Sam settles into another hospital, but it’s in London this time – his father, who’d had no idea where he was, visits and looks “happier than I could ever remember”… and finally, Sam’s home, “I pushed the old iron gate open… that first lovely Ma-made cuppa…”

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 December 4 is £3,772.16 (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… US President Wilson met British PM Lloyd George in London (December 27), the day before the announcement of the General Election results – which now look rather significant.

    Despite first votes for all men over 21 and women over 30, in a way it was no-change. The war-time Lib-Con coalition continued, but with the Libs split and undermined long-term – the Tories under Bonar Law won 382 seats with 4,000,000 votes, while Lloyd George’s Coalition Liberals took 127 seats with 1,300,000, and Asquith’s “traditional” Liberals got the same number of votes but only 36 seats, down 236. Meanwhile, Labour came second in the popular vote with 2,100,000 and landed just 57 seats and Sinn Fein scored 73 from 476,000 votes (then didn’t attend as they prepared to launch the Irish War Of Independence the following month). Proportional representation would have rewritten the whole thing!

    Even so, although that added up to continuity of a sort, in Berlin recurring civil unrest saw revolutionary Navy sailors pitted against the Army (December 24) with the military winning for the Government, such as it was. In Posen, Prussia, a long-standing territorial dispute with Poland erupted into fighting the day after Jan Paderewski delivered a speech in Poznan (December 27) which seems to have instigated the Greater Poland Uprising.

    And further east, jockeying by all concerned proceeded. Admiral Kolchak’s anti-Bolshevik Russian and Czech force drove east to take Perm, East Russia, 800 miles from their base in Omsk, where he’d been declared Dictator five weeks earlier. At the same time, the British escalated their running interference in former Russian states now striving for independence: they entered Batum, Georgia, previously occupied by the Turks (December 27), and Riga, Latvia (29) while the cruiser HMS Calypso captured two Bolshevik destroyers off Reval (now Talinn), Estonia.

[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, in mid-March, 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 near a village called Hügelheim and finally moving westwards to a Lorraine village where they remained until Armistice – at which his long trek towards the French Front began. He finally reached safety after tiptoeing through a German minefield (November 15 probably) and then started his recovery from chronic near-starvation – and a brief emotional breakdown – through the ministrations of French, British and American military doctors and nurses in Nancy and Rouen, the diverse kindnesses of poilus, an old Frenchwoman who gave him chocolate, (freezing) members of the Chinese Labour Corps who swapped him snaffled cheese for snaffled cardigans… and the less well-conceived efforts of several people who nearly killed him with overfeeding and a Madame who offered him a girl he quite literally wasn’t up to…]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

December 10-15ish, 1918, Lewisham Hospital and… home: last week, my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe, concluded his restorative tour of Allied military hospitals in France with a well-fed stint at the American hospital at Rouen racecourse where he ended up with his mind locked into a joyful mantra: “The bloody war is over, the ruddy war is finished…” The medics must have noticed his all-round more robust demeanour because “suddenly”, as he wrote (it was December 10), he found himself on a hospital train to Boulogne and across the Channel, “and off through the lovely English countryside into Victoria station and dear old London town…”

‘Like all such hospital trains during that war, ours was met by Red Cross workers – those volunteers fortunate enough to possess cars. First they handed me that ever-welcome cuppa, then a long envelope and a tag with “Lewisham Hospital”(2) written on it. A very nice lady looked in through the open carriage door and invited the three men nearest to her, and that included me, to go along with her.

     So, off across the river in her chauffeur-driven car – my first visit to that part of London, though I recalled that a lad with the Roman name of Praetor(3) from pre-war office days, had lived in that area.

     “Care and observation” was given as the reason for my presence there. Kindly doctors spent time going over my abdomen, fingers probing here and there and finally settling in one spot. Some slight damage, they noted, from my digestive upsets as a prisoner, and the upheavals caused by excessive kindness after my return to the Allied lines. But it seemed I had been more fortunate than some repatriated men.

     They warned me to be careful about my diet; meals must be lighter than most people took – white chicken meat and eggs lightly boiled came highly recommended – fried food should be avoided, and moderation emphasised above all, specifically little or no alcoholic drink. By using common sense, he said, I could avoid the worst kind of abdominal distension I’d experienced. They gave me a letter to hand to my family doctor and told me I would be free to leave in three days.

     That hospital had about it a subdued air, as though cessation of intense wartime activity had left the nursing staff drained and weary. But all treated chaps like me with special kindness and consideration. They had heard about our difficulties and read about them in the papers, which now commonly carried appeals for understanding of the mental illnesses which maltreatment had given rise to in some returning prisoners.

     Such articles and official advice counselled patience to families if relatives, whom they knew to be alive though captive, did not come home for a time. Some of them remained stranded in countries like Poland, singly or in small groups, held prisoner in isolated villages where news of the Armistice had not yet penetrated. Some, though freed, were believed wandering, and faring badly, among a German population in a state of panic and blind disorder, having lost a war their Kaiser and his minions had always assured them would bring glorious victory and plunder.

     I had been lucky to find my way back into Allied territory so quickly and now excitement and joy filled me to a point where it felt almost too much to bear…

     They let me use a telephone. The operator found my father’s office number and I phoned around 8.30am, knowing he would arrive at that time, but not realising he had no knowledge at all of my whereabouts. What a shock for him to hear my voice saying I was in London!

