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Dear all
A hundred years ago this week… Verdun
entered its third week – meaning that the German Army’s surprise attack had
already failed to quite a degree. Yet, in the Western Front mindset, that
didn’t mean anyone significant stopped and thought about whether attritional
slaughter of tens of thousands really was the best way to proceed.
The
“second phase” began on March 6 with the German capture of Forges, then hills
360 and 265 and Fresnes (March 7). The French recovered ground in Corbeaux wood
(8), lost some of it again (10), but beat back a German attack on Fort Vaux
(11). On both sides, enormous artillery barrages dominated the action and did
most damage – German strategists being startled by the strength of the French
response.
Elsewhere,
the German declaration of war on Portugal (9) was reciprocated (after much
skirmishing in Africa), and on the Eastern Front the Russian Army held off a
new wave of German attacks at Dahlen Island in the River Dvina, at Cebrow
(Galicia, around current Poland/Ukraine border)… and near a place apparently
called Kosloff I can’t find online (7-10).
The
Russian Army continued to prosper on a remarkable range of fronts, with the
steady advance towards Trebizond in Turkey continuing via the capture of Rizeh
(7) and subsequent crossing of the River Kalopotamus (9) while in Iran they
took Cola (7), Sennah (8) and Kerind (11).
The
major event of the British week saw a second attempt to relieve the Ottoman
siege of Kut (on the Tigris, southeast of Baghdad; the 6th (Poona) Division trapped
there since December) come up short at the Battle Of Dujaila Redoubt (8; 4,000
British/Indian casualties, 1,290 Ottoman). However, in East Africa – now Kenya
– a British/South African force drove German invaders back at Taveta and Latema
Nek (10-12).
Meanwhile,
the 200-odd 2/1st City Of London Battalion Royal Fusiliers comrades
who’d come through Gallipoli, had taken up residence 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, and given rumours of what was happening in Europe, 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 would persist in interfering with their rest and
relaxation…
FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
Last week, the Battalion’s new CO, straight
from London with friends in high places, ousted their trusted Gallipoli
leader-cum-hero Major Booth, then did Sam’s Signallers the desperate disservice
of praising them as “the cream”. So nobody liked them… and the Regimental
Sergeant Major set about avenging himself for the new Colonel’s favouritism,
but with particular reference to my father, a close-up witness when he disgraced
himself on the battlefield at Suvla Bay:
‘The haphazard way in which we had fixed ourselves up to
share living quarters with compatible mates was scrubbed right away. The new
regime re-allocated tents away in the rear of the camp to officers, with
separate marquees for Officers’ Mess and Sergeants’ Mess now dividing them from
“other ranks”. Each diminutive Company had its own tents. We unfortunate
Signallers in two tents of our own stood out like sore thumbs, being fairly
close – much too close – to a tent called Battalion Headquarters in which lived
the Regimental Sergeant Major.
Do you remember
him?* The man seconded earlier, on Malta, from the Royal Marines, briefly a
hero with our men, but later, on the Peninsula, disliked for several good
reasons and held in some contempt by the Major on account of incorrect
behaviour on the front line, such as brandishing a revolver and threatening to
shoot men who were already having enough trouble from Turkish guns.
The RSM seemed to
positively hate Signallers, probably because the new Colonel had praised us,
and he decided to humiliate us at every opportunity – in fact, he picked on me
in particular, having viewed me with disfavour since our days in two adjacent
holes at Suvla Bay.
We had laid out a
system of field telephones from each Company HQ to Battalion HQ, and one of our
men was on duty at each point. The work, of course, was a piece of cake so it
caused some further resentment among the rest of the Battalion, doing hours of
training, drill and various jobs of hard work around the growing camp.
But their
resentment was as nothing compared to that of the RSM; he pledged himself
vocally, loudly, to have the Cream Of The Battalion off the jammy jobs and on
to something which would make the sods sweat – he may even have had some
support among our comrades, given that the usurper Colonel’s high opinion of
Signallers (along with some skilful wangling on our part, I should admit) meant
that we were excused certain unpopular tasks, especially “Lion Patrol”, the
humourous title for a chore which took a party of men prowling about at night
in the desert darkness looking for Gawd knows what. Sometimes, when I heard the
jackals howling in the distance, I thought of our brave lads out there and then
thanked Heaven I was part of the Cream Of The Battalion.
One of us, of
course, had to take his turn at manning the phone in the RSM’s Battalion HQ
tent and that was an unpopular number, you bet. One of our lines ran from
Battalion to Brigade HQ, whence all the big, dirty jobs were dished out. When
one of those requests landed on the RSM’s table he would jump up and yell one
name, joyfully it seemed to me: “Corporal Norcliffe!”** He knew I would then
have the painful duty of detailing a man or men to do whatever scruffy chore
had come along.’
* For previous stories of
this blustering RSM see: Blog 64, September 27, 2015, when, under an
early burst of shellfire at Suvla Bay, Gallipoli, he panicked and, brandishing
a revolver from his “trench”/hole (unfortunately next to Sam’s) yelled “Keep
down! I’ll shoot the first man who shows himself above ground without
permission!” – as my father wrote “the RSM’s queer behaviour deepened the
gloom… he failed us on our first night in the line”; then during the night the
RSM and his batman, digging vigourously, broke through into my father’s hole –
he wrote that “It introduced an unwelcome intimacy. My feelings must have shown
for this RSM never loved me.”; and in a later chapter Sam notes that Major
Booth (alias for Harry Nathan) had accidentally created a catchphrase for the
whole Battalion when, under fire, he spotted the RSM skulking and roared at
him, “Keep your head up, Sergeant Major!”
** “Norcliffe” is the
vestige of my father’s rather transparent alias in the early part of the Memoir
when he wrote in the third person and referred to himself as “our boy” or
“Tommy Norcliffe”, before switching to first-person autobiography mode during
the Malta chapters.
All
the best –
FSS
Next week: Haunted by the
RSM, Sam and mates discover the gentle art of “going missing” – until a keen
new Signals Lieutenant leads them to explore “the heliograph’s place in modern
warfare”…
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