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Dear all
A hundred years ago this week… The
Battle Of Passchendaele/Third Battle Of Ypres (July 31-November 10) emerged
from a lull induced by the inundatory rains which accompanied the initial attack
with the French advancing northwest of Bixschoote (August 8). Then the British launched
a substantial attack on the Gheluvelt Plateau across a two-mile front (10),
only to be driven back by a German counterattack which left Westhoek Ridge in
the north of the battle zone as their only gain.
On
the Eastern Front, the Russian Army continued to recede, despite the odd rally,
as at Czernowitz (August 6; western Ukraine now). However, further south, they
again played a strong hand supporting the Romanian fightback against the German
and Austro-Hungarian Armies.
Following
their defeat in July at Marasti, the two Axis Armies initiated the Battle Of
Marasesti (August 6-20; eastern Romania). With massive forces arrayed – more
than 200,000 on each side – the Germans attacked the Russians on the Sireth and
Susitza rivers. Their opponents fell back, but not far, and gradually forced
the Axis Armies to shift their offensive to the northwest before launching a
counterattack in the Moldavian mountains (12).
In
the adjacent – 80 miles northwest of Marasesti – but separate Second Battle Of
Oituz (August 8-20), the Austro-Hungarian Army began their onslaught with a
lengthy artillery barrage on Pravila peak, but failed to take it. The Germans
advanced around Ungureanu peak. But cavalry reinforcements helped the Romanians
to retake Oituz village and land around Mount Cosna (11), then infantry
reinforcements “fresh” from a 90-mile march counterattacked the
Austro-Hungarians at Ciresola peak.
Meanwhile,
back in the UK a German air raid on Southend and Margate killed 32.
And
Liberia declared war on Germany (August 7)…
[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 real 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
turned 19. He took up the offer, 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 until such time as they severally became eligible for the trenches again… An interesting year ensued – four months of blizzards, a
meningitis scare, special training in various northern locations, until – to
pass a few weeks of summer stomping around Yorkshire on a route march …]
FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
Last week, still encamped at the stately
Yorkshire home where the Battalion’s lengthy route march had come to rest, Sam
was startled when his Company Captain offered him the chance of promotion to
commissioned officer direct from Lance Corporal. But he turned it down –
hastily, he later felt – through a combination of his own fundamental aversion
to rank, ordering people around and so on, and his (widely shared) loathing of
this particular Captain’s snide ways.
That
settled he did a bit of clerking while his comrades went through the medicals
which seemed likely to see them sent to the Front – or not, depending on
outcomes. Now he continues with that task, deciding fates, he fears, with a few
strokes of his pen, until the moment comes for him to have his own examination…
‘Given a seat at a small table arrayed with pen and ink,
blotting paper and a pile of forms, I hope I assumed a reasonably intelligent
demeanour and grasped the simple instructions given by the RAMC Corporal who
assisted the two doctors. As each man entered, I wrote down his Regiment,
Number and name in the appropriate space on the form. Then, on the Corporal’s
order, the soldier in question stripped to the buff and the doctors went to
work on him. The familiar command, “Cough!”**, usually signalled the final
test. After consultation, the Corporal pronounced the soldier’s medical
category, I wrote it down, and the lucky fellow departed.
The verdict meant
a great deal; had a man been classed as “unfit” in peacetime when checked by a
doctor acting for an insurance company, he would not have felt the elation
which such a verdict evoked on this particular occasion. Most of them concealed
their emotions, cheerful or otherwise, until they had left the tent, but few doubted
that an A1 grade amounted to a death sentence. At that stage in the war,
delusions of heroism and grandeur were strictly for the loonies.
On hearing about
the medicals, a pal of mine had told me that one spell at the Front was
sufficient for him; he intended to fix matters so that the medics would grade
him C3, enabling him to spend the remainder of his soldiering life in Britain.
Hardened and, perhaps, cynical as I had become by then, I still felt horrified
by the method he proposed to use. “I’ve got a round of rifle ammo,” he said.
“I’ll dig out the bullet and take out a few strands of cordite from the
cartridge. A couple of minutes before I go into the medical tent I’ll chew the
cordite and soon my heart will be affected and beat irregularly. They’ll think
I’ve got a heart disease, mark me C3, and I’ll stay in Blighty while you poor
buggers go through the hoop in France.”
I entered the C3
verdict on his form on the doctors’ instruction, just as the man predicted. His
trick may have gained him exemption from service overseas only to plague him
with heart trouble*** in later years. I never found out about that.
When we reached
the names beginning with “N”, as did mine****, I left my clerkly duties and
joined the strippers’ queue. After that, since no one told me to resume the
desk job. I stayed away from it.
I had been passed
fit, but “conditionally”, and was not surprised when I was told to report to
our Battalion MO. I spent two days in his medical tent, during which he took my
temperature at intervals. He also examined prominent veins in my left calf.
Soon he sent me to a big hospital in Sheffield***** to seek a cure for a
tendency I’d had during my stint on home soil to suddenly run a high
temperature with an accompanying spell of lassitude. The trouble usually lasted
two or three days during which time I’d be confined to a bed in the Battalion
sick bay.******’
** While, in the
traditional way, the doctor cupped the Tommy’s testicles – why, a
moot point as ever.
*** I haven’t been able
to confirm any reference to cordite causing heart disease, but Wikipedia says “The chewing of cordite, as a form of chewing gum was far from
unknown in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The sweet taste made it
attractive, and it gave the user feelings similar to those produced by
alcohol.”
**** A reminder that, even after my father switched to first-person
autobiography from the third-person narrative he used for his childhood and a
little beyond, he still used “Norcliffe” as the family name whenever it came up
throughout the Memoir. I don’t know why!
***** My father probably
stayed at Wharncliffe War Hospital, formerly Middlewood Asylum, converted for
military use 1915-20.
****** During his spell
back in England, waiting to be old enough for a return to the battlefield, Sam also
suffered a severe case of German measles and had treatment in isolation wards because
he was found to be carrying meningitis bacteria (although he didn’t succumb to
the disease itself).
All
the best –
FSS
Next week: Sam, in hospital once more, gets
permission to walk about in Sheffield – looking clownish in his hospital gear…
Happily, not silly enough to put off his nurse girlfriend Flo…
* 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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