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Dear all
A hundred years ago this week… Early
September’s (relative) lull on the Western Front didn’t stop a general drift
towards the Allies taking the upper hand. The British advanced at Villeret
(September 10; Aisne region) and repulsed a German attack at Langemarck (13),
while the Portuguese did likewise at Neuve Chapelle (15), and the French
reversed a German gain at Caurieres Wood (13-14; near Verdun) and held them off
at Apremont Forest (16; near St Mihiel, Meuse region), while also bombing
Stuttgart, Colmar, Thionville and Saarburg (16). In terms of grander strategy,
the British Army “officially” launched the Second Phase Of The Third Battle Of
Ypres by capturing a German “strong point” at Inverness Copse (15).
Russia’s
chaotic state dominated developments on the Eastern Front as Kerenski declared
himself Dictator (September 10), the rebellious advance on Petrograd (formerly
St Petersburg, soon to become Leningrad) led by Army C-in-C General Kornilov
expired with his surrender (14), and the Provisional Government declared the
country a republic (15; it lasted six weeks).
Nonetheless,
the Army combatting Germany in Latvia remained operational and prepared to take
a stand 30 miles northeast of Riga (September 10), and the Navy in the Baltic
bombarded German batteries on Latvia’s Kurzeme coast (12). Further, the Russian
Army in Romania gathered its resources sufficiently to support the defence of
Focsani against a renewed German attack (14), and down in Macedonia it combined
with the French to drive the Bulgars across the River Devoli and 20 miles
further into Albania (10).
Meanwhile,
in Slovenia, the 11th Battle Of The Isonzo – Italy versus Austria-Hungary – is
reckoned to have concluded (September 12; it began on August 18) with the
Italians holding on to the Bainsizza Plateau at the end of what one source
calls an “inconclusive bloodbath” (casualties 158,000 Italian, 115,000
Austro-Hungarians). The fighting continued regardless of historically nominated
dates…
[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, to
recover from some lurking effects of trench warfare and prepare him for more.
However, now I have to break off from the this-week-100-years-ago excerpts from
his Memoir because my father didn’t write enough about his year “out” to
provide 52 blog excerpts. So, for the next 10 weeks until November, before he
returns to France and the Front from December onwards, I’m revisiting his
previous accounts of historic battles as seen by an ordinary front-line Tommy –
the Somme and, first, Sam’s Gallipoli, his initiation into the realities of war.
He was a 17-year-old
Lance Corporal Signaller by the time his Battalion approached Suvla Bay,
Gallipoli, on the night of September 25, 1915.]
FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
Last week, my father,
Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe, and his mostly novice-soldier pals came
under fire for the first time and experienced their first deaths of comrades –
young Nibs, old Ewart Walker – not to mention those other WW1 battlefield
treats: lousy food (instant apricot jam overload), the stinking bucket latrines
in plain sight of the enemy above… and the enemy, in fact!
Now as he settles into dealing with all this, he recalls and
reflects on a whole range of events amid the grind of attritional warfare –
starting with an early shock which made him realise that, already, he could
entirely understand comrades committing acts that he’d have called “cowardice”
a year earlier when he was a gung-ho kid in the grip of the prevailing war fever
back home, and enlisted with his brother Ted and their pals Harold Mellow and
Len Winns:
‘I wanted to talk to somebody like Harold or Len, the
intimates of pre-war days. Back in our front line, I moved around the trenches
as much as I dared without permission – and got shot at once or twice by the
apparently tireless Turk snipers. When I found a hole which sheltered some G
Company men, I asked if they could direct me to Harold and their replies
shocked me: “He’s away on a hospital ship, wounded in a foot. Trouble is, the
bullet came from his own rifle. A self-inflicted wound, which means court
martial. He has to convince them it was accidental. It happened in the dark in
one of these holes in the ground. But how did the rifle muzzle come to be
resting on his foot?”
If fear and
desperation had driven Harold to do it, I didn’t blame him, but I said, “I
believe what Harold said and good luck to him”. It was a very serious matter,
depressing to contemplate, and I tried to find Len, but he had vanished too,
wounded or ill.’
