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Dear all
A hundred years ago… this week, on
the Western front the loos-Artois Offensive and the Battle of Champagne entered
their (still deadly) petering-out phases. Although, on October 6 the French
took Tahure and Butte Hill in the Marne area, all sides were reaching the
already familiar conclusion that no significant advance could be made.
While
Russian and German Armies continued their struggles to and fro in Lithuania,
Belarus, Latvia and Ukraine, further south German and Austro-Hungarian
divisions combined to invade Serbia on October 7 and two days later, after
heavy street fighting, they’d taken Belgrade. The British and French had talked
of supporting Serbia, but did too little a lot too late – partly because of
hesitations and leadership changes in neutral Greece which saw 20,000 Allied
troops stuck in Salonika as the invasion began.
Illustrating
the breadth of the conflict, far-flung elements of the British Army took
Birjand in East Persia (now Iran, October 7) and Wumbiagas in then German
colony Cameroons (9th).
Meanwhile,
in Gallipoli... 12 months on from joining up, the thousand men of the 2/1st
City Of London Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, including my father, Lance Corporal
Signaller Sam Sutcliffe (still underage at 17), and
their pals from Edmonton, north London, had landed at Suvla Bay on September 25.
Their first experience of a real battlefield: real bullets and shells, their
first deaths, and the none too inspiring process of digging in.
FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
Last week’s excerpt concluded with the
much-vaunted RSM panicking and threatening to shoot his own men if they showed
their heads above ground – thereby drawing Turkish fire in his general
direction. Sam, to his regret, found himself in the next hole to this RSM and
his batman – who tunnelled a passage through to the hole he shared with a
fellow Signaller called Bacon. “It introduced an unwelcome intimacy,” my father
drolly noted.
Finally
moving on from his fine-detailed account that first 24 hours scored on his
memory (remember he wrote his memoir 50 years later, in his 70s without a note
or a diary), Sam continues:
‘I still expected a sudden instruction would set us hurrying
towards those hills in the “extended order”* we had been trained to use in
attack. But that did not happen.
Instead, we were
told to make our holes deeper; hard work indeed for those of us with trenching
tools only. Those fortunate enough to have secured picks and shovels improved
their holes fairly quickly. Had we been digging in good earth, all of us would
have done better, but this curious, flaky rock – grey in colour, layer upon
layer of it, each about half an inch thick or less – was difficult to handle.
Frustrating, irritating, productive of little but despair.
The men who moved
around collecting and filling water bottles, and others who, during the day,
returned to the beach for supplies and brought them up to us, did so at great
personal risk from Turk shells and bullets. Others routinely in danger because
of the nature of their work were our Pioneers; back in Egypt, the Regiment had
formed this section composed of men prepared to take care of sanitation. In
places without water-flushed WCs, even on the front line, these men erected
shelters, emptied and cleansed the waste buckets and seats housed in them, and
sprinkled chloride of lime about the place.
Now, in the
battlefield, their work was of great importance. Canvas screens surrounded the
bucket areas. With bullets and shells wreaking their havoc, these men exercised
great self-discipline in servicing the latrines. Men needing to use them sat in
real peril, their excretory movements probably accelerated by bursting shells
and whining bullets. Holes appearing in the canvas screens added urgency to
these operations.
In fact, the Turks
fired ever more frequently as that first day wore on. They took a steady toll
on our men, in ones and twos, woundings and killings. Meanwhile, we attempted
nothing, achieved nothing as far as we could see, our landing and presence
apparently a sad, military waste.
But our second
night ashore brought the relief of movement: digging trenches well in advance
of our initial position. When darkness fell, large parties stepped forward,
armed with picks and shovels. As soon as they started digging, the noise
brought shot and shell their way, and stretcher-bearers were kept busy.
Still, they
persisted, and soon established a trench system substantial enough for full
occupation by half our Companies — the rest of the men and Battalion
Headquarters had to stay in our original position which, despite further
efforts to deepen our holes, remained lamentably exposed. Nevertheless, a
tendency for some to regard that place as home became evident, although wise
men realised the better organised forward trench system offered more
protection.
