nearby plantation.
But
come nightfall, the job got serious and rather exciting, Sam felt. Though also
farcical as it turned out…
‘We were told of German submarines being refuelled somewhere
in that area of the Mediterranean and communicating with someone ashore on
Malta. So we had to spot all signals at sea or on land, read them if possible,
and alert the troops waiting to take any necessary action.
We had a phone
line to a section of our men now camped back in the bay and, when I saw a
flashing light coming from a place not far from their small camp, I quickly got
in touch with the Sergeant in charge. Watching from my tower at the tip of a seaward
finger of land, I concluded that the recipient of the signals must have been
offshore beyond me. My mate wrote down the letters as I called them out, but
the message, if such it was, had been encoded.
The military
operation to deal with the matter had its funny side. Sergeant Watson and his
merry men hurried to the position I had indicated on the phone. They spotted a
flashing at the top of a high stone wall by the road. A born leader and a man
of action, the Sergeant sprang and heaved himself upwards — as I learned later
for, having sent the message alerting him, I wished to participate in any
excitement which might follow, so I asked a pal to take over the lookout job on
top of the tower and commenced the fairly short walk from the tip of the headland
back to the bay.
In case the
suspected collaborator with the enemy had helpers in the vicinity, I decided
against taking a well-used track which ran along the high ground and, instead,
made a rather tortuous progress among rocks low down by the sea. I soon
realised the dark, moonless night was quite unsuitable for this silly choice of
a route. I pressed on, but knew for certain I could not join the Sergeant’s
party in time to help them. And when someone fairly close by let fly with a gun
of some sort I was shaken to the very marrow. It had been a lark of sorts up to
that point, but that terrific bang spoilt everything. The picture I’d had of
the mettlesome young soldier voluntarily facing danger to help his comrades was
phoney; the scared boy crouching low among rocks, scarcely daring to breathe in
case he was spotted, was real.
I waited some
considerable time before moving, and then used great care to avoid making any
noise. So, when I reached the coast road and approached the place where I
guessed the light had been flashed, I found no one. The scary silence made me
hurry to Sergeant Watson’s small camp, where my story of being fired on was
received with some scepticism.
There was no glory
for anybody to be had out of the entire incident. Certainly, somebody had been
on the wall, but after Sergeant Watson sprang upwards and straddled the top of
it, apart from hearing the noise of a hasty departure he made no contact with the
possible enemy. The Sergeant acted quickly, though. He jumped down on the far
side – and his yell of pain brought others to the wall top, intent on saving
his life if possible. But “Stay up there!” was his whispered command so they
waited. They could hear him quietly moaning and cursing until he told them to
move along and climb down at a point two or three yards away, whence he led his
men on a search of the area. Still they caught no spies.
However, the
Sergeant was sorely wounded. Sorely being the appropriate word since his brave
jump had brought his backside down on the hairy spikes of a huge cactus and he
needed careful search and extraction treatment before relief from pain enabled
him to write his report.
On my return to
the lookout tower, my friend who had so kindly taken on my job up top
immediately asked about a shot he’d heard soon after my departure. I told him
how close to me the explosion had been and how ear-shattering. We guessed that,
if it had no connection with the flashing light, then the owner of one of the
small plantations in the vicinity must have mistaken me for a thief in the
night.’
All
the best –
FSS
Next week: Sam gets promotion – the worst promotion of all;
nobody loves a Lance Jack!
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