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Dear all
A hundred years ago this week… The
Battle Of The Somme came to an end (November 18 by British reckoning, just for
the winter of course) after the concluding Battle Of The Ancre (13-18) added
maybe another 40,000 to the toll of dead and wounded.
The
British initiated the attack, wading through mud to capture St Pierre Divion
and Beaumont Hamel (November 13), then Beaucourt-sur-Ancre (14) and Grandcourt
(the day of the winter’s first snow, 18). The French Army, a little to the
south, fought off German counterattacks at Ablaincourt, Saillisel and Pressoir
(14-16).
And
the whole campaign, dated from July 1 onwards, cost 419-432,000 “British and
Dominions” casualties (including 24,700 Canadians, 23,000 Australians, 2,100
New Zealanders), and anywhere from 465-600,000 Germans in exchange for a 6-mile
Allied advance on a 16-mile front.
Down
in Romania, the Battle of Transylvania which, in August, had begun so
promisingly for the Allies’ new ally, Romania, tumbled rapidly towards a grim
conclusion as the German Army broke through the Torzburg Pass and captured
Targu Jiu (November 15), and had Romanian forces retreating across the board in
the Prahova, Aluta and Jiu valleys, despite heavy resistance (14-17).
Further
south, in Macedonia one long story neared its conclusion as diverse
co-ordinated Serbian, French and Russian troops took Monastir (November 19),
forcing combined Bulgarian and German contingents to retreat – a campaign begun
on September 12. The British contributed too in their sector, taking Kavakli on
the left bank of the river Struma (19). Campaign casualties, counted through to
December 11: 53,000 Bulgars, 8,000 Germans, 27,337 Serbs, 13, 786 French, 4,580
British, 1,116 Russian, 1,000 Italians.
Meanwhile, my father, under-age volunteer Corporal Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London, 18
on July 6, 1916, had fought with the Kensingtons Battalion from mid-May to
September, at Hébuterne/Gommecourt on the north end of the Somme Front, then
around Leuze Wood and Morval to the south (FootSoldierSam’s Blogs dated May 15 to September 25, 2016). About September 30 he was told his
age had been officially noticed, he was still legally too young for the
battlefield and he could take a break until his 19th birthday if he wished. He
wished all right – though not without a sense of guilt. He left the Front for
the British base camp at Harfleur and a surprise, temporary move into catering…
But for
the two Remembrance week blogs (6th and 13th) I’m leaving my father enjoying his respite from the battlefield and
turning to some excerpts from the two major campaigns he’d already fought in: Gallipoli
and the Somme.
FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
On November 13, 2016, in Remembrance of my
father, his brother Ted (who died in 1922 from the aftereffects of poison gas),
all their pals and comrades and all the millions who suffered…
Last
week, I tried to evoke aspects of a Tommy’s Gallipoli experience – Suvla Bay and V Beach
because Sam’s Battalion was evacuated twice – through short quotes and stories from Sam’s Memoir. Now, the Somme – 100 years ago
this year, of course. I’ve chosen excerpts from the time he moved to the
Western Front in May, through to a few days after July 1, a grievous aftermath.
It’s long but it’s strong stuff, essence of Remembrance Day I think.
First,
though, a contribution from a guest, the only and very welcome responder to my
invitation for others to add their family Remembrance stories here. Janet Welch
(alias #bakerboytom), from Camberley, Surrey, is writing a book on the intriguing
subject of bread and the Great War – because her great grandfather, Acting
Staff Sergeant Thomas Martin, served as a baker on the Western Front. She
writes:
‘Although not as glamorous as
the frontline regiments, the Army Service Corps was a vital part of the armed
forces supplying everything from uniforms, ammunition and food. Thomas was a
lifelong soldier having signed up with the Royal Berkshire Regiment before
transferring to the ASC as a baker. Bread was a large and important part of the
soldiers diet providing the bulk of calories in the army ration. Were it not
for bread where would the butter and jam be?
Thomas arrived on the
Western Front on the 5th of August, 1914, as part of the British Expeditionary
Force and didn't leave until the end of the war. In charge of setting up one of
the first field bakeries, his resourcefulness and hard work eventually led to
him being honored in 1916 with the Distinguished Conduct Medal.
His first job was to set
up the bakery, from pitching tents to house the dough-making facilities, to
building and firing the ovens for baking the bread and then creating the stores
and finally distributing the bread up the lines of communication. Whilst this
sounds simple enough there were many challenges in those early days and as the
war progressed the challenges changed but didn't diminish.
Whilst iron rations
consisted of biscuits, men much preferred bread. Hundreds of thousands of
loaves had to be baked six days a week, every week of the year, without fail.