     “I’m going to make arrangements to leave the office for the day,” he said. “I shall come to the hospital as quickly as possible – it may be a couple of hours before I’ll see you, but I’ll hurry.” His senior clerk happily took over, he told me later, and he forsook work that day without worry or misgiving.

     In that happy time of victory and sudden release from war’s fears and tension, even the meanest employers helped to make family reunions as joyful as possible by giving people short, paid holidays when sons or husbands returned to their families from battlefronts.

     My father had never been a demonstrative man, but his greeting on that occasion was the warmest ever and added to my seething, happy excitement. The family had received only one small hint that I might be alive, he told me, just a German field-card with my name and number on it… that card given to me by a young German soldier who passed it through the barbed-wire fence of a prison camp near the Belgian-French frontier. As you may recall, I deleted some of the printed statements on it, leaving a line or two which, I hoped, meant that I was well. That soldier must have added it to the German military mail with his own correspondence and by some miracle it got through, via either Switzerland or Holland, both neutral countries.

     Pa looked happier than I could ever remember, and when he slipped a pound note into my hand – it was black, from the wartime, replacing gold sovereigns(4) – I really knew the “war’s over” spirit had gripped him. We talked on for a couple of hours, my adventures of such tremendous interest to him that I had difficulty in prizing out news of family doings and local matters. Finally, he went off, brimming with eagerness to tell Ma and the rest that I had reached England and would be coming home to them in a couple of days.

Army Records must have worked non-stop trying to catch up with the histories of chaps like me; at the hospital, I spent some time filling in a log form covering my doings over the past year – a matter of back-pay to be calculated, for one thing.

     Meanwhile, they gave me an address to which I could apply for money on account, and a promise that, when the combatant nations finally declared Peace (a condition of Armistice, or truce, remained in place for months), and the Army began to demobilise, money would be available to tide discharged men over the period between leaving the Services and resuming work as civilians. This provided immediate and wonderfully reassuring relief from anxiety about one’s financial position during readjustment to a life interrupted for four years and more.

     Meanwhile, regular hours and good food continued the process of building me up begun by the French, British and American hospitals in France, and it showed in my appearance.

     My new-found confidence suffered a slight setback though, when I, with permission, visited a barber’s shop. Explaining the unkempt condition of my hair to the man brought from him assurances that he would be careful and understanding. Although I felt that washing my hair in bath or shower for some weeks had made it quite clean, he shook me more than a little by saying he had found lice in my hair. This threw me right back into the “dirty old, outcast prisoner” category for the moment. But he set to work to kill off the filthy insects and cheerfully reported them all dead and done for after several dousings in curative solutions.

     His charge made only a very small inroad into the quid donated by my father, but it would have been worth the lot to get rid of the last living reminder of a now past and painful period.

     I left hospital with various papers, including a warrant to travel free to my home, and a long questionnaire enquiring about what had happened to me in prison camps and who had been in charge. There was going to be trial and punishment for Germans who had been cruel to our men.

     But I thought such matters could be put aside for at least a couple of weeks. I intended to devote my time to the pleasures of rejoining the family, meeting old friends – if any had survived – and, very important, welcoming dear old Wally(5), introducing him to my parents and having him share my bedroom for a few yarn-exchanging nights, if the two single beds were still there.

Everything seemed larger than life on my journey from Lewisham to London Bridge on the upper deck of a tram(6). Then, a short bus ride took me to Liverpool Street where I exchanged the travel warrant for a ticket, and in half an hour I was walking the last few hundred yards from Edmonton Green station to my home.

     To me, that walk was full of significance; my first time out as a completely free man, able to go wherever I chose to go, no obligation to report my whereabouts to anyone, and about to enjoy all the pleasures of reunion with the family who would be as delighted as I was that we could all be together again, free of wartime tensions. No more air raids(7) to send them into shelter under the stairs, no more stinking trenches for me. Just peace, wonderful Peace, and happy living for all for ever after.

     So I pushed the old iron gate open, closed it behind me, and looked up into the bare branches of the great sycamore tree which stood next to our house(8). Then, turning my back to the house, I gazed across the busy main road with its tramlines and overhead wires to the shops opposite… All small businesses and only one whose owner I had known before the war… I had usually bought my shoes from him.

     Looking half-right, I could see some cottages, a ladies’ hairdresser’s, a newsagent’s and an undertaker’s – the last, whose premises I now hoped not to patronise for a while yet, displaying a desirable coffin in the window. On the corner of our street, facing the funeral parlour, stood the pub, adjacent to a double-fronted dairyman’s place, a ladies’ and children’s wear shop, a grocer’s and sub-Post Office, toyshop, basket-ware emporium, and finally the watch repairer.

     Now to face the front door, walk up two stone steps to the old-fashioned porch – two round pillars supporting its plaster-ornamented roof – put my finger on the bell push… and set everything in motion which would begin to shape a new and, I hoped, happy and prosperous future.

     A moment later, my mother stood by the open door, surprised, almost shocked at my sudden appearance there. She greeted me warmly, without restraint, and I wasn’t reticent either… when we had parted, in late 1917, we had talked with some foreboding of the expected massive German attack about which the enemy had boasted openly.

     Over that first, lovely, Ma-made cuppa, we discussed everything as it came to mind. Considerable time passed before it dawned on me that my anticipated massive homecoming welcome had so far been limited to a mum-and-son reunion. I’d forgotten that the world’s work must go on, in spite of what may have appeared to me the Earth-shaking event of the year, my return to our family home.