Throughout the war, whenever the “Blighty”
issue came up, Sam maintained his empathetic view of those who cracked and, one
way or another, ran for it. That sometimes included officers who fought in the
front line. Those who rarely showed their faces among the Tommies, though…
‘I did sometimes wonder where our top officers were. One of
them, at least – our adjutant** – had what it takes I knew, although I saw him
once only in our front line… As I sat in a trench with my headphones on, sending
or receiving a message, he appeared above me. He stood up there, on the rim of
the trench, in a very exposed position, one arm in a sling, his face showing
the pain and tiredness he was suffering. Why he was there in that awful
condition I did not know. Had a ranker exposed himself thus to enemy fire
without good reason, he would have been put on a charge. Obviously wounded, he
should have been sent away from the line by the Medical Officer; but then we
all knew of that peculiar medico’s terrible reputation – I soon gained personal
experience of his utter ineptitude.’
** The “adjutant” here seems to be the officer my father earlier
referred to as “Captain Blunt”, an alias I presume, even though he had nothing
but praise for him.
Ah, the MO. Here’s the story of Sam’s
tragi-comic encounters with him:
‘The Medical Officer mentioned above – he was tall, thin,
stooping, and sallow and mournful of countenance – must have escaped from a
civilian practice which, because of his ignorant incompetence, had yielded
barely enough money to keep him supplied with watery soup and a few crusts.
Some of his diagnoses and treatments were so ridiculous as to be unbelievable
by all except his victims.
Early on, I
developed a very painful toothache and, when I eventually traced him to the
hole in the ground wherein he lurked, his advice to me came in the following
words – do believe me, this is true – “I have no instruments with which to
extract teeth. Take this Number 9 pill*** for your bowels. Perhaps the
artillery can help you by attaching a string from your bad tooth to a shell.
When the gun is fired, your tooth will be pulled out!”‘
*** Number 9: a laxative
often issued as a cure-all by Army doctors – and said to be the source of the
bingo caller’s somewhat mysterious “Doctor’s orders, Number 9”.
His ineptitude became even more dangerous when
Sam got bitten by one of the five-inch centipedes that lurked in the trenches:
‘… one day my left hand swelled painfully. Between my little
and third fingers I found a yellow spot.
For over 24 hours
I stood the pain, but by then the hand and the forearm had swollen to twice
their normal size and, under my left armpit, a swelling throbbed. I knew this
poison was spreading rapidly and could be fatal. I had to visit that wretched
medico. What do you think he said? “You have had a poisonous bite, but I can’t
do anything about it. Take a Number 9 pill. It might help to clear the blood.”
That too is absolutely true.
I walked away, the
pain reducing me to moans and tears. I wandered off towards the beach,
deserting my Company, but not caring any more. To be shot would have been a
relief. At some point along the track I found a small, marquee tent with a Red
Cross flag flying above it. I entered and received a kindly welcome from a
Sergeant member of the Royal Army Medical Corps****, who listened to my story
while I removed my tunic. The shirt also had to come off, the arm so swollen
that the Sergeant helped me by pulling the garment over my head and peeling the
left sleeve off last of all.
An officer made an
examination; his speech suggested American origin, especially when he, with a
penetrating gaze right into my eyes, asked, “Can you stand some?” Of course, I
assured him I could stand anything but the current pain. Whereupon he told the Sergeant
to hold my swollen hand – which looked remarkably like some sort of puffed-up
frog – over a large basin, keeping apart the little finger and its neighbour.
The Sergeant took a firm grip and the Yankee doctor inserted his small blade
into the palm side of my hand first, then cut upwards between the fingers and a
little way across the back of the hand.
Normally, I would
have let out a howl but, as the pressure eased, I experienced only relief. Then
the surgeon, using both hands, commenced squeezing, starting at the top near
the shoulder…
Amazed at the
quantity of red and yellow muck which had almost filled the basin, overjoyed by
the pain receding, I told the doctor about our strange MO.
… That was my
first experience of American kindness and efficiency; more such generous aid
from our future allies came my way before that war concluded.
