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Dear all
A hundred years ago this week… The
Third Battle Of Ypres/Passchendaele (July 31-November 10) stalled to a degree
because of more heavy rain, but British troops made a couple of advances
including the capture of German positions east of Hargicourt, northwest of St
Quentin (August 22-26). However, the Canadians committed what’s commonly
regarded as a tragic error in trying to extend the Battle Of Hill 70 success to
take the town of Lens – a failure with heavy casualties, some inflicted by the
Germans’ new mustard gas (21-22).
Further
south, unhampered by the weather, the French launched the Second Offensive
Battle Of Verdun (August 20-26) and moved rapidly through their list of
objectives, taking Avocourt Wood, Mort Homme, Hill 240 (23-24), Hill 304, Bois
Canard (25) and reaching the outskirts of Beaumont (26; French casualties
14,000, German unknown).
While
the Russian retreat on the Eastern Front continued, especially in Latvia, their
supportive action alongside the Romanian Army bore some fruit as they helped to
beat back a week-long German counterattack and protect gains made in the Battle
Of Marasesti (August 6-September 3), and did likewise as the Battle Of Oituz
settled into a stalemate (August 20).
Meanwhile,
Italy’s opening onslaught on the Austro-Hungarians in the 11th Battle Of The
Isonzo (August 18-September 12) progressed well as they occupied Korite and
Sella (August 20), Monte Santo (25) and most of the Bainsizza Plateau, their
main target.
Back
home, one of those minor landmarks which meant nothing at the time occurred
when German planes bombed Dover, Ramsgate and Margate (August 22; 12 killed, 25
injured) – this turned out to be World War 1’s last German daylight raid on the
UK by aeroplanes.
[Memoir background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller 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. So they 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, and then,
just after his 19th birthday on July 6, a few summer weeks stomping around
Yorkshire on a route march… which in due course leads him to hospital again…]
FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
Last week a hundred years ago, still lodging in
tented encampments on their route march, my father and his comrades took
medicals which they regarded with some ambivalence given the common talk was
that an “A1” fit-and-healthy verdict amounted to a “death sentence” via
imminent dispatch to the battlefield (for the first time in many cases, though
not for the formerly underaged veterans like Sam).
But no
clarity ensued for my father. Judged “A1 conditionally” because of his erratic
temperature and intermittent bouts of “lassitude” – the less conspicuous
outcomes of his months at Gallipoli and the Somme? He was sent to a Sheffield
hospital (probably Wharncliffe War Hospital, though he doesn’t name it) to be
“built up”.
As he
stabilised he was told he could go out into the town whenever he wished - but,
oddly, he had to wear the wonderfully inelegant one-size-doesn’t-fit-anybody
“hospital blue” uniform. Despite that, he got back together with Nurse Flo from
the quarantine unit at another Sheffield hospital he’d attended earlier in the
year (for carrying cerebrospinal meningitis then catching German measles).
Their friendship back then had led him closer to losing his virginity than
anything else in the course of the war – his Boy Scout “chivalry” lessons saved
him, so to speak – but now she’s taken him to a family chalet in the woods
outside Rotherham…
‘She drew a curtain aside revealing a small double-bed and,
to liven things up a bit, I pretended I was a lascivious villain and had at
last got a maiden in me power and would have me way with her come what may.
Laughing and giggling at this unlikely idea, we acted out the scene, then came
to the part where I picked her up – thankful she was so tiny – and flung her at
the bed. Probably she grabbed at the curtain but, whatever caused it, down came
part of the drape, torn from the rings on the rod above. Her relatives might
have arrived at wrong conclusions about our conduct, so needle and cotton had to
be found and the curtain re-hung. After valuable time had been wasted on that
job, we had time only to rush through the lovely strawberry tea which someone
had prepared and stored in a food safe for our enjoyment. Then we had to hurry
back to hospital.