     So Ma brought me up to date on the rest of the family. My elder sister now worked in a factory producing aeroplane wings, my younger brother made bits and pieces which went into the planes, and my baby sister attended a nursery school only two doors away from our house(9). At that time of day, Pa was at his office – and good old brother Ted remained abroad still, although our father had, with help from a friend who knew about these things, got a message through to the Observer Group of the Royal Engineers to tell him that his beloved lost brother had turned up alive after being released from captivity in enemy hands. A dispensation to allow Ted home could be granted now that hostilities had ceased.

     Then Ma told me the story of the German field-card in more detail. In August of 1918, Ted – home on seven days’ leave – answered a knock on the door and the postman handed him a strange card printed in, of all things, German. He understood a word or two from having worked alongside a German in pre-war days, and, of course, my signature at the bottom needed no interpretation… their first intimation for many months that, although in enemy hands, I was alive.

     Ma told me how the stoical, hard-hitting Ted had stood and stared, then shed tears of joy and cheered. After calming down a little, he dressed in his battle-stained(10), but now well-washed uniform and went off to the War Office to obtain further details about my immediate future and my return, if such was available.

     That evening, he told the family that, when he finally found the appropriate office, the clerk thanked him for providing the first news about me they had received for some months. And soon after Ted’s War Office visit, a message came to the house informing the family that I was now a prisoner in German hands. Surprise, surprise! They failed to mention that their informant was my brother(11).’

(2) Lewisham Hospital was founded in 1894, renamed Lewisham Military Hospital during World War I, and later University Hospital Lewisham.

(3) My father spelt him in a less Roman way – Praeter – when the lad joined Lake & Currie as junior to even my father’s junior office boy post in 1915/16 – Chapter 11 of the Memoir.

(4) In fact, private banks had issued notes since 1698, says Wikipedia, but this right was gradually eroded by law and ended in 1921; meanwhile, in 1914 HM Treasury acquired wartime powers to issue £1 and 10/- (10 shillings = 50p) bank notes and did so until 1928.

(5) Wally, along with another POW called George, had formed a food-sharing syndicate with Sam during the summer while they were imprisoned near Hügelheim and in the unnamed “Lorraine village”.

(6) If the doctors stuck to their prescription of three further hospital days of recovery for Sam he’d have gone home on December 13-15, depending on how they were counting.

(7) German airships and planes bombed many British towns – including some strikes on north-east London – during World War I, though not on anything remotely like the scale of the World War II blitz. A fascinating detail I ran across: among the casualties of a raid on March 7, 1918, was Lena Ford, who wrote the lyrics to Keep The Home Fires Burning (music by Ivor Novello) – an American, born 1870 in Pennsylvania, she lived in London for her last 20 years and, during the war, opened her home to soldiers passing through.

(8) They’d moved to 317, Fore Street, Edmonton (from 26, Lowden Road), in late 1917 – Sam happened to be home on leave at the time, jut before he shipped back to France for the last time.

(9) Older sister Ciss/Dorothy (born December 3, 1894), Alf (1903), Edie (May 22, 1912). Brother Frank Sydney (June 5, 1900; Sidney in some documents) had died of diphtheria, aged 12, in 1912, the same year in which their baby brother John (April 11, 1911) died, aged 1, having “failed to thrive”. Their parents were Charles Philip (April 29, 1864, Manchester), and Lily Emma, née Fleetwood (August 18, 1872, Lincolnshire).

(10) Ted had served on and around the Western Front since the Somme Battle in 1916.

(11) The official records – so it may be true – in the shape of my father’s ‘Casualty Form – Active Service’ (see scan below) aver that news of Sam being a POW (rather than “Missing”, his previous status since April 1, 1918, after the 2/7th Essex had counted their March 28 losses at Fampoux) came through on September 9, 1918, not in August as my father recalled from talking to his mother. The form also states he was a “Prisoner of War at Parchim”. Which he wasn’t, of course, Parchim, in the far north of Germany, near the Baltic, was one of the main POW camps in World War I. So probably Sam’s chance-your-arm field-card, left in the hands of a kindly German soldier at the Sancourt POW camp, Somme department, sometime in late spring/early summer (see Blog June 3, 2018), passed through a central POW postal facility there and so onward to England via one route or another.

All the best– FSS

See Footnote (11) for reference in this Blog.

Next week: Retro FootSoldierSam Christmases past… 1906-ish, Sam’s 8 and away from his own struggling and hard-pressed family for the day at choirmate Reg Curtis’s home… 1914, and, on Christmas Eve, Sam’s Royal Fusiliers near-mutiny in Tonbridge when their officers forget the men might like to get home; but when Sam and brother Ted get home the family warms up like never before… Christmas, 1915, just after the Suvla Bay evacuation, the brothers and their Regiment feast on Lemnos, then on Boxing Day they’re sent back into Gallipoli to see in the New Year under fire…

(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.

Sam, after his breakdown in a French hospital, is tended by poilu pal Paul and braced by a medicinal diet of champagne and brandy. Then an English visitor whisks him away and the medical regime switches to Guinness. Recovering, he takes a walk and a Madame makes him an offer he…

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 December 4 is £3,772.16 (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 peace continued to evolve, the main event for the British being the General Election on December 14 – the result delayed for a further two weeks so that servicemen overseas could vote. Swift legislation had ensured that women could vote for the first time (although only the over-30s) and all men over 21 too (they didn’t have to own property any more; combined, this enfranchised 13.7 million people, an increase of more than 250 per cent).