The Sergeant led
me up a hillside to a small encampment consisting of a marquee and half a dozen
bell tents. For beds, the patients had stretchers, the sort that folded up when
not in use; each of us had a pillow and two blankets. At regular hours, the
only nursing staff I saw – the Sergeant and a Corporal – brought us food, drink
and medicines. If not serious, wounds were dressed. Mine they kept open by more
squeezing, but the swelling subsided rapidly, while whatever medicine they
administered improved my general condition.
Most of all,
within a few days, the kindness of those men, the generous helpings of good,
plain food, and lots of restful sleep, turned a doleful kid into something once
more resembling a soldier.’
**** Royal Army Medical Corps: referred to by its initials RAMC
for most of the Memoir.
Just as the medics deemed him healed, he
observed a British strategic manouver which filled him with disgust:
‘My fitness for return to my Battalion became obvious. On
the very day when the good American doc decided I could depart, I was shocked
to hear a battery of our own guns open fire from a position directly behind our
little hospital. This was all wrong, absolutely wicked, and I walked away from
that little bit of heaven feeling that it had been befouled by some brainless
British officer. Now you wouldn’t blame the Turks for strafing the Red Cross
tents – and that is what happened. I heard that bad news a few days later, and
just hoped the good American and all staff survived intact.’
He sneaked back to his Battalion, dodging
snipers en route, and recalling that, in his agony, he hadn’t notified anyone
about his absence when he left the line a couple of weeks earlier; that is,
technically he’d deserted. No matter, though, he found that his pals had
explained his problem to an NCO. So they’d presumed him dead or on a hospital
ship. All sorted, he then found himself dispatched to a Signals post – more
accurately, a hole – on a hill whence he, his assistant, and a bunch of veteran
machine gunners from a Regiment he later transferred to, the Essex, observed
the battlefield below:
‘… I could see the trenches of our forward positions; quite
a network had been constructed by now and I ruefully admitted to myself that
the steam had gone out of the whole operation, the purpose bogged down in holes
and trenches.
The machine
gunners could give useful fire cover to our chaps down there should they be
attacked. But why should the Turk bother to attack? He must have concluded by
now that the British had failed in their original objective and that, if he
came forward to drive us into the sea, he would suffer many casualties and gain
only a useless strip of land. Leaving us where we were to face a winter in
terrible conditions was the better strategy’
The hole remained his workplace for some weeks,
his spirits lifted by glimpses of home and normal life provided by his mates’
fond reminiscences:
‘As a Lance Corporal, with one man to assist me, my job was
to maintain communications with 88th Brigade Headquarters. Clearly,
that meant one man resting, one on duty. I talked over the possibilities with
my helper, and we decided to try doing four hours on and four off, night and
day. We occupied a square hole, about six feet each way, with no roof. A short
trench joined it to the main trench along the top of the hill. This was to be
my home. Although on a hilltop, these trenches had been dug into the same soft,
layered rock as those first holes we’d worked so hard to excavate down near the
beach, so their unstable walls constantly flaked away.
My first Signaller
mate there was a pleasant chap, quite a philosopher in his way, probably my
senior by four or five years. He showed me photographs of his parents and a
sister, and I warmed myself in the glow of love emanating from him as he talked
about them and their life together before the war. A good worker too,
meticulous in his time-keeping, he woke quickly during the night when the luminous
dial on my watch told me four hours had passed and I nudged him to take over.
At that point, you
placed the headphones and microphone in the other man’s hands, briefly switched
on the torch to show him that the combined phone/Morse signal instrument with
its buzzer key, earth pin and single landline, and the message pad and pencil
were all handy. Then you swapped positions in the hole.
On duty or
resting, at night you arranged your thick, rubberised groundsheet so that you
rested on half of it and pulled the other half over your legs for protection
from the cold or rain. When writing down any messages coming in, the
groundsheet also came in handy to screen the heavy-duty torch beam.
But it was all
very difficult and uncomfortable.’
