Sam’s Memoir(1) – paperback and e-book – and the e-excerpts from it are now available in their third and final editions with added Endnotes and, in the Memoir, added documentation.
For details of how to buy the Memoir or Gallipoli & Somme & Arras 1918/POW etc mini-e-books click here plus see reader reviews here and here and reviews from the Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association here.For AUDIO excerpts click Here Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook Here
The war’s over at last – but Sam’s blog, Facebook page and tweets will continue until his Memoir concludes with the Centenary of the July 19, 1919, Peace parade in London…
All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s Memoir will always go to the British Red Cross – and the current running donations total as of April 3, 2019, is £4,078.85 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!).
Dear all
A hundred years ago this week, in the aftermath of the Armistice… The big story, the Paris Peace Conference, came up with nothing substantial (until the start of next week), but Europe and beyond remained embroiled in aftermath uproar of various kinds, often indicative of trouble in store.
Assorted “soviets” (outside Russia) went on springing up and/or collapsing. In Ireland, the Limerick Soviet, created on April 15 during a strike that followed the murder of a policeman/trade unionist by the IRA, briefly produced its own currency and newspaper before peacefully expiring on April 27. In Germany, a socialist leader organised 20,000 “irregulars” of the Freikorp into a force coherent enough to capture the town of Dachau from the local soviet (26)…
On the multinational capitalist front, power-broking business took shape significantly with the San Remo Oil Agreement (April 24). This divided spoils among the victors – well, just UK and France – with the UK passing to the state-owned French oil company a 25 per cent stake in Turkish Petroleum it had expropriated from Germany in December, 1918, while acquiring 47.5 per cent for British-but-not-state-owned Anglo-Persian oil (April 22).
While swathes of the Canadian Army disbanded, having served their purpose, Polish head of state Pilsudski unsuccessfully tried to generate union with Lithuania by declaration and the promise of democracy, and the democratic Estonian Constituent Assembly convened its first session in Tallinn… elsewhere shooting proceeded.
After a short lull in the Russian civil war, the Red Counteroffensive Of The Eastern Front (April 22-July 19) started with the successful three-day defence of Orenburg, about 900 mikes southeast of Moscow, against a White Russian attack. However, in the Battle For The Donbass region (January-May) in eastern Ukraine the Whites drove the Reds into retreat in the Kolpakovo district.
Meanwhile, in Baku, Azerbaijan, a workers’ uprising overthrew the newish military dictatorship (April 25).
[Memoir background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London,16-year-old underage volunteer in September, 1914, fought at Gallipoli with the 2/1st Royal Fusiliers (Blogs September 20, 2015, to January 3, 2016), then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons (Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)… until officialdom spotted his real age – 18, legally too young for the battlefield. They told him he could take a break from the fighting until he turned 19. He accepted, though with an enduring sense of guilt. December, 1916, saw him posted to Harrogate, Yorkshire, and re-allocated to the Essex Regiment Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied around Arras until mid-March when he ran into his own Essex 2/7th Battalion. They moved into the trenches near Fampoux just in time for the German Spring Offensive. A last stand by the Battalion on March 28, 1918, left 80 alive and “fit” out of the 520 who started the day – the 440 in between being dead, wounded or, like Sam, “missing” and, in his case, a POW (Blog March 25, 2018). For several months he wandered occupied France in randomly-assembled half-starved POW groups doing hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany and finally moving westwards to Lorraine – whence, the day after Armistice, his long trek towards the French Front began. He reached safety after tiptoeing through a German minefield (November 15 probably). Then began his recovery from chronic near-starvation – and a brief emotional breakdown – until, finally, on December 10, 1918, he returned to England and another few days in hospital before reuniting with parents and siblings, especially brother Ted, home on a week’s leave but suffering badly from gas damage. Civilian life offered Sam a warm welcome… until, in February, 1919, the Army called him back - though only to a “Dad’s Army” unit. Meaning, at first, a few weeks de factoholiday in Brighton. But then, something completely different…Sam as ex-POW guards German POWs…]
FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
April, 1919, Sussex: Sam is continuing with his final Army job, in a squad of fellow ex-POWs guarding German war prisoners still detained at a run-down near-stately home in the village of East Preston, five miles southeast of Arundel.