    Meanwhile, the Allies’ occupation of Germany proceeded quite slowly. American troops reached the Rhine between Brohl and Rolandseck (December 9; 38 miles apart) and Coblenz two days later; the British military governor of Cologne, Sir Charles Fergusson, entered the city and hoisted the Union Jack (11), British troops there soon joined by the Canadians; and the French entered Mainz (14; all of these towns in Rhineland-Palatinate).

    As peace treaty negotiations went on, the Allies agreed an extension to the Armistice for a month until January 17 (December 14) – and that same day their controversial and ambivalent ally, the dictatorial President Sidonio Pais of Portugal, was assassinated.

    Further east, Ukrainian revolutionary forces occupied Odessa, on the Black Sea (December 11), but I can’t find any reference to clarify whether this came from left or right. And the consolidation of Romania saw Bessarabia (now mostly in Moldova) volunteer union (10).

    Mopping up after the Ottoman surrender in the Middle East led to the British occupying Hodeida as the Turkish Army surrendered and retreated (December 13; then in southern Arabia, now in Yemen).

[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 2/7th Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations (he spent his 19th birthday, July 6, 1917, in a Sheffield hospital). In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied for Brigade HQ in Arras and at the nearby Front. In mid-March, he ran into his own Essex Battalion; they moved into the trenches near Fampoux, about six miles east of Arras 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 all sorts of hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany between the Rhine and the Black Forest near a village called Hügelheim (tending sick German war horses) and finally moving westwards to a village in Lorraine where they remained until Armistice – at which his long walk towards the French Front began and the events below ensued… ]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

November 20-25ish, 1918, a French military hospital in Nancy, France… My father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe – after eight months of slow starvation and much brutality as a POW and, post-Armistice, a four-day walk back to the French lines – last week collapsed on the street because of a big meal his tortured guts just couldn’t take and was picked up by two poilus(the “hairies” as the French called their Tommies) who took him to their own hospital.

    There Sam received much kindness, but had his one brief “breakdown” – his own word for it – succumbing to floods of tears, shaking… “a right mess”. He couldn’t even stand up and, again, a poilu picked him up off the floor – this time a fellow patient, Paul, who then, via soldierly communication in fragments of French, German and English, became his good friend and temporary chief carer:

‘I was then 20 years old, Paul about 30. A man of infinite kindness and patience, he forbade me to leave my bed except to use the “seau” or bucket. I must call him when in need and say “Portez le seau”. A patient himself, but almost recovered from his disability, he thereafter made his care of me almost a full-time job. Except during necessary absences, Paul sat at the bottom of my bed and we exchanged thoughts in our peculiar way or looked around this large square area jammed tight with beds and wounded men, most of them mobile.

     My friend did step aside when the nurse who had admitted me guided a doctor to my bed… English books and weekly magazines of that period would depict French doctors as men in long, white coats, pale of face but wearing rather full black beards. And thus I would describe this doctor who looked down at me, took my pulse, examined eyes and tongue, took my temperature, and examined my distended belly with his hands. After his visit, I was given no solid food but, four times daily, a small measure of, according to Paul, champagne and brandy.

     Injured-but-convalescentpoilusconstantly arrived and departed, but I cannot recall ever seeing a nurse in that area except when with a doctor on one of their rare visits. Not a bad system, though, where mobile patients would benefit from walking to appropriate clinics… Such thoughts occur to me now, but I doubt if they did then.

     However, the picture of that blue-clad crowd remains clearly in my mind; there could be but one explanation for their cheery self-help and mutual regard for one another’s welfare. Under stress of warfare, general tension made men most regardful of their personal survival and available comforts. But fighting had stopped, risk of imminent injury or death had gone, and soldiers could now allow themselves to relax and enjoy all those little things which, for them, had passed unnoticed when life itself was an uncertain possibility.

     While not a real member of their community, I could feel their happiness and daylong pleasure in this new way of living as they sat about or lay abed or went about their little bits of business. They’d be back in the city or down on the farm very soon; if they had survived a long and awful war, then coping with peace conditions would be simple. That sort of ease and hope pervaded the place.

     Quiet Paul would mix with the crowd from time to time, then return to tell me about some detail he’d picked up. Most of this I understood from our partial language and gesture system, but if it was too difficult I would signify partial comprehension by facial expressions and he might have another go or use the familiar “sanfairyann(2)" as we British soldiers pronounced it and the French didn’t. We compried(3) all right.

     After a few days, the doctor allowed me some sort of milk food and, believing I had regained strength, I sat up, stood up, and then fell back on the bed. But, daily, I drew away from that condition of weakness which had culminated in a breakdown. It became obvious I would soon need outer clothing – my papery prisoner’s garb(4) had vanished at some point, not to my regret, but I couldn’t very well walk around in dirty vest and underpants. Paul went off to attend to this important matter and returned with a brand-new French tunic, trousers and forage cap, all in the well-known medium-blue seen in every city and village throughout France in those war years.

     Voilà, I was a poilu who couldn’t speak his people’s language – and wearing a cap about two sizes smaller than I needed, so just as well we had no mirror and I couldn’t see what a ’nana I looked. Still, it was good to be able to walk, if only a few paces to begin with. I thanked Paul and asked him to convey my thanks to the French Army equipment officer for giving me the uniform.

     I still had to rest on my bed quite a lot and I was dozing under the blankets one afternoon when Paul roused me and I awoke to see a lady standing at the foot of the bed. Smiling like a good-looking mum, she said she was the wife of a Major So-And-So and she had been told that an English soldier was recovering in the Nancy military hospital. I gave her my name, Regiment and recent history, and she said she would make arrangements for an ambulance to take me to her husband’s Royal Army Medical Corps hospital.