I had to move
around constantly; as a Signaller I had no choice. When our comrades built and
occupied new trenchworks, we had to run out lines and man the instruments to
maintain communications from Battalion HQ to Company and from Company to
Company.’
At this point, Sam
encountered one of the more remarkable comic characters of his entire war:
‘Fifty yards or so from one end of that original collection
of holes – where I still lodged from time to time – was a clump of trees and
bushes… and one morning I was amazed to hear a voice coming from it. It said,
“Devine! Devine!” The bearer of that name I knew to be an officer’s servant and
the voice belonged to Lieutenant Chalk, the Battalion dandy. Crawling that way,
I came upon this gent sitting naked in a hip bath and, fortunately, unaware of
my presence.
Apparently, not
war nor any other damn nuisance was going to deprive this P.G. Wodehouse
character of his morning cold tub. As requested, Devine took him a towel. And
presumably John Turk had the Lieutenant’s permission to resume fighting soon
thereafter.
That pale pink
figure squatting in that round shallow extra-large frying pan – what in
heaven’s name had it got to do with war? A few slender trees and straggling
bushes screened him from the eyes and rifles of an enemy who gave no quarter
and was reputed to castrate and hang by his feet from a tree any infidel
foolish enough to allow himself to be captured… An enemy who split lead bullets
before firing so that they would spread out when striking bone and cause
massive laceration.
Reflecting on this
strange apparition, my thoughts moved on from farce and risk to… water supply.
We were always restricted to one pint daily per man. So where did the dear
Lieutenant’s Devine procure more, much more, than this meagre ration for his
master’s bath? Somebody told me several old wells had been uncovered, but they
contained poison. In one, he said, they found a dead Turk. Still acceptable as
bath water, I guess; perhaps the batman used that.
I never saw
Lieutenant Chalk again, nor did I learn whether he survived the war. Somehow I
doubt it.’
And so, from the outset,
the routines of attrition – or failure as the troops saw it from pretty early
on – began to establish themselves:
‘We settled in. No more advances. And no more bacon. Most
days there were only two items of “solid” food available, namely, hard biscuits
and apricot jam. How come? It appeared that, for some weeks, a ship stuffed
with these two eatables plus tea, sugar, and canned milk, served as our sole
source of supplies. We of the PBI (Poor Bloody Infantry) accepted these rations
without question, believing what we were told without doubt or quibble…
At first, the
weather stayed hot, very hot. Some troops, not compelled to English standards
of hygiene on account of their easy-going colonial habits**, unwittingly fed
and caused to multiply millions of dirty, fat flies and any foodstuff, or even
hot tea, exposed, however briefly, to their attention instantly turned black
with swarms of these filth carriers.
Dysentery plagued
the Army and many men existed in a weakened, dazed condition with only moderate
chances of survival because they had no opportunity to replace the large loss
of body fluid caused by the disease. When they finally collapsed, they had to
be carried off to the beach, there to await transport to the Greek island
hospital or to Egypt. This scourge spread alarmingly and one missed comrades
only to learn that they had succumbed to it.
For a very
specific reason, I remained one of the few who steered clear of dysentery
throughout that campaign (although I did experience its horrible effects rather
later in the war). Around that time, some parcels from home were brought ashore
and one of them was for me, the only parcel I received during that campaign.
Beautiful goodies delighted and uplifted me from the prevailing gloom. But the
package was small, of necessity, and the contents soon vanished, so intense
were my hunger and their sweet appeal.
However, there
remained two medicine bottles, each containing 200 tablets. Knowing something
of the front line’s risks of disease, my parents spent some hard-to-spare money
on water-purifying tablets, surely one of the most useful purchases they ever
made. I dropped one tablet into my daily water ration. I kept the tablets in my
tunic pockets and, since one could never undress, this meant I had these
life-savers on my person day and night.’
* “Extended order”:
opposite of close order; troops separated as widely as the situation and
terrain permit – recommended for “skirmishing”, I read.
** Apologies from the
next generation, but I think he meant neighbouring Anzacs. The way soldiers
talk, I expect the Anzacs were complaining about the bloody Poms attracting the
flies.
All
the best –
FSS
Next week: Getting used to trench life – including the grind of little
sleep, poor diet... and Turkish snipers. While the C-in-C swans about on a
battleship!
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