Shifts of men worked around the clock on back-breaking and exhausting work. Flour
had to be tested, yeast (a living organism) had to be procured or made and
clean water obtained. The quantities were vast, the quality of ingredients
variable and the working environment in the bake house a daily challenge. What
appears a simple process required great organisation, great skill and know-how
and a lot of manpower for the bakery to produce the very best loaves possible.
Although the bakeries were behind the front lines many were repeatedly shelled
or bombed; the light and smoke of the ovens, fair warning to the enemy!
As the war progressed
more and more bakers were recruited; all skilled men! As the years passed
machinery was introduced to reduce manpower and release men to the front-line
Regiments.
Bread wasn't the most exciting part of the soldier's diet but it
was hugely important. I have spent the past three years piecing together
information about these unsung heroes of the Great War and I hope to put this
altogether to pay tribute to the bakers who fed the army. Lest we forget.’
Before I move on to some snapshots of the Somme
battle, including July 1… Food is certainly a subject to be taken seriously
when talking Armies at war (remember what Napoleon said) and my father happened
to write very appreciatively of victualling standards on the Somme front
compared to his appalling culinary experiences in Gallipoli. And bread does get
honourable mention here in his companion passage to Janet’s account of her
great grandfather’s contribution:
‘I soon
recognised that this Battalion was run by men more skilled in caring for and
providing for their rankers than any I had encountered earlier. A Quartermaster
Sergeant, a Sergeant Cook, and some well-trained men worked miracles with the
rations to produce meals of a quality I’d seldom experienced in front-line
soldiering. They had several mobile field kitchens, comprising large boilers,
food store boxes, fuel containers, fire boxes under boilers with tubular chimneys
and so on, along with two-wheeled vehicles, usually pulled by mules, which
allowed cooking to proceed while on the march…
Always, a
substantial hot meal and good steaming tea arrived when needed – well, except
when “enemy action” occasionally disrupted their praiseworthy efforts… For men
who, for hours, had endured exposure to rain, cold, shot and shell to
unexpectedly be given a mess-tin full of hot stew or tea with bread was to
restore our faith and hope and courage – the very knowledge that others thought
about our discomfort, even misery, and had been kind enough to do something
about it heartened us… No going for days with nothing but hard biscuits, jam and
a small allowance of water…
With morning and
evening tea, they also portered the usual solids, such as bread or biscuits,
jam or cheese…’
So to Sam’s Somme: here he is, just
transferred, to his disgust, from his Gallipoli Battalion to the Kensingtons,
and despatched with a few comrades to meet them at Souastre, a village a couple
of kilos behind the front at Hébuterne/Gommecourt – where he finds himself
developing a new persona:
‘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… Consequently, I quickly earned for myself a
soubriquet I liked, to wit, The Pisstaker… The paramount necessity: to appear
free of anxiety, as unruffled as possible by nasty things which might be happening
in the vicinity.’
Getting to know his new Company, he realises
many of them are from the first wave of conscripts to enter the British Army.
They tell him a lot about life back home in Blighty – which he hasn’t seen
since January, 1915 – and give him much to ponder, especially with regard to
conscientious objection, a concept he’s never heard of before. Typically, he
thinks his way through to an independent view:
‘… some prominent people concerned with improving the status
of working-class people had promoted the idea that, if a man had religious
convictions strong enough to forbid him taking part in warfare, he should be
allowed to state them before a special tribunal, the members of which might
decide that he should do “national work” other than join the armed services**. As
World War I progressed the numbers of men who held or adopted these strong
pacifist beliefs increased, and some men thus avoided all the risks and
sufferings to which most were exposed…
And yet… here too
was a concession which appeared to indicate that one fence separating The
Workers from the rest had been demolished — in part, the “conscience clause”
entailed an admission from on high that the dwellers in the terraced side
streets were capable of thought, able to form, maintain and explain a
conviction reached after study and evaluation.’
** The right to
conscientious objection had been recognised in the UK since the 18th century,
but only for Quakers; it became a general right in March, 1916, after the
Government introduced conscription.
At 16, Sam had no ideology – yet, coming from
poverty, he certainly expresses instinctive class consciousness in many ways.
These include his attitude to rank. When he trained as a Signaller in Malta
pre-Gallipoli, he earned the tiny promotion to Lance Corporal. But, his Signals
skills not needed on the Somme, he soon begins a long campaign to lose even
that rank:
‘I sought an interview with the Captain in charge of our
Company and asked to be allowed to revert to the rank of Private, but he refused…
I never gave an order to a Private; I did a job myself rather than tell anyone
else to do it. In fact, I behaved in a manner which, I thought, would soon have
me relieved of the fishbone on my arm.