Transferred to Home Guard forerunner, the Royal Defence Corps, he’s emerged from a short-lived lust for revenge and come to enjoy fraternising with (most of) the enemy… not to mention a haughty girl in Littlehampton (who hasn’t inveigled him into losing his virginity just yet). This week, he’s in charge of a hard-labour detail with his sort-of new pals – they don’t share much language, but they do have a lot of WW1 front-line experience in common…
‘In spare moments, I still spent the odd half-hour with the mandolin player. His life must have been dull because, as an Unteroffizier(2), he couldn’t go out with working parties – this I assumed, at least, never having seen him outside his room. An engaging bloke, he was, always well-groomed and neatly moustached… I listened mostly, being well aware that he was older, better educated and more worldly-wise. I gained an insight into the Berlin pre-war lifestyle experienced at his level; it included frequent dinings-out and visits to theatres and opera houses.
Meanwhile, the work of reinforcing the Arun’s banks continued. A repetitive routine. Rifle slung over shoulder on the walk to the station, pack my merry men into a compartment and sit with them, listen and try to understand their conversations, but not often succeed – hoping that most of the Germans knew I had a smattering of their lingo, yet not exactly how much I might comprie(3)… and, at the same time, suspecting that the oddball(4), who resented deeply his captivity, spoke rudely about me or the British in general.
When Willi Justmann, of ruddy cheek and open smile, happened to be a member of our party, he always helped us enjoy the journey. Hans(5), whose surname I forget, made another good companion. Both spoke as much English as I spoke German. No hatred in them by then – like me, too young to hate anybody who did them no personal harm. I think we youngsters mistrusted the opinions of most older men, chiefly because they felt so certain of their rightness. I’d bet those German lads had many a laugh, before the war, at the prancings of Kaiserimitators with the ugly, carefully moulded moustaches, points upturned, the elaborate uniforms and high-kick marching to and fro.
Detraining at Arundel(6), we marched to a prearranged rendezvous with a man who supervised our unloading blocks of chalk from a barge on to the riverbank at various points. That task completed, we then rolled the lumps to the river edge and down the bank to settle in the water. Then we built up one block on top of another, and gradually constructed a new, firm riverbank.
Our boss was a genuine Sussex-by-the-sea man of about 60 years, slow-talking, comfortable, and the sort of bloke for whom people work twice as hard as they will for a bully. He wore a leather strap over his corduroy trousers, just below each knee, to guard his private parts against the marauding habits of small insects and tiny rodents. His lower regions protected and his torso massively garbed in a long poacher’s coat of heavy black cloth, he faced both weather and his fellows with confidence, knew his job well and shared his consequent contentment with those around him, including our German mates. The decent ones, that is, for when I numbered among my party, for one day only, that Prussian-type nut, the foreman soon got his measure and yelled, “Work you! Stop jawing and get on with it!”
No other Jerry ever had a word of reproof from him in my hearing.
Up on a hill above the town, I could see Arundel Castle(7) in its extensive grounds and longed to slip away and explore them, but I needlessly feared someone might escape – why should they have done so, with return to Deutschland probably imminent?’
(2) Unteroffizier: equivalent of Sergeant in the German Army – he was introduced in the March 24 Blog.
(3) Comprie: soldierese Frenglish for “understand”, bien sur.
(4) “The oddball” is a back-ref to the one German POW Sam couldn’t get on with, also introduced in the March 24 Blog. As per a few paragraphs down, Sam thought him a “Prussian” – but then he tended to think that of any German he disliked, such as the miserable prison-camp guard in Lorraine, back in autumn 1918, who continued mistreating and harassing the British POWs even after everyone else started celebrating the Armistice (see Blog November 18, 2018).
(5) Hans and Willi were the first German POWs Sam befriended when he got over his vengeful phase (again see Blog March 24).
(6) Area map showing Arundel, East Preston etc at https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/East+Preston/@50.8489064,-0.5554478,12z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x4875a480ae383f65:0x27ad9d21859cd419!8m2!3d50.811152!4d-0.48458 (if this doesn’t click through and you like to see a map of what you’re reading about, do cut and paste it into your favourite search engine).
(7) For a recent photo of Arundel Castle as viewed from the banks of the Arun where Sam and his German POWs were working in 1919 see this local news story https://www.littlehamptongazette.co.uk/news/woman-s-warning-after-toddler-falls-into-stream-near-arundel-castle-1-8706417 Parts of the castle date back as far as 1068 and it has been the family seat of the Dukes of Norfolk for more than 850 years (two of them were beheaded by angry monarchs and the palace was besieged during the Civil War).
All the best– FSS
Next week: Sam contemplates leaving the Army imminently and finds his self-confidence vanishing as he realises he has to build a new, civilian life… As ever, older brother Ted is ahead of him, back in his pre-war job… But Sam finds his own former employer bust and not hiring…
(1) 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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