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Dear all
A hundred years ago this week… the
Battle Of The Somme, which had hardly “gone quiet” since July 1, reached peaks of slaughterous horror, albeit to the
marginal advantage of the Allied Armies. The Australians who'd occupied
Pozières on July 23 then defended it under a massive German bombardment
(24-26); the British captured Delville Wood (27) and Longueval (28); but the
British and Australian attack on “the O.G. Lines” (29) – their name for the second line of German trenches from Pozières to Bazentin and Longueval – failed
with heavy losses.
But
the French Army continued its piecemeal gains around Verdun, taking a German
redoubt near Thiaumont (24) and holding attacks at Ville-au-Bois near the Aisne
and Prosnes, southwest of the Somme (both 27).
Russia
continued to successfully stretch its forces every which way. Although an
Austrian counterattack at Kowel (July 24-August 8), northwest Ukraine, stalled
the Brusilov Offensive, its advance continued east of the Styr and they took
Brody (28, Ukraine). At the same time in Armenia their campaign against the
Turkish Army achieved its final objective (it transpired) with the Capture of
Erzincan (25, a push begun on July 2). Remarkably, Russian troops earlier
deployed to France now arrived in Salonika (30) to join French, British and
reconstituted, relocated Serbia Battalions in defending Greece against Bulgaria.
Elsewhere,
the Italians pressed ahead recovering territory taken by Austria around
Trentino (July 24-30), British ally Sharif Hussain of Mecca took Yenbo, the
port of Medina from the Ottoman Empire (25), and steady British progress across
German East Africa proceeded with the occupation of Malangali, Dodoma and
Kikombo (July 24-30, now in Tanzania).
Meanwhile,
my father (now promoted from Lance Jack to) Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe
from Edmonton, north London (his 18th birthday on July 6, 1916), had been been
involved in daily fighting on the Somme Front from mid-May onwards. This followed a ’15-’16 winter
at Gallipoli, and three months recovering in Egypt, until his
2/1st City Of London Royal Fusiliers (250 survivors out of 1,000) moved to France
in late April. Shortly after their arrival, to their
chagrin, the Army disbanded the Battalion and transferred the remnants to other
outfits – Sam to the Kensingtons. They had enough Signallers so he became an ordinary soldier
in the line. The Kensingtons served in and around the front line at Hébuterne, opposite the German positions at Gommecourt,
including on July 1 – Battalion casualties 59 per cent – and beyond…
FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
Last week, mid-July a century ago, still in the
front-line at Gommecourt, ever lucky Sam recalled a couple of hairsbreadth
escapes from death as almost routine, but also noted how relentless night-time
toil (digging trenches and such), fear, stress and inadequate victuals were
wearing him to skin and bone. Feeling soured post-July 1, he wrote to his
father asking home to appeal to Secretary For War Lloyd George for his first
home leave since late 1914.
Now
though, I’m taking you back to May-June, a period in his
Memoir when my father wrote so much that these blogs would have been far too
long if I hadn't held some incidents back. As you’ll see, these incidents aren’t date-tied, but offer interesting snapshots of
life on the Front in its quieter moments – and how a curious, restless lad like
Sam could possibly begin a paragraph with “I really enjoyed life in that support trench” as he’s just about to:
‘I really enjoyed life in that support trench for several
reasons, the main one simply that I was getting rest and sleep, but also it ran
through what remained of an orchard. The occasional tree, the fruit bushes, and
wild brambles seemed to cut us off from the war – just because we couldn’t see
much of it…
I found a strand
of steel wire and, with music nostalgically in mind**, fastened it to the butt
of my rifle, carried it over my adjustable back-site and tied it off on the
fore-site. Now by raising the back-site I put tension on the wire – and
plucking it produced an almost musical note. Using the wood covering the barrel
as a fretboard I could play a tune of sorts.
Always ambitious,
I pictured myself playing the thing cello-wise. So I procured a supple, thin
branch from a fruit tree growing by the trench-top and, using some cottons from
my “housewife” (the cloth mendings holder*), I made a bow. I drew it across the
wire cello-wise, but without result. Then I recollected that one must treat a
violin bow with resin to make it grip on the string and vibrate it. I again
looked to the tree for help and, sure enough, I spotted some gummy exudations
on the trunk. Gathering a couple of pieces, I tried rubbing one against my
cotton bow strands. Some stickiness resulted, but the faint noise emitted by my
rifle-cello could not be called music. I decided I would have to play it
banjo-wise and, using a tooth from a comb as a plectrum, I could just manage a
few recognisable notes.’