I wanted no rank,
no responsibility except to myself. Rank entailed being careful, steady, a good
example, even though a Lance Corporal was everybody’s lackey, often jeered at
by the Privates and ordered around by Corporals and Sergeants. I longed to lose
that stripe and be a carefree nothing.’
Now a couple of quotes in which Sam describes
marching towards the Somme battlefield for the first time and entering the
trenches:
‘Our Company, walking in twos, must have formed a
considerable crocodile as we weaved around shell-holes and various vaguely
visible humps which mystified me until ear-splitting explosions and
skyward-leaping flame flashes, changing to brief red streaks and short-lived
shrieks issued from one of them – British gun batteries, of course. Someone
could have tipped me off – we were stumbling through such a concentration of
guns as I had never imagined.’
‘As we approached the front, a stream of men passed us,
going back the way we had come – happy, because we were relieving their burden
of tense preparedness with no let-up, night or day. Always some part of the
trench system was being damaged or destroyed, some danger threatened. Mates
maimed, blown apart. So, as they threaded their way through our advancing line,
they made quiet, little jests, wished us good luck, gave useful hints occasionally
about special features of the terrain. Nice chaps going for a well-earned rest,
bless’em.’
Soon he encounters the Front’s second most
dangerous activity (though way below number 1: going over the top in daylight)
– patrolling and digging advanced trenches in No Man’s Land at night. The
hair-raising thing was the work involved making so much noise it could hardly
go undetected by the enemy for long:
‘… when, eventually, their wrath descended, we squeezed down
into the hollows we’d dug and found we did have a few protective inches of
earth above our precious bodies. Machine-gun bullets spattered around me and I
marvelled that I should lie there, hear and see them striking, yet remain
untouched. But our semi-trenches afforded little protection when light field
guns joined in and their shattering whizz-bangs*** filled the air with noise
and flying metal. One could only hug Mother Earth and wait for an order to
retire, which didn’t come. I heard the occasional muttered request for
“Stretcher-bearers!” – brave fellows indeed, themselves not immunised from
injury or death by their labours of mercy.’
*** British soldiers
nicknamed shells fired by the German 7.7cm field gun “whizz-bangs” because they
travelled faster than the speed of sound, so recipients heard the “whizz” as
they sliced through the air before they heard the “bang” made by the gun firing
them.
A few days relief from all this could feel like
going on your holidays – this is Sam’s Company on a long, but welcome march
from Hébuterne to Halloy, about 20 kilometres from the Front, to rehearse
their July 1 attack on a replica of the German trench system:
‘Soon, all the Companies of the Battalion came together in
one long column. The drum and fife band took its place at the head and gave out
sweet music. Cares fell away, and we sang and whistled joyfully. Kilometre
after kilometre, with occasional ten-minute breaks, we didn’t worry, for this
march was taking us in the one direction which pleased all of us – back!’
Well, my father’s memories cover a lot of
ground – post-Gallipoli military innovations such as steel helmets and gas
masks, touching encounters with women and children still living near the Front,
converting his rifle into a guitar of sorts in an idle moment, angry
reflections on their remote Generals lodged in châteaux miles away from danger
– but I’ll conclude with some excerpts of his account of July 1, 1916, and its
immediate aftermath:
‘We
found the section of trenches we took over in fine condition. The Engineers had
installed their “revetting with expanded metal” system quite splendidly, as
well as a sump under the duckboard floor of the front trench, perfect drainage,
and so superior to the old, sloppy, mud floor on which we had often slithered.’
‘On
the day – which followed a period of massive bombardment of enemy positions to
destroy their barbed wire defences etc — our Battalion was to occupy the
ordinary front line, and our most advanced trenches where my Platoon found
itself. The support trenches behind us sheltered a kilted Regiment who would
come through our line to start the infantry attack, at which our men in the
front trench would advance over the German front trench – by then in the hands
of the Jocks – and go on to take the German support trenches. Finally, from the
advance trenches, we would pass over all those people and clean up and occupy
the German rear positions.’
‘… enemy
machine guns massed at strategic points and they stood their field artillery
almost wheel to wheel, or so it seemed, and the whole area became an inferno of
explosions and bullets.
When the kilted lads advanced, their numbers decreased alarmingly
with every forward stride. Meanwhile, our own advanced position was being blown
apart piecemeal; pockets of survivors lost touch with their leadership and the
nearest NCO had to make decisions… If he could only see ahead that our first
line of attack was destroyed before capturing its objective, that its members
lay dead and wounded on the ground ahead or grotesquely draped over the enemy
barbed wire which our bombardment should have destroyed, then when should he
take his small force over the top?
Some small groups did from time to time go ahead until killed,
wounded and captured. Some dedicated officers achieved marvels within limits
set by the powerful enemy, but in the end this massively prepared attack
failed.
