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Dear all
A hundred years ago this week… The
Eastern Front saw the crucial developments as Russia continued to work its way
through the consequences of the February Revolution. The Kerensky Offensive
(July 1-19) across present Ukraine, then Galicia, had gone surprisingly well in
its first few days, despite civil disorder at home, but the outbreak of
democracy to the Army – with committees debating whether specific orders should
be obeyed – and an eventual, powerful onslaught by German and Austro-Hungarian
forces saw any optimism swiftly quashed.
Reverse
gear was probably engaged when the Russian Army evacuated Kalusz (July 16;
three days after taking it) and Nowica (18; both in Galicia, now Ukraine). Then
the counter-attack took hold – dubbed the Battle Of East Galicia (19-29) – with
Central Powers advances east of Lemburg (19; also known as Lviv), south of the
Dniester and to Tarnopol on the Sereth (21).
Kerensky’s
promotion to Premier (19; replacing Prince Lvov) may have had something to with
news travelling slowly (his Offensive had cost Russia 60,000 casualties).
However, in that same seven days the Russian Army did also break through German
defences further north near Vilnius (22; Lithuania) and – a great surprise – successfully
support the Romanians in a massive counterattack, launched with an all-day
artillery barrage, against long-established invading German forces in the
Battle Of Maraseti (July 22-Aug 1).
On
the Western Front, British and French troops were largely occupied with holding
off German attacks, which they did at Moronvillers (16), in the Ypres sector
and Verdun (17), St Quentin, north of the Aisne and at Lombartzyde, near
Nieuport (18-22).
In
other outposts of conflict, a South African-led force drove the German Army
back even further towards their East African border via a brutal battle at
Narangombe (July 19; now Tanzania), and British cavalry defeated the Turks west
of Beersheeba, Palestine (19; now Israel).
Two
very different royal stories: the British royal family changed their name to “Windsor”
from “Saxe-Coburg and Gotha”, which many thought sounded a touch too German in
the prevailing circumstances; and Serbian, Croatian and Slovene leaders in exile
announced the Kingdom Of Yugoslavia via the Corfu Declaration, intending to
unite these nations under the Serbian monarchical dynasty.
[Memoir background: my father, Lance Corporal Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London, under-age 2/1st Royal Fusiliers
volunteer and Gallipoli veteran (Blogs September 20, 2015, to January 3, 2016),
had
fought on the Somme Front with his second outfit the Kensingtons (Blogs May 15 to September 25,
2016)…
until
officialdom spotted his age – 18 on July 6, 1916, legally too young for the
battlefield – and told him he could take a break from the fighting until he was
19. He did so, though with 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
until such time as they severally became eligible for the trenches once more… Well, it was an interesting year all right – four months of
blizzards, a meningitis scare, special training in various northern locations –
but my father didn’t write enough about his eventual 13 months “off” to cover
1917 in weekly chunks (I can hardly blame him; writing his Memoir in the 1970s he wasn’t really thinking
about his son and editor’s self-publishing blog requirements come 2017). So, the blog broke off, May
14-July 9, and looked back at his childhood and
early teens – his formative years – under the title The Making Of
FootSoldierSam. Now, though, we return to
my father’s (approx.) 100 years-ago-this-week stories from summer 1917…]
FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
Last week, the final Making Of FootSoldierSam
excerpt compilation covered various aspects of my father’s final year before
the war when the national patriotic upsurge, and his own preoccupation with his
mates, led to his enlisting in September, 1914, at 16 (under-age, as was his
18-year-old brother Ted). And so the boy became a soldier, a Tommy, a man –
very much in theory as he saw it himself.
But
now I can return for a few weeks to my father’s story of his “hiatus” year.
While he mentions few dates or time-specific events – once the blizzards which
ran through to late April, 1917, in northern England had passed – the long
route march his Battalion was about to embark on when we left them, and they
left Harrogate, at the end of the May 7 blog clearly took place during the
summer. And a phrase or two here suggests to me it was probably just after
Sam’s 19th birthday on July 6, the cue, administratively, for him to be
returned to combat and, naturally, for his consequent anxiety at the prospect,
given his experience at Gallipoli and the Somme:
‘…that night we were told to have everything packed ready to
leave next morning on a long, route march. That was all we were told, being
left to draw our own conclusions – and predictably those included the unwelcome
likelihood that we should make for the nearest port and proceed overseas.