     Off she went, and I received my last visit from the good docteurand thanked him for all the kindness accorded me by the French hospital. Really sorry to leave Paul without being able to walk outside and get to know him away from the medical setting, I had to say goodbye too hurriedly when the RAMC Corporal came for me. In a trice, the contact with French friends was broken and lost forever(5).

Our ambulance pulled up amid a forest of large tents, marquees and, on one side of the encampment, a border of Nissen huts – those long corrugated-iron arches with wooden ends and doors which served so many temporary wartime purposes, housing people warmly and protecting stores of all kinds from weather and scroungers alike.

     The Major, RAMC doctor and conspicuously respected boss of the medical side of this huge casualty camp, had assembled a collection of ex-prisoners who needed hospital care after being set free by the Germans. On my arrival, a doctor examined me and an officer wearing an Air Force uniform questioned me in a general sort of way. He told me that, originally, the hospital had been set up to care for casualties of the Independent Air Force(6), a new organisation composed of specially trained Allied and British Empire flyers. Their work took them deeper into enemy territory than had previously been attempted.

     The doctor ordered a light diet for me, with an additional half-pint of Guinness every day – a homely touch indeed and, though no tippler, I knew it would be good for me(7).

     Next morning, having chatted late into the night in our marquee with some other British ex-prisoner, as ordered I went to the camp’s canteen tent. There, the Major explained to a group of us newcomers that he understood some of the problems which might now worry us; we should ask for any help we might require and it would be freely given, he said – before adding an “as far as possible in the circumstances”. Meanwhile, we should adapt to the changed life as quickly as possible, follow doctors’ instructions, and so avoid certain possible adverse reactions – which he didn’t specify.

     Although we who were still at least semi-confined to bed got the same food as the patients who could walk to the mess-tent for meals, I heard many complain of feeling hungry. I’m sure they were grateful for the kind treatment they received, but living as they had done in prison camps had reduced them almost to the level of wild animals and they could not change their behaviour overnight. I would notice men prying into tents or sheds, anywhere something edible might be found and filched. They still regarded one another with suspicious eyes too; they did not smile and generally maintained, even in this pleasant hospital camp, the stale, hopeless atmosphere of the Kriegsgefangenenlager(8).

     When I started to move about a little myself, I came across a number of these men robbing the hospital bakery – the limit in predatory idiocy, surely. They had opened a small window on one side of the small, brick building; one man stood on the shoulders of another, reaching in, grabbing loaves and dropping them down to those waiting below. From some short distance away, on rising ground, I saw that loaves slid past the window on trays, propelled by some means, mechanical or manual. The bakers must have been taking them from the ovens to store for the next morning’s issue.

     This all seemed like the dog eating his own tail and then gobbling his mate’s. At this rate, there would be no food for anybody tomorrow.

     Next morning, all of us were summoned to a meeting in the canteen to hear a statement by the Major. It gave further proof of his tolerance and understanding – a mild reproof about the mass larceny, followed by a surprising instruction to those who still felt hungry after eating the meals provided. They should, said the Major, go to the Quartermaster’s tent at nine o’clock each morning; a ticket would be issued entitling the bearer to a packet of biscuits from the canteen (none of us had any money, and would get none till we rejoined our Regiments).

     How the Major financed the free biscuits issue I couldn’t begin to guess – nor how he came to have such a knowledge of degraded men’s psychology.

Regular meals and ample rest worked wonders for me. One morning, without hindrance, I walked out through the camp gates and entered a village. Walking along the main street, I noticed a woman, probably about the same age as my mother, leaning from an upstairs window. For no particular reason, I continued to look her way as I walked and when she waved and signalled that I should cross the road and join her, I did so.

     When I entered the open front door, I was faced by an open stairway made of rough wood and devoid of bannisters. At the top, I found myself in a large room almost without furniture, but the woman from the balcony now sat there at a sewing-machine. By signs, she indicated that I should seat myself on a box facing her machine. Having some vague idea that she had asked me into her home out of a kindly intention to perhaps offer me a cup of coffee, I sat and awaited developments. But she said nothing, resumed her machining, and thereafter ignored me.

     Embarrassment kept me alternately glancing at her and looking away out of the window. Perhaps she was expecting somebody who could speak her language? Perhaps, maybe, I wonder, and such passed through my confused mind, but never a guess at what, perhaps, should have been obvious… With much relief, I heard footsteps climbing the stairs and, turning that way, I beheld a girl dressed in what seemed to be the most popular colour among French ladies at that time, namely, black. I observed that she had bare legs and feet and somewhat dirty, ragged clothes.

     She stood there, silent, and then I got the shock of all shocks; the machinist indicated that I should go with the beggar-girl (such she appeared to be) to a bed in the far corner of the room. Meanwhile, she, I assumed, would get on with her work and collect cash when I had been served by the poor girl. What a set-up, what a knocking shop! And what a customer – sansmoney, sans desire, and lacking even the strength to raise a stand. Apart from the fact that I had never had a woman and this would not have been my choice either of place or person…(9)

     So I walked out and thus concluded my unforeseen meeting with a Madame and her unwashed Mam’selle.