Imagine two men, on rotation 24 hours a day,
week after week, struggling to do this job well:
‘… we learned that four hours on, four off, meant we never
had a satisfactory sleep. So we experimented with two on, two off, eight on,
eight off, every arithmetical combination we could think of to cover the 24
hours. Nothing really worked.
When you took over
after whatever interval, your mate, released from that crampy corner of the
hole we lived and worked in, should have felt free for some hours of beautiful
sleep – but was he? On duty, you must want to go to the bog some time, so your
mate had to wake up and take over. During the day, you would need nourishment,
so your mate had to procure it, and very often cook it on our small meths
heaters. Actually, we catnapped day and night and just made the best of a
terrible existence.
The resulting
fatigue, along with poor diet, was reducing us to shadows of ourselves.’
His first assistant coming down with jaundice confirmed
the extent of their physical decline. For rather different reasons, his
replacement didn’t last long:
‘… a jolly fellow, always cheerful, named Bill Jackson. He
wore thick lenses in wire frames – I saw his presence in Gallipoli as one more
tribute to the doctor who had examined us volunteers at the time of our enlistment.
The daft, old medico shouldn’t have approved him for active service. The truth
was, if Jackson lost or damaged his glasses he’d be almost blind. He had a
lovely wife and three children of whom he talked often. Such a loving family as
he described must be missing dad terribly…
One night, as we
sat in chilly darkness and thoughts once more turned homewards, the futility of
what we were doing became very apparent to me. “Bill,” I said. “Why are you
here? A wife and kids thousands of miles away, you stuck here in a hole in the
ground. What’s the use?” He had no sensible answer to that one, so I told him I
had a plan aimed at getting him away from this rotten country.
It was simple, his
part being to remove his spectacles when next taking his rest. Should he happen
to lay them on the groundsheet anywhere near me I would not be able to see
them. If I happened to kneel on them they would be crushed on that hard ground
and he would be unable to see where he was going, let alone write down
messages.
He demurred about
all this. But later, in complete darkness, just such an accident did occur, and
when daylight came I had to give Brigade HQ a detailed account of the strange
occurrence and they sent up two men, one to replace Bill, the other to guide
him down to the beach and a hospital ship, no doubt.’
So, at 17, already full of anger and despair at
being caught up in this fag-end of the Gallipoli folly, Sam was venturing into,
erm, unorthodoxy. Bill’s replacement brought him little joy, but the Essex
veterans certainly did in their own extra-curricular way:
‘… they sent me up a sad, little man called
Harry Green. His arrival coincided with a brief period of wonderful luck with
our food. The machine gunners nearest to my hole in the ground belonged to a
regular Battalion of the Essex Regiment; country lads, very shrewd – and tired,
as we all were, of the poor and monotonous diet, they secured an officer’s
permission for two of them to make a foraging trip to the beach. A lighter had
unloaded a cargo of fresh meat, we’d heard – very likely this had happened many
times previously, yet our lot had never had a mouthful of it, not the rankers
anyway.
These two
resourceful men returned with – would you believe it? – a whole leg of beef.
Whether they stated that they represented a large group of men I don’t know,
but they got hold of it, and they carried it, each taking turns, a long way
across open country, risking shells from field guns and bullets from snipers
until they got down into a communication trench leading uphill to our position.
When I saw this huge piece of meat I marvelled that two men could have hauled
it such a distance.
Generosity to
comrades was part of the faith of these Essex farm men, so they included me and
my dour helper in their feastings. They gathered old planks and anything that
grew nearby. At dusk, they partially covered over a disused trench with
sawn-off branches and started burning small quantities of our scavenged wood,
restricting the flames carefully to avoid inviting a shell. Gradually, they
built up a big heap of glowing embers whereon we laid our mess-tin lids with
their folding handles to cook thin slices of the beef. The smoke filtered away
through the branches and the night air grew rich with the smell of meat roasting.
Then, during
daylight hours, we filled our bellies with beef stewed in a couple of large
dixies left overnight on the smouldering mound – small additions to it being
made at intervals by those whose duties kept them up and about. Large tins of
dried potato shreds had been issued and we all added our shares to the cook
pots to thicken the liquor. Into one dixie, went a quantity of curry powder for
those who liked their stew really hot – and had no fear of possible
consequences.