Another day, we
spent the few hours of freedom I was permitted at a cinema, followed by tea in
Rotherham at Flo’s sister’s house in a quiet cul de sac. Nothing exciting
happened, but again these close contacts with civilians still living normal
lives found me very appreciative, though always uneasy somewhere inside.
In the hospital ward, I made two good friends – Foxon, and
the other name won’t come back to me – both local lads, from opposite ends of
Sheffield. Foxon invited me to accompany him to his home one afternoon. We
walked uphill, to Eccleshall, a district obviously inhabited by well-off
people. Foxon’s family lived in a detached house standing in grounds with trees
and shrubs; Dad, who shook hands and made me very welcome, wore a black morning
coat – the long, cut-away type – and striped trousers, a shirt with a fairly
high, white, butterfly collar, and a grey tie. Foxon, like me, wore the
shapeless hospital-blue two-piece, so I felt at no disadvantage. We spent an
hour or so talking, drinking milky coffee, and eating little sugary pastries.
Just as friendly
was the family of my other pal. They lived in a terraced house somewhere off
the Attercliffe Road and I enjoyed a happy afternoon there with his mother and
sisters.
On a fine day, a
concert party entertained us soldiers in the park-like grounds of the hospital.
The comedian did well with a George Robey** song and followed that
with I Ain’t Never Got Nothing From Nobody, performed in a funny,
forward-leaning, eyeball-rolling style which amused some and sort of scared
others who weren’t so sure that the man was really sane. After that, reassuringly,
children from a ballet school danced prettily on the well-cut lawn.
I thought about the mates I’d left behind on the Somme staring
sightless at that great big moon on the night of the final search for survivors***.
They would be just bones in earth now. They could have been here watching the
lovely children, had they shared my good luck.’’
** George Robey: “The
Prime Minister Of Mirth”, 1869-1954, music hall star from Kennington, London;
his best-known song was If You Were The Only Girl In The World and his catch
phrase “Kindly temper your hilarity with a modicum of reserve”; he raised
£500,000 for war charities during World War I; Nobody (the correct title),
written in 1905 by Bert Williams (1874-1922, the best-selling black American
recording artist pre-1920; W.C. Fields called him the funniest and the saddest
man he knew) and lyricist Alex Rogers (no dates and little other information on
him except he was a black vaudeville performer, no references to him after
1924), for a Broadway show, Abyssinia
which featured real, live camels; lyrics include “When
all day long things go amiss,/And I go home to find some bliss,/Who hands to me
a glowin’ kiss?/Nobody/… I ain’t never got nothin’ from nobody, no time!/And
until I get somethin’ from somebody, sometime/… I don’t intend to do nothin’
for nobody, no time!”; later recorded by Bing Crosby, Nina Simone, Ry Cooder,
Johnny Cash.
*** My father (recalling
this in his 70s) was no doubt thinking about the pal he found out in No Man’s
Land when the remnants of his Kensingtons Battalion were retrieving the dead
three or four nights after the July 1, 1916, slaughter – this on the northern
end of the Somme Front around Foncquevillers and Hébuterne, opposite the
still-German-held Gommecourt. In Chapter 31 of his Memoir, he wrote: ‘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… 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… 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… 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… Goodbye, Charlie.’
All
the best –
FSS
Next week: Sam’s virtue preserved once more… his
story now backtracks to Gallipoli!… As per the earlier period in spring-summer,
my father didn’t write enough about his under-age “gap year” to provide a
substantial blog for the whole of 2017 (blogging wasn’t really a consideration
when he was writing back in the ‘70s). So on the retrospective lines of the
Making Of FootSoldierSam series about his childhood and teens, for the next ten
weeks I’m going to run excerpts from his battlefield experiences at Gallipoli
and then the Somme – before returning to his 100-years-ago-this-week story,
concluding the year with his departure for the Western Front, presaging Sam’s
remarkable account of his 1918, the to-the-last-man-and-bullet defensive battle
against the Spring Offensive, his months as a POW and onwards to Armistice and
Peace…
* 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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