     I continued my walk, my bewilderment gradually subsiding as I remembered that I was wearing a French Army uniform – Madame must have assumed I was one of her lot and perhaps in search of sexual relief…

I came to a railway with a train stopped and, in absence of a station and platform, several would-be passengers being pushed aloft to board and one or two cautious disembarkations in progress. Then the predicament: a sweet, little, old lady asking me, perhaps, if that was the train to so-and-so. I should have known it was bound to happen. Standing there, enjoying the freedom to look on and to share the pleasures and anxieties of departing and arriving travellers, but in a uniform I could not live up to, since French people naturally expected their soldiery to be helpful.’

(2) “Sanfairyann”: British soldierese for “Ça ne fait rien,” meaning “It doesn’t matter”.

 (3) “Compried” would be derived from French people constantly saying “Avez-vous compris?” to British soldiers i.e. “Did you understand?”

(4) The filthy British Army uniform he’d worn since the March 28 battle at Fampoux had been replaced with the ersatz POW jacket and trousers at the Hügelheim camp during the summer, see Blog August 12, 2018.

(5) It’s difficult to date events in this period as my father refers to nothing more specific than being “a few days” here and another few there. But, given he reached the French lines on November 15 almost certainly, spent a “short period” with other returned British POWs in a village near the trenches, then moved to Nancy where his collapse on the street led to the poilus taking him to the French military hospital – this documented as being on the 20th – for his “few days” of being very ill, I’m guessing the RAMC intervened no earlier than the 25th(-ish). As per a footnote to last week’s Blog, following Armistice the RAMC hospital “42 STY H” (STY meant Stationary Hospital, even though they moved around a good deal) transported itself from Camiers (way up in the Pas-de-Calais) 322 miles southeast to Nancy (Meurthe-et-Moselle) on November 18, 1918, and remained there until March 19, 1919 – and no doubt the French hospital informed the British that they were caring for a Tommy and told them when my father became fit enough to move.

(6) Independent Air Force (IAF): a short-lived World War I strategic bombing force (founded June 6, 1918), part of the Royal Air Force (itself founded April 1, 1918), used to strike against German railways, airfields and industry; statistics don’t suggest the IAF enjoyed great success – 550 tons of bombs dropped and 109 aircraft lost – and it was disbanded soon after the war ended.

 (7) Writing in the ’70s, my father is referring to the long-standing ad slogan “Guinness is good for you” which ran from 1929 for about 40 years.

(8) Kriegsgefangenenlager means prisoner of war camp.

(9) My father really did come through the war a virgin, despite various temptations preferred – this being the last. Apparently, the situation didn’t last too long once he got settled back into civilian life at home.

All the best– FSS

Next week: Sam ends those being-mistaken-for-a-poilu problems by scrounging a British uniform (pre-owned by a dead Tommy, but still…) – and, now he’s found the clothes dump, he does a crafty bit of business with some freezing Chinese Labour Corps lads. And so on to an American hospital where he can get some good meals under his belt at last… even though some German POWs there die of food poisoning! Finally, a romantic interlude… for two other people. And home. Yes, back to dear old Blighty.

(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.

Sam’s back among the Entente Allies at last – but his body can’t break free of the war… nearly killed by a kind American officer’s gastronomic generosity he collapses in the street until two veteran poilus carry him to a French military hospital where, briefly, he has his breakdown, “shaking, trembling, sudden showers of tears…”

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 at December 4 is £3,772.16 (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… Sporadic conflict continued in a few scattered settings: in the Gulf Of Finland, the light cruiser HMS Cassandra – engaged in supporting newly independent Baltic states against the Bolshevik Russians – hit a German mine and sank with 11 men lost (December 4); nearby, the Bolshevik Army was engaged in invading Estonia (8); down on the Caspian, British and Bolshevik naval vessels skirmished.

    But the main continuing story comprised landmarks in the Allies’ unopposed occupation of Germany: the Belgian Army entered Jülich (December 2), Neuss (4), Mönchengladbach (5), Krefeld (6) and Uerdingen (8; all in North Rhine-Westphalia); the British Army entered Düren (4) and Köln/Cologne (6; also North Rhine-Westphalia); and US troops reached Coblenz (8; in Rhineland-Palatinate – and spelt with a “C” until 1926 apparently!). In Berlin, as yet unoccupied, German soldiers scrapped with the domestic Marxist revolutionaries of the Spartacus League, founded in 1914, a week after the war began.

    Further south, formalities proceeded with the last Bulgarian troops evacuating the Dobrudja region, Romania (December 3), the surrender of all Turkish and Russian naval vessels in the Black Sea and the proclamation of the Yugo-Slav Union (4; Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia).

[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 2/7th Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations (he spent his 19th birthday, July 6, 1917, in a Sheffield hospital). That summer, his CO offered him training for a commission, but Sam detested ordering men around so he refused. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied for Brigade HQ in Arras and at the nearby Front. In mid-March, he ran into his own Essex Battalion; they moved into the trenches near Fampoux, about six miles east of Arras 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 all sorts of hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany between the Rhine and the Black Forest near a village called Hügelheim (tending sick German war horses) and finally moving westwards to a village in Lorraine where they remained until Armistice – at which his long walk towards the French Front began… ]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

November 16-20-ish, 1918, on the road west from German-occupied Lorraine to the French front line: my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe, after eight months of slow starvation and much brutality as a POW, last week described days two to four of his personal long walk to freedom – more of a totter in truth.

    Two English nurses in a deserted French town more or less saved his life with food, bed and kindness. He encountered his own last German: a Uhlan cavalryman who bade him a cheery goodbye rather than beheading him with his sabre. And finally, on November 15 probably, he reached the now silent and empty Front lines and tiptoed through a German minefield into a French trench.