Nothing was gained in our sector. Many good men were lost. Many
normally strong fellows were reduced to trembling, inarticulate old-looking
men.
Our beautiful front line had become an uneven shallow ditch for
most of its length, the expanded metal revetments either lost under piles of
blasted earth or just sunk deep down in shell holes.’
‘I saw a Scot who, though not
wounded, just sat and shook. His head nodded, his arms flailed feebly, his legs
sort of throbbed, his eyes obviously saw nothing.
One of our usually most happy and physically strong men was
crying non-stop while violently protesting about something. He’d been buried up
to his shoulders in earth and, even in that inferno, men nearby had paused in
their advance to free him, yet he had this strange grievance.
So, possibly, nervous shock afflicted everyone there to a greater
or lesser degree, even though fear no longer weighed on us as earlier in the
day.’
‘A gradual return to
usefulness replaced the varying degrees of stupor and inertia which for many
were the invisible wounds following many hours of explosion and upheaval,
shattering to eardrums and nerves… and ruinous to pre-conceived ideas of what
should be occurring according to plans worked out in grandiose HQ châteaux many
kilometres away in the rear.’
‘Our Company – such as it was
now, after its brush with hell**** – remained in what had been the front line.
By dawn, most of us were ready to stop where we stood – crouched, rather – for
under cover of dark we had searched for and found many wounded men, their
chances of living diminishing with every hour in which they lay exposed with
wounds untended.
We felt that our work was very valuable and the joy with which
injured men greeted their rescuers was reward indeed. Perhaps the failure of
the massive attack had left us with a sense of guilt which the intensive rescue
work relieved.’
**** The Kensingtons
suffered 59 per cent casualties (wounded and dead) – about average for a
British Battalion on July 1.
I’ll close these Somme excerpts with a touching
passage Sam wrote about his Company’s work, a few nights later, on retrieving
the dead. As I understand it from his Memoir,
the Kensingtons’ War Diary, and Alan MacDonald’s wondrously detailed book, Pro Patria Mori: The 56th (1st London)
Division at Gommecourt, 1st July 1916 (Iona Books, 2008), on July 2 they
moved back to Souastre and then, temporarily, occupied trenches in front of
Fonquevillers whence each night they went out into No Man’s Land:
‘We
were given two or three days rest a couple of kilometres back and then returned
to continue clearing up the mess – the first few nights devoted to recovering
our dead mates, the living wounded having by then all been rescued. The
identity discs we wore now became very important; each dead man having this
link with the living could be identified and his death notified and a train of
events set in motion to inform his family, finalise his service record, accord
him a proper burial in a known cemetery, and finally secure for his nearest
relative some sort of pension. The real difficulty was in regard to those so
badly mutilated no way of identifying them existed.
One discovery out in No Man’s Land deeply affected me. While
working in bright moonlight on search work, I looked down into a length of
communication trench in the advanced system we had helped to construct and saw
the rather large face of a very good chap I had worked with for a while in
Egypt. He had gone to a different Battalion from our camp near Rouen. And here
he was, long dead, eyes blank, but still the features unmistakable and formerly
so familiar to me. Charlie’s large face was all the more recognisable because
of his large nose. The moonlight no doubt concealed the ravages of injury and
exposure – perhaps the shade and coolness of the trench bottom minimised them
too…
As soon as possible, I guided two of the men doing recovery work
to Charlie. I recalled then, as I do now, his special qualities. He was
completely honest, stubborn about things in dispute, but usually found to be
right about them in the end; Cockney in speech to an extent which, on first
acquaintance led one to expect illiteracy, he soon made you realise your error –
he handled sending and receiving Morse Code messages better than most. In fact,
before the war he’d done that kind of work on the railways, but using a machine
which emitted two musical sounds, high and low, instead of dots and dashes.
Of the many men whose poor bodies we found and saw cared for that
night, Charlie was the only one whom I had known well in life. He had been one
of us, and thus special to us, during our first experience of Army life…
Recollection of Charlie calls forth a mental picture of him walking away from
me… large head, broad shoulders, sturdy trunk, strong, slightly bowed legs –
more like a Frenchman than an Englishman, nothing of the Cockney about his
build or his gait. Goodbye, Charlie.’
For more of Sam’s Somme story see his full Memoir or the
extracted e-book episode on the Somme (all proceeds to the British Red Cross).
All
the best –
FSS
Next week: Meanwhile,
back at Le Havre, a hundred years ago this month… Sam, as if on a working
holiday from what he’s been through, enjoys observing some odd goings-on – but
then tantalising news of his brother Ted still out there in the fog of battle…
* In his 70s, Sam
Sutcliffe wrote Nobody Of Any Importance,
a Memoir of his life from childhood
through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919
Peace parade.
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