This feasting
continued for several days and I felt my strength building up and youth’s
natural cheerfulness returning. We could smile again; such a change from the
dejected hangdog expressions with which we had all been depressing each other.
Even my fellow
Signaller, Green, a gloomster to the depths of his nature, permitted himself to
speak of his home life and his girl. She I pitied though, for the prospect of
sad, little Private Green for a husband, even in his happier moods, was
daunting. I knew I was a mug to put up with his moanings instead of telling him
what a miserable devil he really was.’
An oddity to remind us all that this really was
a different age: Sam sees his first warplane!
‘High above us, shells exploded and I saw that, near the
white puffs of smoke, were two flying machines, their wings somewhat swept
backwards like a large bird’s. Although I had never seen a warplane in action
before, I was able to recognise them as German Taubes*****.
Only a year or two
earlier, I had seen my first aeroplanes taking part in a race from London to
Manchester and back — now the things had already been adapted to combat uses.‘
***** Taube: monoplane fighter/bomber/surveillance aircraft,
manufactured from 1910 onwards; Germany’s first mass-produced military plane, unless
you know better.
With the food supply to his Royal Fusiliers
Signallers’ hole getting erratic through confusion with the Essex lads’ supply
line, Sam takes a walk (?) down to Battalion HQ to set it straight. On the way
back up he sees something that really gets him thinking about the ins and outs
of how Tommies should conduct themselves:
‘This time that communication trench yielded a strange
experience; on my right, at a spot I hadn’t previously noticed, an opening
caught my eye. I peered in and it revealed a sight almost unbelievable to me: a
rather wide, roofed trench, with a long, narrow table, on each side of it a
plank seat occupied by men who looked remarkably clean and spruce; on the
table, their enamel mugs and plates, knives and forks, symbols of civilisation
and decency. They did not appear to see me, perhaps because the light from the
candles placed at intervals restricted vision to things close by. I recall
standing there, tears, for some emotional reason, streaming down my face…
although I was now 17 years old. The difference in the way of life of those
trained, experienced soldiers, and that of myself and most of my Territorial
comrades was never so apparent to me as at that moment.’
Of course, it all
started at the top. Their officers were all career military men, capable of
assessing the usefulness of every single thing, place or circumstance within
their purview. The very disciplines to which the best of them submitted and
which they practised in peacetime too made them admirable leaders when war
surrounded their lives with discomforts and dangers. The amateur officer would
try to carry out basic standing orders to the very letter, regardless of the
health and comfort of his men and the fact that wounds and sickness were daily
reducing the numbers of those he commanded; so his surviving men would have to
do longer and harder stints and themselves become gradually reduced to
mindless, humourless automatons.
Much of the
routine stuff wasted energy at a time when all signs indicated a position of stalemate,
be it only temporary. The good officer would use such periods by allowing – or
ordering – men otherwise unoccupied to give attention to personal hygiene,
improvement of habitation, sanitation and the procurement of maximum rations.
Memory may play me
false here, but I seem to remember that those fine men I glimpsed in that
side-trench, who conspicuously insisted on preserving some of the decencies
amid conditions which defeated less efficient soldiers, were members of the
Royal Scots Regiment******. I learned that the small number seated in their
improvised dining hall were all that remained of a full Battalion who did
marvellous work in the earliest landing on that Turkish peninsula.’
******
Several
Battalions of Royal Scots did fight at Gallipoli; from the following reference
to them being involved in the earliest landings, it seems the men who impressed
my father may have been members of 1/5th Battalion (Queen’s Edinburgh Rifles),
part of the Royal Scots (Lothian Regiment), see http://www.1914-1918.net/royalscots.htm
All
the best –
FSS
Next week: The great Gallipoli snowstorm;
trekking down from his hilltop, Sam risks snipers to beg HQ for food. But then
an interlude of plenty… and the best gift of all, the evacuation of Suvla Bay
for Christmas!
* 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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