We need not have worked
up the consequent state of anxiety, since we spent the first night of the march
in fields just outside the town housing Mr Smith’s famous brewery*.
This gave me
occasion to wonder in which war did some genius devise the method by which four
men, using only their own rifles and groundsheets, could construct a temporary
shelter or bivouac? We had lately learned how to accomplish this, and now we
had the chance to fully appreciate that care in assembling these eight items
could ensure a fair night’s rest after a hard day’s march – although, bearing
in mind that our rubber and cotton groundsheets had metal eyelets at intervals
on each of their edges, and thinking I might be able to improve and strengthen
our little bivouac before we settled into it, I had taken the opportunity to
buy a ball of string in Tadcaster. So I was able to tie and raise the edges of
the groundsheets a few inches, hoping to prevent rainwater flowing in should
the fine weather break.
A couple of
afternoons later, in a clearing in a wood some miles east of York, we again set
up our bivouacs. The field kitchens were lined up, fuel lay all around for the
cooks to gather, and they fed the great mass of men generously on a meat and
veg stew with chunks of bread. Later, in the same boilers, they prepared a
strong brew of tea flavoured with the oniony grease from the stew – typical
Army cha, drunk from our carelessly rinsed mess tins, its rich warm flavours
never to be equalled in Civvy Street. Thank goodness.
Darkness fell and
each foursome squeezed into its “bivvy”. Comparative quiet reigned. But only
until two in the morning, when a violent storm broke over the snoring
community. We four, quite dry, tightly packed in our small shelter, voted to
stay put. Amid the crashes of thunder, we heard men calling, men cursing,
orders and arguments mingling. All this seemed to go on for hours, but we
remained safe and dry, even dozing off at times.
With the dawn, the
storm passed and the rain ceased. We emerged at last to a scene of desolation
and confusion; most of the bivvies had collapsed, their occupants standing
about, soaked through. What a mess, what discomfort, what language! The
original four-letter word was enlarged, extended, given a wealth of additional
meanings, coupled for additional effect with the fatherless-child tag, all in
tribute to the inventor of that so-and-so bivouac. For me and my companions, a
ball of string had made all the difference between the wretched experience
suffered by so many and a night in a little snuggery around which – not through
– several inches of rainwater would flow.***
Walking round the
clearing later, I was quite amazed to see that lightning had stripped several
trees of much of their bark. A terrific storm. Yet we suffered no casualties.’
** Samuel Smith’s of
Tadcaster, just over 16 miles from Harrogate – established 1758,
*** I think my father must have been something of a devil for
keeping dry if at all possible – not a bad characteristic in a Tommy. This
watery Yorkshire scene recalls his account of his original Battalion, the 2/1st
Royal Fusiliers, on their first night at Ghajn Tuffieha, Malta, June, 1915,
during their extensive training period pre-Gallipoli: ‘After we erected our
tents, a silence settled over all, darkness came, and sleep began its healing
work – until, at midnight, a storm broke with a violence most of us had never
experienced before. The majority of the Battalion were housed in large, pointed
bell tents, hastily and perhaps carelessly erected given the day’s weather. We
Signallers had smaller bivouac tents, three and a half feet high with rubber
ground sheets secured to the tent all round; thus, our weight – four of us per
tent – and that of our equipment helped to hold it down. So we dozed and
sometimes chatted through the stormy hours, and by dawn the thunder and
lightning ceased.
When we opened the tent flaps and crawled out, we were amazed.
Everywhere, among dozens of fallen tents, men wearing next to nothing struggled
to put things right. Others sheltered in the wash house. Those who had
anticipated the swimming ban being lifted were wearing the trunks they had
shrewdly procured. But as the sun rose so did everybody’s spirits and the vast drying-out
operation commenced.’
All
the best –
FSS
Next week: The Battalion’s wanderings pause at a
ducal estate where their trainers, who had never seen action, prepare them for
their return to the front with lessons in drill, polishing buttons “and similar
harmless pastimes” – and a musical afternoon with the Duke and Duchess thrown in.
As ever, Sam wonders how long this good luck can last before hell opens its
gates once more…
* 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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