We’ll come back to the
rifle-guitar. But one of the small, intriguing aspects of Sam's front-line
recollections is how, when the heat was off, the troops had freedom to wander the
trenches if they cared to. My father constantly “left his post” to see what he could see
and no officer ever pulled him up about it. Here, some time in June, before the
great battle, he explores and runs into his first Canadian –and a dead
Frenchman:
‘One day, prowling along a nearby disused and partly
demolished trench, I saw a big man lying quite still out on top among the trees
and shelled stumps. He held a rifle with a telescopic sight which he peered
through, although, beside his head, stood a separate small telescope on a tripod.
I crawled out and asked him what was going on (of course, I wouldn’t have done
this on the front line). He told me to move slowly and carefully, keeping well
down.
“I’m a Canadian,”
he said. “A sniper. That’s my job and I work alone. I report to Headquarters
way back.” He described his work: watching enemy country, reporting anything
noteworthy, taking the occasional pot-shot when doing so might serve some
useful purpose. The enemy also had snipers – whose attention he preferred to
avoid. He pointed out, high up among nearby trees, a small platform approached
by a frail, metal ladder which he sometimes used.
“Some job,” I
thought, and wished I had the confidence to apply for such work… but even more
that I should have the courage necessary to fight this lone battle with the
enemy.
Earlier in the
war, I knew, the French Army had manned this sector of the Front and, making a
further foray along the disused trench one rainy day, I found that, unlike the
British, they had provided themselves with covered accommodation – recesses dug
at intervals along their trench, roofed with heavy, waterproof sheets, the
half-rotted remains of which still hung over them.
When the rain got
heavier, I sheltered in one of these places. Inside, unfortunately, about six
inches of water had gathered, but I rolled a sandbag into it and kept my feet
dry while I waited for the weather to improve. A dank smell of death hung about
this shelter, but in the semi-darkness I couldn’t see what caused it.
The rain continued
and I realised I’d better get back, regardless. Nobody knew where I was, I
might be wounded and never found, I thought, letting imagination run away with
me for a moment… Then, near the junction of this old trench with our own
communication trench, I was startled to see protruding from the earth the
bright, red cloth of a trouser leg – still shaped to some extent by the bones
inside it. I knew some French soldiers wore baggy, red uniform trousers, but I
was amazed the cloth had endured exposure for a long time without rotting, and
even retained most of its colour.’
A little later, with a
move one step further back, Sam got the opportunity to deliver a full recital
on that rifle-guitar:
‘So the days and nights passed and soon came our turn to
move back to our Reserve line. It ran through the outer, westward side of a
small country town, much of it wrecked***. My section occupied the ground floor
of what remained of a small, detached house.
After I settled
in, having nothing special to do, I bethought me of my musical rifle. Sitting
beside a stairway leading down to the cellar, I attached my length of wire to
butt and fore-sight and plucked it to produce the best semblance of a tune I
could achieve. A scuffle on the steps was followed by a shout: “What the hell’s
going on up there?” An officer emerged from below and I had to confess that I
was torturing my rifle as well as the ears of my neighbours. Quite truthfully,
I assured the officer I had been unaware the cellar was occupied.
More amused than
irritated, he asked me to demonstrate my method of using the gun as a
one-string guitar. Probably The Last Rose Of Summer****
had never sounded quite like that before, but he returned to his colleagues
below without putting me on a charge.’
* See Facebook episode on
Sam's early weeks as a volunteer receiving all the basic infantryman's
equipment at https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=583641088472365&id=300782296758247
**
In his earlier teens Sam sang in the church choir but also learned piano and
quickly took to pop and music-hall songs.
*** Given the Reserve
Line runs through it, this sounds like Hébuterne, although my father’s relaxed
attitude suggests somewhere a little further back, such as Sailly. (My father
never spelled out exactly where he was on the front line – old habit of secrecy
perhaps, or maybe he really didn’t know given that an expert I met at
Gommecourt before the Somme centenary commemoration told me all the signs in
the nearby villages were removed, to confuse the enemy I think it was. My
deductions re locations come from the Kensingtons’ War Diary, cross-refed with
Alan MacDonald’s brilliantly detailed history of the Gommecourt section of the
Somme battle, Pro Patria Mori.
**** The Last Rose Of Summer began life in 1813 as a poem by Thomas
Moore (1779-1852), Irish “National Bard” and friend to Byron and Shelley; it
immediately acquired its best-known tune – probably the one “played” by my
father – composed by Moore’s regular collaborator Sir John Stevenson,
1761-1833, although Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Britten all wrote or arranged
later variants; the lyric begins “’Tis the last rose of
summer/Left blooming alone/All her lovely companions/Are faded and gone”.
All
the best –
FSS
Next week: Sam and
comrades head rearwards again: bunks – luxury! And the Sergeants suddenly
invite him to quaff champagne with them… at 2.50 francs a bottle. Plus harsher
reflections on his small part in a court martial and the Army’s sickening
resort to discipline-by-threats by sending lists of executions round the front
lines.
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