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Dear all
A hundred years ago this week… the
Battle Of Verdun, which of course nobody yet knew would come to be seen as the
greatest and longest in all history, “progressed” via a week of German attacks
at Bethincourt (March 14), Vaux (16) and Poivre Hill (19) – all repulsed,
except that the first saw the capture of Côte (Hill) 265. In the standard
historic timelines nothing else on the Western Front rates a mention bar a
French advance at Saint-Souplet in Champagne (15) and an Allied bombing raid on
Zeebrugge, Belgium (18). But deadly attrition continued…
The
Verdun effect had begun to spread to other areas though. On the Eastern Front, following
a steady run of winter successes, the Russian Army launched the Lake Narach
Offensive, in modern-day Belarus (March 18-30), hoping to distract German
attention from Verdun – a typical WW1 battle of artillery and machine-guns saw
the Russians gain 10 kilometres then lose them (conflicting casualty figures
show up to 110,000 Russian, 40,000 German).
Down
on the Italy/Austro-Hungarian border, again urged on by the French, the Italian
Army instigated the Fifth Battle Of The Isonzo (out of 12!) near Gorizia (March
9-15). It petered out because of bad weather with almost 2,000 casualties on
each side.
Much
further south, and unrelated to Verdun, in East Africa, now Kenya, South
African and British forces defeated the Germans at the Battle Of Kahe and
pushed them west beyond Mount Kilimanjaro (March 18; 686 German casualties, 21
British/South African).
Meanwhile,
the 200-odd 2/1st City Of London Battalion Royal Fusiliers comrades
who’d come through Gallipoli – plus maybe 50 reinforcements – proceeded with a
rather strange period of R&R in a tented town at Beni Salama, on
the banks of the Nile and the edge of the Sahara 30 miles north-west of Cairo. After that terrible
campaign, it wasn’t such a bad life for my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam
Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London (still under-age
at 17), his older brother Ted (19, lately converted from foot-slogging to horse
wrangling), and their mates. Except that the Army dumped a new CO on them,
replacing the Major they loved, and then…
FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
Last week, the Signallers got their comeuppance
for the detested straight-from-London new CO calling them the “cream” of the
Battalion. The puffed-up RSM who’d made a fool of himself in Gallipoli* got his
revenge on them, and Sam in particular, by making them his dogsbodies, lumbered
with every petty task he could think of. And Sam tried to do all the jobs
himself to avoid the embarrassment and ill-will caused by passing them on to
others:
‘Not even by detailing myself to telephone duty in [the
RSM’s] Headquarters tent could I get him off my back. He would hand me the
order or, if I’d written down the message myself from a verbal instruction over
the phone, he would still have me supply the required men from my small group
of Signallers. Well, if available…
Something had to
be done to end this victimisation, so when a gap appeared in the brailing** of
our tent at the back, we enlarged it. The fabric was old and tender and the
hole we’d improved on sometimes let in a draught, but we deemed occasional
discomfort preferable to satisfying the unending demands of the unjust RSM.
Thereafter, when
we decided we’d done our share of the odd jobs for the day, we simply went
missing. Before the man had completed his shouting the lads would be through that
hole, racing through the lines of tents and on the far side of a ridge at the
back of camp, where they would continue their siestas or meditations in peace
and quiet. This would force the RSM to call on another junior Lance Jack for
the required labour; although, on parade, the RSM was great at yelling orders,
stamping about noisily, and saluting ostentatiously, he appeared to be almost
afraid to give orders to older men.’
With this partial
solution to the RSM problem in place, my father’s attention could turn again to
the more engaging aspects of life by the Nile – eccentric characters, training
in archaic Signals skills, and even a recognition that the usurper CO’s
organisational ability did bring certain benefits to the men:
‘Our Signals Sergeant at that time lived strangely. What
enabled him to arrange his personal comings and goings without reference to us
and our work remained a mystery. Believe it or not, he had taken up oil
painting, scenic and portraits.
His pictures
looked good to me. I’d never been able to achieve any kind of understanding
with him, perhaps because he considered me too young. So I had the pleasure of
his company only on rare occasions, moments when he perhaps felt that the war
should sometimes be permitted to interfere with his hobby. All this sounds
daft, so shall we assume that this quite brainy Sergeant performed duties about
which nothing was known by his associates?
Meanwhile, our
new, young officer in charge of Signals, Lieutenant Wickinson, began to
organise training schedules which soon occupied most of our waking hours and
would eventually bring us up to a level of efficiency justifying, to some
extent, the Colonel’s inclusion of the word “cream” in a sentence which also
contained reference to ourselves.
As opportunity
offered, I had washed my uniform and underwear piece by piece. In the warm
weather everything dried quickly so, although one spare pair of socks was my
only item of clothing beyond what I wore, I never had to go about partly
undressed for long. Whatever my appearance, at least I was clean.
And soon, new kit
and uniforms did finally arrive, thanks, we understood, to the Colonel’s
influence in high places. With weekly pay parades restored – the basic enhanced
by the refunding of “credit accumulated” – we now had money, almost wealth it
seemed for a moment, and, with Lieutenant Wickinson keeping us fully occupied,
our Signallers group no longer loitered at the RSM’s beck and call.
The further we
penetrated into the desert in the course of our exercises, the more hilly it
became – ideal for visual signalling practice. Some days we would set up a
chain of hilltop stations using heliographs, well-made instruments mounted on
tripods. The simple, yet exact process of using them involved flashing Morse
messages to a distant station by observing and controlling the positions
relative to one another of two mirrors – often while you noted incoming
messages at the same time. By means of a graded sight, your sending mirror had
to be kept in a position yielding clear signals to the man at the receiving
end. This work kept two men quite busy.
I did find it
difficult to assess the heliograph’s place in modern warfare, except perhaps in
dealing with dissident tribes in desert areas. Flags might also have a role in
those circumstances, and, at night, possibly the electric lamps. But, in the
recent campaign, the only communications media we used were field telegraphs
and phones – except that, sea to shore during the landings, flags and signal lamps
still proved very quick (though even then, ship-to-ship wireless Morse
signalling had come into its own).
These activities
once again restored interest to our lives after a period of heavy, manual
labour, or equally exhausting efforts to avoid same. The Colonel with the hefty
leather-clad calves did effect substantial changes in the lives of all ranks
so, although our loyalty and sympathies remained firmly with the Major, we
nonetheless found ourselves feeling and looking somewhat the better for the new
regime.’
* See last week’s Blog
87, March 6, for a footnote detailing how the RSM’s various misdeeds led to notoriety
and widespread scorn among the troops.
** Brailings: rope loops
along the bottom of the tent canvas through which pegs were hammered to hold
the sides of the tent to the ground.
All
the best –
FSS
Next week: Sam gets treats
from home and makes his getaway from
Beni Salama – though only on legitimate leave – accompanied by some lively
entertainment from a magician and a pigeon…
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