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Dear all
A hundred years ago this week… No
doubt, its importance can be exaggerated, but even so there was no bigger news
than the USA’s declaration of war on Germany on April 6, following an address
to Congress four days earlier in which he deployed the now-familiar phrases
“war to end all wars” and “make the world safe for democracy”. Probably much
swayed by the recent German switch to all-out submarine war and the dubious
machinations around the Zimmermann Telegram, Senate and Representatives voted
in favour by huge margins. In fact, “boots on the ground” US involvement barely
registered until 1918.
On
the Western Front, the unusual passage of fighting provoked by the German
Army’s planned retreat to the Hindenburg Line, which had begun on February 23,
reached it’s conclusion on April 5 with the pursuing British and French (and
Australians at Noreuil) experiencing their last few days of somewhat unreal
progress by taking 20 or more of the “outpost” villages the Germans defended to
the last to cover their general retreat. In the early days of settling into a
new status quo, the French began a bombardment of German positions around
Vauxaillon (April 6; Aisne department; the nearby city of Reims was evacuated
on the 8th).
In
other “theatres”, little crucial action occurred on the eastern Front, nor down
in northern Italy and Salonika, while April also saw the start of the six-month
Stalemate In Southern Palestine (following the British/Egyptian Expeditionary
Force’s double failure during March to take Gaza from the Ottoman Army).
Russia, at the extreme of its southern reach, continued its odd success in
Mesopotamia, using cavalry to take Kasr-i-Shirin and Khanquin, northeast of
Baghdad, from Ottoman forces while the British Army’s steady Samarrah
Offensive, driving north out of Baghdad, captured Belad station, about 20 miles
from Samarrah (April 8).
Meanwhile, my father, under-age 2/1st Royal Fusiliers volunteer and Gallipoli
veteran (FootSoldierSam’s Blogs dated September 20, 2015, to January 3, 2016) Lance
Corporal Sam Sutcliffe from
Edmonton, north London, had fought on the Somme Front with his second outfit the
Kensingtons (Blogs
dated May 15 to September 25, 2016)… until
officialdom told him they’d noticed his age – 18 on July 6, legally too young
for the battlefield – and that he could take a break from the fighting until
his 19th birthday. So he did, though not without an enduring sense of guilt. By
December, 1916, he ended up posted to Harrogate, Yorkshire, and re-allocated again,
this time to the Essex Regiment 2/7th Battalion, along with a bunch of other under-age
Tommies training/marking time until they severally became eligible for the trenches
once more…
FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
Last week, the Army despatched my father, his
pal “Mac” McIntyre and three others from Harrogate to (probably) Cramlington**,
Northumberland – their mission, to become instructors in the mechanics and use
of the Army’s upcoming new super-rifle which would sweep aside the old Lee
Enfield.
An
enthusiastic and persuasive trainer swept aside Sam’s doubts about the whole
enterprise – why not an automatic pistol, which he knew the front-line Tommies
would much prefer? Like corporate salespeople doing a presentation today, they
even learnt set jokes and timed pauses for laughter.
But
here Sam and Mac break off from their studies to attend to more mundane
matters. The winter of 1917 was one of the longest and bleakest on record in
Western Europe with the snow falling and laying from January onwards and that
April still the coldest ever in the British Isles***, starting with a blizzard
April 1-3 on the Cheviots, 30-40 miles northwest of Cramlington.
As my
father mentioned in the last blog, the Army supplied the musketry school’s
Nissen huts with only half the anthracite their stoves demanded to maintain
modest comfort in these conditions. So…
‘During our training course, freezing-cold nights kept us in
our huts most of the time. But, during the hours of darkness, two men from each
hut had to procure coal, a zinc bathful of it, from… somewhere. Naturally,
McIntyre and I worked together when our turn arrived to rob the slag heap (as
we called this chore, in order to mislead any civilian who might chance to hear
of our unlawful activities).
No thrills on the
route described to us, until we came to a narrow path along the rim of a deep
excavation, partly water-filled. Slipping on the frozen ground was a risk; we
moved slowly, carefully. At the pithead, we took care to avoid being seen by
the workers, and to fill our bath and get away quickly.
I saw no coal
lying around, but a train of loaded wagons stood there. I climbed up on top of
one and handed down large lumps to Mac. He placed them in the bath noiselessly.
Nevertheless, for some reason, men carrying lanterns appeared and we feared
they would search, so we left the bath on the track under the buffers, climbed
up on to the wagon again and lay flat on top of the coal. A period of thumping
hearts until the miners, as I suppose they were, moved on, we got away – and
the really trying job commenced. The terribly heavy load necessitated frequent
rests, and the narrow path along the rim of the big, dark-blue hole was
nerve-wracking. But when we completed the job, elation followed, and good
friends rewarded us with hot tea and listened to our hair-raising tale of
near-discovery.
Of course, others
had similar experiences every night. The camp’s longer-term inmates had devised
the system of sending out pairs of men from each hut in turn to avoid having
too many of us at the pithead at once. We became thieves, no doubt, but without
this extra fuel we would have endured some freezing, sleepless nights.
Probably the
original intention had been that we should all spend the day training in the
big assembly cum dining cum entertainment hall, then return to cold huts at
night and use our ration of coal for warmth while we slept. But plans had
changed and a more individual course of instruction developed, requiring the
use of our huts during daytime. The resultant foraging for coal must have been
known to the officers in charge and a blind eye turned to our nocturnal
operations. Perhaps, if they had approached the pit owners, they would have
given us the coal, but authority has its pride.
** In his Memoir he never mentioned the village’s
name, but I’m pretty sure he told me it was Cramlington.
*** A record April low
temperature of -15C was recorded at Newton Rigg, Cumbria, on the 2nd. The
blizzard produced drifts up to 3 metres deep, steady falls continued until the
19th – and then even more snow fell towards the end of the month.
All
the best –
FSS
Next week: A tangled web
unravels… Sam enjoys Mac entertaining the troops with the skills he acquired as
an apprentice phrenologist (“character delineator” via bump reading!) – until
suddenly Mac turns on him with a crushing personal attack. Of course, it’s all
about a girl…
* 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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