    Temporarily accommodated with other returned POWs in a nearby village, he was given a sumptuous meal of bread and cocoa… which nearly finished him off as his malnourished guts couldn’t stand such riches and abundance…

‘During the short period of recuperation I spent in this village near the front line, I saw vast earthworks and wooden bridges being constructed to provide a wide, raised road to transport the French Army eastwards.

     One large front-line area lay in low ground, but this apparent valley did not look natural, the ground having been subjected to massive upheaval. I concluded this had resulted from underground explosions, rather than bombardment – the Armies having tunnelled under one another’s trench systems and dynamited them.

     I also watched French colonial troops, dark of skin and in their thousands, drilling and being inspected. Probably new recruits, their uniforms and accoutrements in perfect condition, they looked fighting fit, a fine, prospective Army Of Occupation – and the fact that they were coloured(2) men would doubly humiliate the defeated enemy.

     Soon we Britishers boarded a French Army lorry and moved on to that fine town which we call Nancy(3) and they call Nawnsee, where they billeted us in a large barracks together with many other returned prisoners.

     I searched for Wally and George but, among all these men, I knew no one at all. Everybody greeted me cheerfully, though, in good spirits no matter what their physical condition, certain now of rejoining their families soon and so not bothered about having to “kip down”, as the expression went, on a hard floor just as they had done as prisoners of the Germans.

     Still somewhat distended below, I needed no food, so I walked out of the barracks and found myself in a street mainly occupied by shops. It was then indeed that the wonderful feeling of freedom welled up in me – although it remained difficult to feel certain that no guard would loom up and drive me back into an enclosure.

     I looked into shop windows and knew the pleasure of gazing at beautiful things in a jeweller’s window, but then even more so when I stopped outside a shop titled “Boulangerie, Confiserie”(4), if that’s right. The display certainly was appetising… so reminiscent of the baker’s in Le Havre in the distant days of my buying trips from the Harfleur camp when Marie-Louise Baudlet(5) became my friend and interpreter.

     I came to a sweet shop and my eyes were attracted to a bar of chocolate. I became aware of a small woman dressed in black, whom I had noticed at my side previously, looking in the same direction. She went inside, but soon emerged and smilingly handed me the bar of chocolate and another small package too. A surprised and very grateful man, I thanked her, “Merci bien,” and the sweet kindness, which prompted her to give me things for which she felt I longed, affected me almost to the point of tears. I held out my hand in offered handshake and as I raised our joined hands it seemed the most natural thing in the world to lean forward and kiss the back of hers. This delighted her, and therefore thrilled me, and she broke into excited talking of which I understood little. However, I compried(6), as the troops used to say, such words as “écrivez” and “famille” and my sparse French allowed me to assure her that “ma mère et mon père” would be hearing from me shortly.

     All her wartime sufferings and losses were written in lines on her dear old face and her generosity had welled up at the sight of skinny, ragged me, whose age may have matched that of her own boy, probably long dead and buried with those thousands of our French comrades who fought to the death and held on to Verdun and other vital positions… or, perhaps, the black clothes and hat indicated a husband lost and mourned for. I know I felt deeply affected by the incident.

     We parted and, after a few yards, I thought to look inside the second package; it contained writing paper and envelopes – “Écrivez à votre famille(7)”…

When I raised my eyes again I found myself being observed by a tall officer. He had stopped directly in my path – in doubt as to my nationality, I soon realised, because I still wore my war-prisoner rags. When I told him I was an English former POW, he took charge of me at once. He was an American airman, he told me, in charge of a depot in Nancy.

     “We’ll go there and feed you, and you can dress up in one of our uniforms for the time being,” he said. I could see that at last my luck was in. I set off alongside him, though matching his long strides proved difficult. What with the tummy upsets and general weakness, and now the overflowing emotions caused by two acts of kindness accorded me by two such utterly different kinds of people… I was letting my feelings get out of control – and in danger of breaking down.

     “Here’s our place, and up the stairs we go,” he said. We entered a room furnished with a table, three hard chairs and not much else beyond a filing cabinet. He picked up a telephone, turned the handle, and told somebody to bring food which he ordered in detail. Presently, a Private, or rather Airman, came in with a tray carrying two large plates of canned meat, baked beans and bread – an enormous feed, and they both adjured me to tuck it all away. Tempted to hope my stomach had settled down enough, I went at it with a will and savoured the mug of hot coffee, not ground acorns, they gave me when I had finished. The immediate effect: happy satiety and more gratitude.

     “Stay here while we make arrangements about your uniform,” said the officer. Off he went, returning shortly with a completed form which he handed to me. He directed me to take it “down the stairway, turn left at the bottom and go through the first door you come to on the left side of the street”. Offering profuse thanks and the best salute I could manage, I made my way down the worn wooden stairs, but after a few steps along the pavement I must have lost consciousness… my next memory is of being carried along, not by Americans, but by two French soldiers using a hand seat – the method of carrying someone hurt or ill we had been taught to use in Boy Scout first-aid classes. Two joined hands supported me below and they held me upright with linked arms round my shoulders.

     Again my belly swelled and I felt terribly ill. After what seemed a long walk, these kind poilus(8) carried me up stone steps and into an entrance hall. They lowered me into a chair, talked to a blue-clad nurse, then with encouraging pats on the shoulder, stepped back and waited. The nurse drew the cork from a small, brown bottle, which she handed to me, and I drank its pleasant-tasting contents. She just waited and watched to see how I reacted to the medicine.

