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Dear all
A hundred years ago this week… the
Battle Of Verdun, initiated by the German onslaught of February 21, proceeded
as a bloody stalemate, if in somewhat quieter vein than earlier as the German
commanders reconsidered their strategy. Still the summaries at this stage regularly
feature the word “repulsed” because that’s what happened to limited German attacks
at Hill 34 (May 8), Thiaumont Farm (9), Vaux Pond (11) and Mort Homme (13).
Elsewhere
on the Western Front, the first Anzac troops arrived (some from Gallipoli via
Egypt like my Father’s Royal Fusiliers) and, amid the ceaseless attrition, hot
spots flared up at Vermelles (May 11), Ploegsteert (13, Belgium) and around the
Hohenzollern Redoubt and Hulluch (14).
Down
in Armenia, a sudden reversal of fortune saw the Turks defeat the erstwhile
all-conquering Russian Army at Pirnakapan (May 8), Bashkeul (9) and Ashkale
(13). However, further south, near the Persia/Mesopotamia border, the Russians
defeated Ottoman forces at Kasr-i-Shirin – apparently starting a push towards
Baghdad (which the British had lately fallen disastrously short of).
In
eastern Africa, relatively small-scale clashes continued with further German
defeats by the Portuguese at Nhika (May 8, present-day Mozambique) and by the
South Africans at Kondoa Irangi (10, Tanzania).
Meanwhile,
after their terrible winter in Gallipoli, and three months recovering in Egypt,
my father Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from
Edmonton, north London (still under-age at 17), his older brother Ted, 19, and
their remaining comrades – the 250-ish 2/1st City Of London Battalion
Royal
Fusiliers who’d survived – had shipped to France in April. For a few weeks, encamped
outside Rouen, their all-consuming objective was to save the Battalion from the
disbandment threatened by the powers-that-be by training like madmen. It didn’t
work…
FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
Last week, the enraged 2/1st learned that,
despite their best efforts to prove they should form the veteran core of a
reinforced Battalion, they would be disbanded and dispersed to other outfits on
the Western Front. Incensed, they sank into gloomy recrimination at the Army
and wanted nothing other than leave – and their first sight of home since
January 1915.
My
father had a few days of fuming and waiting before his new deployment – to
destination unknown, as ever – happened so fast it caught him on the hop. As he
wrote in his Memoir:
‘For me, the parting
proved quick and rendered almost painless because, without warning, three or so
of us were assembled, our kits and rifles inspected, and off we marched to a
railway station. I had no time to seek out my brother to say goodbye, so once
again I was on my way into action without benefit of his company. Reflecting
sadly on this, I felt consoled when I realised that, if we had lived together
in constant danger, we would have feared for each other’s safety and, if one
had been injured or killed while we were together, the other would have
suffered deeply. For some months thereafter, we had no news of each other,
since he didn’t know my destination and we had no means of corresponding.
My little group
travelled some distance on the French railway, then transferred to open trucks
on a narrow-gauge line run by British engineers and drawn by diesel engines.
After detraining, we marched until we reached a quite pleasant-looking village,
the first I had been able to see at close quarters*. Far in the distance, I
could hear the rumble and thud so familiar a few months earlier. Once more, the
belly-tightening tension resumed its grip and I was all set to face and deal
with personal risks to the limit of my physical ability.
In that state, I
could play a role apparently a shade more light-hearted and carefree than my
normal one. The paramount necessity: to appear free of anxiety, as unruffled as
possible by nasty things which might be happening in the vicinity. And thus
would one exist during the coming months or years until relief came in the form
of wounds or death – but preferably, as optimistic youth would have it, in the
form of a piece of paper authorising one to depart from the scenes and stenches
of trench warfare and travel to a land where all was sweetness and kindness and
about which, to some extent, real memories had been replaced by fantasies.
In this village,
soldiers occupied most of the buildings. A brief stroll along the main road and
one or two along short side lanes revealed barns and out-houses serving as
quarters for the hoi polloi, while commissioned ranks luxuriated in farmhouses
and cottages. I viewed one splendid establishment through big, wrought-iron
gates; the buildings surrounded a large courtyard. One of our lads stood
outside on sentry duty. So, I wondered, what exalted rank dignified the
occupant of that fine residence?
I found
considerable wreckage at one end of the village, but also some small farmhouses
there still in the care of civilians, mostly women and old men. It was great, I
felt, as I often did during such interludes, to be in fairly close proximity to
non-military folk.
Just the sight of
females, from time to time, made the place seem homely. Not that any attractive
girls lived there, though many must have graced the place before filthy war and
rape, or the risk of it, drove them elsewhere… I still retain a mental picture
of a youngish woman behind whom I walked a while as she drove three cows along
a lane: her hair coarse and matted, she wore a man’s cap, an old, dark-blue,
military tunic much too big for her, a knee-length skirt of mud-coated, dark
cloth – below which her thick calves were clothed in British Army long pants,
with grey Army socks and heavy, Army boots on her feet. A boy such as I was
then could feel sympathy not untinged with amusement, but I imagined she would
remain totally safe from the lustful cravings of even the most sex-deprived old
soldiers. That apart, she was a good’un just to be in that place so near to the
front line, at risk from long-range enemy guns, trying to keep the little farm
going while her men were away.’
* From this point, and
for the duration of his 1916 Somme/Western Front experience, my father stopped
using place names and also – as you’ll see in a coy reference next week –
refused to name the Battalion he joined there. I don’t know why and I don’t
remember discussing it with him – which is odd, considering I asked about
almost everything else that needed clarifying. But my modest researches in
Battalion war diaries and Somme histories have led me to conclude that his
transfer was from the Royal Fusiliers to the Kensingtons (officially the 1/13th
London Regiment (Kensington)). By my reckoning from the available info, the
village he describes here was Souastre (15 miles south-west of Arras, recent
population 3-400). As to the date when he joined them, I’m going with May 14 –
when the Kensingtons’ War Diary notes “17 O.R. reinforcements received” (O.R.
means Other Ranks) – although it may have been a little later; Alan MacDonald’s
extraordinarily detailed history of the Gommecourt sector on the Somme, Pro Patria Mori, says that, up to May
24, the Kensingtons acquired 100 ex-Gallipoli ORs from the 2/1st London.
All
the best –
FSS
Next week: Despite his
enduring bitterness at the Army, Sam is surprised to find that on the Western
Front foot soldiers are cared for far better than anything he’d experienced in
Gallipoli…
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