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Dear all
A hundred years ago… this week, on
the Western Front a massive artillery duel around Arras continued day after
day; French planes bombed Saarbrucken (Sept 6), Freiburg, Lens and Saarburg
(7). Zeppelins raided the English East Coast and London (7 and 8; 27 dead).
In
the east, no sooner had Grand Duke Nicholas taken supreme command of the
Russian Army (5) than (coincidentally) they conducted a successful
counterattack at Tarnopol, Galicia (7-8) – and defeated the Turkish Army in
Armenia.
An
Allied attack (8-9) on the redoubtable German fortress at Mora, Cameroons, the
British defence of Hafiz Kor (5, Indian North-West Frontier) and Bushire, South
Persia (9), against local tribes, and fighting between the German and Belgian
Armies in German East Africa (6; now parts of Burundi, Rwanda and Tanzania)
re-emphasised the worldness of this Great War.
And
in Gallipoli, with the Allies’ August Offensive exhausted, the campaign settled
into the deadly, static attrition that characterised its concluding five
months.
Meanwhile...
Gallipoli-bound (they feared), but lately arrived in Egypt, the thousand men of
the 2/1st City Of London Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, including my father, Lance
Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe, his brother Ted (still
secretly underage at 17 and 18), and their pals from Edmonton, north London, set
up camp at Abbasieh, just outside ancient Heliopolis, and explored their first
few days in this exotic setting…
FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
Last week, after arriving in Egypt around
September 1, the first chance he got, Sam set off to see Heliopolis and the
Pyramids, although he spent most of the day in the English way, feeling
embarrassed by the attentions of an unwelcome local “guide”. Now he starts to
observe the Fusiliers’ neighbours, a dangerous band of men in the British
officers’ view, namely…
‘… a contingent of the Australian Army, the first to come
over to help with the war; fine physical types most of them, equal to the best
we had, superior to the majority of our chaps in physique, and with an
independence of spirit which made our strict military discipline look
suspiciously like oppression. An officer gave orders, but in a manner which
permitted a strong, healthy man to retain what he regarded as his self-respect.
Yet what had to be done was done, as far as I could judge.
Gambling was
forbidden to us and, officially, it may have been to them, but a mighty sight
worth seeing was the Australian Crown And Anchor school. Soon after dusk, quite
some distance from their camp, a line of little lights would commence to
twinkle. Curiosity lured me over there, spiced by the knowledge that, if our
Military Police caught me near those wicked Aussies, I’d be in real trouble. I
believe I planned to vanish into the dark desert if trouble threatened, and
make my merry way back to our camp later.
I found a long line
of improvised desks, a space of several yards between each of them. A couple of
candles on each desk illuminated the Crown And Anchor board – actually a
leatherette sheet, easily folded up and pocketed in an emergency, with the six
symbols of the game printed on it. The operator sat on a box and called out his
line of persuasion or temptation, such as “Come on, me lucky lads! The more you
put down the more you pick up. Who’ll have a bet on the old mudhook*?”… Watching
from my respectful distance, I was very impressed, at times amazed, at the
quantity of money which changed hands.
Looking along the
line against the blackness of the desert night, down-turned faces of operators
and punters registered complete concentration on the business of money-making,
oblivious to any possible interference – or police raid. I did hear that,
several times, groups of disgruntled losers had assembled way out of sight,
then charged, grabbing such cash as they could, knocking desks over, dousing
lights and vanishing, hopefully unrecognised.’
* “Mudhook”: anchor.
Next payday, my father applied for a pass to go
into nearby Cairo, this time in the prized company of brother Ted – really his
hero, “whom I liked above all men”, he writes:
‘I knew his Company included some tough, Cockney characters
and I admired the confident way in which he lived among them. Never on the
defensive, always able to convince them of his equality, even with the most
belligerent; at that very moment he was short of three front, top teeth,
knocked out in the good cause of supporting his self-assertiveness… I revelled
in his yarns and confidences, would have gone anywhere with him. We walked
around that strange town until we stood at the entrance of a great mosque – was
it the Blue Mosque**? We assumed we should not enter…
The remainder of a
very happy afternoon and evening we spent in a beautiful park or gardens. We
used the intense heat to great advantage, I would claim, since we were able to
lounge in large, comfortable chairs under big trees, and enjoy ice-cold beer or
lager or soft drinks of unknown, but delicious flavours. Yet my boyish palate
best appreciated the Egyptian version of ice cream. It came in two-inch
squares, half an inch thick, and in two colours; it was hard, firm, smooth,
with lovely flavours. How did they achieve its fine texture, its hardness which
prolonged the pleasure of placing small pieces of it in the mouth and enjoying
the tasty, melting process?