     Whatever I may have wished to do, Nature beat me to it; I began to tremble violently, just couldn’t stop shaking. To complete the display of weakness I began to blubber like a kid. Then the kind soldiers were carrying me again – upstairs and into a large square hall crowded with French soldiers, some dressed, or partly, some wearing greatcoats over underpants and vests, all wounded. Some had an arm in a sling or a splinted leg, but the majority wore head and eye bandages.

     The poilus placed me on a single iron bedstead with a mattress. My friends covered me with two blankets and bade me “Au revoir” and other kind words not compried by ignorant me. They departed to a chaffing chorus of remarks from their comrades.

To rest there was all I wished and the men around me gave understanding smiles and waves(9). Sleep followed. The lights were on when next I surfaced. I knew then that I was ill and confused, abdomen distended and experiencing some difficulty in breathing. And now I needed to relieve my bowels.

     What to do about that? One could not ask for a bedpan; I saw no nurses and it would insult a soldier to ask him for such a thing. I was worried, deeply, and did the only thing possible – I stood up and tottered across the crowded hall by holding on to the beds I passed and, when I reached the stairs, I sat on the top step and bumped my way downwards till I reached the ground floor. I went through a small door into a big yard, dimly lit. On the other side I could see what might be the sort of place I needed, a row of cubicles with half doors… The half doors brought vividly to mind the lavatories of schooldays.

     I shuffled across the yard, opened a cubicle and saw there was no seat, merely a small, circular hole in the concrete floor. The cubicles had no dividing walls, only half-partitions matching the half-doors. As I squatted, I recalled that, in Cairo, I had been taken to just such a convenience by a self-appointed guide(10)…

     My door shook and a girl’s face appeared above it, then she entered the next cubicle whence audible evidence of her activities proved that the circumstances caused her no embarrassment at all. In some strange way, this felt homely and reassuring. But I was in a bad way. Great gusts of escaping wind above and fluid below… Shaking, trembling and sudden showers of tears. Briefly: in a right mess.

     I crawled up the stairs and then, unable to stand, crawled again on hands and knees towards my bed… where, as always, someone I’d never met before appeared and helped me; a French soldier, he got me up on to the bed. We conversed using French, German and English words and many gestures. We knew what we were telling each other perfectly and, during the following days, that good French soldier, Paul, and I became good friends.’

(2) “Coloured” was not a racist term in the 1970s when my father wrote his Memoir. As his editor, I decided not to generationally revise his words when matters like this arose.

(3) Nancy: 262 miles (422 kilometres) southeast of Arras, 114 miles (183 kilometres) north of Belfort, in the department of Meurthe-Et-Moselle, it remained French after the Franco-Prussian War and throughout World War I.

(4) “Boulangerie, Confiserie”: “Baker, Confectioner”.

(5) Marie-Louise was a grocer’s daughter and French soldier’s wife in Le Havre who befriended, guided and advised Sam during his couple of months camped at Harfleur when he left front-line action in late 1916, after the Somme – because he was found to be only 18 and still underage for fighting – and acted as buyer for a semi-official Army cafeteria. See Blogs October 16 to October 30 and November 27, 2016.

(6) “Compried” would be derived from French people constantly saying “Avez-vous compris?” to British soldiers i.e. “Did you understand?”

(7) “Écrivez à votre famille”: “Write to your family”.

(8) Poilus: was French slang for their own infantrymen in World War I; meaning “hairy one”, it arose from Napoleon’s Army of the early 19th century largely comprising heavily bewhiskered agricultural workers.

(9) A document splendiferously titled ‘Released Prisoners Of War Admitted To Medical Units Overseas Compiled From Returns Other Than A.F.W. 3034 Transmitted By The D.A.G. 3rd Echelon, France’ (from the record office at Warley, HQ of the Essex Regiment) says that 30237 Pte Sutcliffe C. (C for his seven first name Charles, but he was always known as Sam) was admitted to hospital on November 20. However, neither this document nor one headed “Released Prisoners Of War Reported by Hos. In France”, which repeats the information about my father, clarifies which hospital they’re referring to. It would appear to be “42 STY H Courban”. But I can’t see that my father was ever anywhere near Courban – a village 116.6 miles (187.6 kilometres) southwest of Nancy – and my modest researches have revealed no hint at all that a World War I hospital was based there. On the other hand, November 20 could well have been the day when those comradely poilus picked my father up off a Nancy pavement and took him to the French military hospital, where somebody officially noted his presence. Now this starts to make some feasible sense. “42 STY H” meant “42 Stationary Hospital” in British Army admin code. They appear to have been termed “Stationary” because they moved around a lot! Anyway, after Armistice, “42 STY H” transported itself from Camiers (way up in the Pas-de-Calais) to Nancy on November 18, 1918, and remained there until March 19, 1919. So, if you’ll permit me another guess about the admin story that proceeded behind my father’s hard experiences, I’d suggest that Nancy French military hospital told the new RAMC one about his presence and that’s why, a few days later as you’ll read, the Major in charge sent his wife over to pick up Sam.

(10) See Blog August 30, 2015 – before Sam’s Gallipoli sojourn.

All the best– FSS

Next week: Sam, post-“breakdown”, is tended by poilupal Paul – and the French doctor puts him on a medicinal diet of champagne and brandy. Sam recovers a little… and gets an honorary French uniform! Then an English visitor whisks him away to the RAMC and the medical regime switches to Guinness… he takes a walk and a Madame (in the brothel sense) makes him an offer…

(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.