At dusk, the place
gradually came to life. We had paid a small sum to enter the park, and now we
perceived that some free entertainments would be our reward. We saw an open-air
cinema with the screen set well back in a recess, making the pictures visible
even in daylight. Chairs and tables were set up and waiters available.
Elsewhere, we found a stage on which acrobats and other performers displayed
their skills.
A smaller show gave
me my first view of genuine belly dancing. Accompanied by the kind of noise to
which I had become inured back at the camp***, but enhanced by rhythmic
percussion, we saw dark-skinned females circle the stage, gyrate, or gradually
sink to their knees, the while their bellies kept up spasmodic circular
movements to the time of the music. Ted said the dances were designed to get a
man going, but I thought he might do himself an irreparable injury if he attempted
anything while those violent abdominal movements were occurring. Happy days.’
** The Blue Mosque:
Aqsunqur Mosque or Mosque of Ibrahim Agha in the Tabbana quarter of Cairo,
completed in 1347, restored 1908.
*** That is, from an
Egyptian military band – although he loved music, Sam’s ears never attuned
themselves to non-European scales (well, nor Welsh male voice choirs come to
that, as we see a few months on).
Happy days for the most part anyway. Shortly,
Sam heard about and then saw for himself the rough side of his admired Aussie
neighbours and he didn’t like it at all:
‘We heard one day that some Australians had gone to the
Wasser where the whores did their business. Because men had caught disease from
the women there, the Aussies had smashed up several houses; soldiers told tales
of furniture thrown out on to the street, pianos chucked from upper storeys,
fires started****.
The Australians
continued to make a lively impression on the less flamboyant British. One
morning so much noise, so much shouting and banging came from the Australian
camp that, despite our rules, many of our lads went over to investigate. Along
one side of their camp, traders had been allowed to set up temporary stores and
stands. There, I heard, an Aussie could buy almost anything he might require,
and you could think it significant that no trader wished to do similar business
near our encampment. “English soldier no good. No money!” – I’d heard that one
before! The Aussies were paid on more generous lines so their custom was worth
courting.
In view of what now
followed, it’s possible that those traders wished they had been content with
the minuscule profit which would have been theirs had they dealt with us.
I believe I’m right
in saying the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force canteens had set up a
marquee with the colonial boys where some of the local traders could supply
smoking requisites, groceries and beers in a more official setting. When I
joined the dense crowd milling around the trading area, I found that the dinkum
Aussies had taken over. The long counter of the nearest store was exposed to
the mob and a man stood on it, comically conducting some sort of auction. Men
rifling through the stock handed him articles for which he pretended, with
coarse humour, to accept bids from the crowd. The highest bidder never secured
the goods because the man up above always threw them in another direction and
the recipient paid nothing.
All sorts of
horseplay was going on around me, and soon groups of men appeared carrying large,
metal cooking pots filled with beer. They had raided the official canteen and
ladled out the liquor to any man who had his mess-tin handy. With strong beer
inside them even the timid became bold. When stocks of merchandise to loot ran
out, smashing up the various stalls and shelters became a competitive
occupation.
Finally, when all
appeared to have been demolished, a simple fellow who hoped to sell ice-cream
from a tub on a small donkey-drawn barrow was foolish enough to cross behind
the shattered trading area. I heard his pleas and protests; he and his donkey
survived unharmed, but barrel and contents vanished. And that was that.
Next day, the lads
from Down Under departed – men who had any of the pilfered goods were told to
hand them in…
I was sorry about
it all, feeling that a crop of hatred had been sown that day, quite
unnecessarily.’
**** Ahret El Wasser, a
street in the Ezbekieh quarter of Cairo; on April 2, 1915, a riot known as “The
Battle Of The Wazzir” occurred, with 2,000 ANZACs allegedly involved; something
similar happened again on July 31, so perhaps the Fusiliers were gossiping
rather old news.
All
the best –
FSS
Next week: “A period of general unease”… before they board a ship for
Gallipoli the Fusiliers are advised to draw up their wills… and at the last
moment Sam gets separated from brother Ted!
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