Sam, fighting starvation as ever, goes scrumping and gets a terrible kick in the crutch from a new taskmaster called Kayser! He also enjoys(?) raw liver nicked from pigs’ swill. But the POWs still strive to retrieve a little self-respect… via some unofficial barbering with horse shears.

For details of how to buy Sam’s full Memoir(1) in paperback or e-book & excerpted Gallipoli & Somme episode & Arras 1918/POW etc mini-e-books & reader reviews see right-hand column

All proceeds to the British Red Cross

For AUDIO excerpts click Here  Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook Here

Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… 

[Apologies to regular readers: the blog was late up this week for the first time in four years and there’s no “a hundred years ago this week” section about the wider war before moving on to the weekly except from my father’s Memoir - this is because I’ve been in hospital for the crucial two days and nights on an unscheduled sojourn. All well now and I just got home on Sunday evening to I’ll put the blog up pronto without the historical context… normal service resumes now, through the week, and next Sunday I hope. All the best, Phil pp Sam]

[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. So 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). He passed many weeks in various hospitals because of a meningitis scare, German Measles, and recovery from the effects of trench warfare’s privations (he spent his 19th birthday, July 6, 1917, at Wharncliffe War Hospital, Sheffield). During that summer, his Company Officer offered him the chance to train for a commission, but Sam detested ordering men around so he refused; he may have requested his subsequent “reversion” to Private, or perhaps it was a “punishment”, I don’t know. Come November/December, 1917, during his final home leave, he assured his parents that he would survive (irrationally, he knew). In December, probably, he returned to France, unattached to any specific Battalion pro tem, and dogsbodied for Brigade HQ in Arras – including excursions to the 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 opening artillery bombardment of the German Spring Offensive and a last stand by the Battalion on March 28 which 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. Then, for three or four months he wandered occupied France in randomly-assembled half-starved POW groups, until a train took his latest band down to a rural area between the Rhine and the Black Forest near a village called Hügelheim where they settled into a slightly less uncomfortable/filthy camp for the summer, mainly working on sick and wounded German war horses.]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe, four months a POW now, his starving gang apparently settled for a while in southern Germany, encountered the worst and best of their guards – the more sadistic setting them up for terrible kickings by the horses they’re caring for, a more easygoing bloke allowing them to pick up windfall fruit to assuage their constant hunger.

    Now they continue recent work at an actual horse hospital – maybe the first place had the status of nursing home or similar, for convalescent nags. Sam learns more about different German reactions to scrumping (it’s back to brutal again), eats some horrible stuff from a pig’s trough – and how to sneak a haircut distinctly non-Sassoon style (neither Vidal, nor even Siegfried really):

‘That day we started work on one of several horse hospitals — “Pferde Lazerette(2)” said a notice at the entrance. Another one, where we went on to work quite regularly, was on the other side of Hügelheim(3), the village a couple of kilometres from our Gefangenenlager(4).

     In charge there was a man called Kayser (pronounced as in Kaiser Bill, the great leader of all the Jerries). His glass eye, black beard and jackboots gave him a threatening mien, yet we found him a fair, if surly, taskmaster, and quite easily satisfied if we worked steadily.

     Nonetheless, on one occasion he kicked me right in the crutch with all the strength he could muster. The pain put me down on the floor, and my groin hurt for days, but I made no complaint – it was, as they say, a fair cop. I had noticed a large apple tree in a field adjacent to the stable and, hoping I was unobserved, went scrumping. There being few windfalls, I shook the tree… my big mistake — as the furious Kayser yelled after first coming up quietly behind me and throwing that terrible kick.

     All the pleasant scenery and the quietness of Hügelheim could not fill our empty bellies, so we were ever on the lookout for something to fill the awful void – hence my risky scrumping expedition, of course.

     Wally, the kind friend — as he became — who had invited me to join his Pferde Lazarette party without asking the guard’s permission(5),  found that his job sometimes took him close to pigsties; occasionally, he managed to slide his hand into a trough and pull out some dark-coloured meat which, on close study, appeared to be liver. It smelt unsavoury, but we wiped it and ate the revolting stuff. So robbing pigs of their swill was now our aim in life — though I have since suspected we were laying up stores of health troubles for future days.

     Hügelheim natives proved not unfriendly, although kept at a distance by the Soldaten. One morning when we passed through the village on the way to Kayser’s Pferde Lazerette, a gorgeous aroma of frying bacon greeted us and our Posten(6) certainly took special note of the cottage from which it arose. So, for the whole of that working day, we saw nothing of our fat Jerry friend – and we had a fair idea where he had been lurking. He rejoined our group only as we lined up to return to our Lager, but we refrained from questioning him. Each day thereafter, he disappeared as soon as he’d handed us over to Kayser.

     Every day, we took the horses from the Lazarette to water at a trough in the village, a couple of hundred yards from the stables. One lovely hot day, I took two to water and not a sound was to be heard, even though the inn – Gasthaus – was close by. How peaceful it all was, I thought. Horses satisfied, I was leading them away when suddenly a door slammed and they bolted. I was hanging on to a halter rope with each hand and they dragged me all the way back to the Pferde Lazerette and didn’t stop until they were actually inside their stable.

     That was the only time I saw Kayser laugh, but I didn’t join in.

Few of us liked being scruffy and dirty, and we did try to do something about it when opportunity arose. A chap at the prison camp with whom I had struck up some sort of matiness told me he had seen a Jerry shearing a horse’s coat with a machine powered by a man turning a wheel. He had a good idea: “If we could get into the shearing shed, do you think some of us could cut each other’s hair?”

     So later that day, during the one break from work allowed, some dozen of us climbed through a window at the back of that shed and we were soon shearing as to the manner born. The finished head was near enough bald. How different a man looked to his former shaggy self.

     But, before we’d finished the job, our lookout saw a Jerry approaching and gave the alarm. We rapidly scrambled back out through the window. The man who had been in mid-shear at the moment of emergency rather conspicuously sported only half a haircut – our method had been to start at the nape of the neck and proceed upwards and forwards. Of course, the guards spotted his condition, and we feared all kinds of punishments, but the actual result was that the Captain detailed one of his experts to shear the lot of us. Subsequently, we were able to douse our heads and keep them free of lice.’

(2) Pferde Lazerette: horse hospital.

(3) Hügelheim, in the Baden-Württemberg area known as Markgräflerland, 18.4 miles (29.6 kilometres) west of Mühlhausen/Mulhouse.

(4) Gefangenenlager: prison camp.

(5) See last week’s blog.

(6) Posten: guard here, but maybe “functionary” would be the general translation I gather; he’s the tubby, amiable fellow who let them pick up windfalls.

All the best– FSS

Next week: Sam sings “Everything’s going my way”, maybe even “Oh what a beautiful day” (in his heart anyway) as Mr Nice German Guard discovers the Treaty Of Geneva for reasons which will become apparent in a bit. Clean POW uniforms! soap! his first shower since March! new shoes! Despite that, he’s so emaciated he reckons “I would not have been recognised by my own father”…

(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote Nobody Of Any Importance, a Memoirof his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.

Sam, picking up more German, gets a conscience-troubling offer to act as translator to the POWs… And a German guard asks him what is this “fick” the British soldiers are always saying?

For details of how to buy Sam’s full Memoir(1) in paperback or e-book & excerpted Gallipoli & Somme episode & Arras 1918/POW etc mini-e-books & reader reviews see right-hand column

All proceeds to the British Red Cross

For AUDIO excerpts click Here  Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook Here

Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… The conclusive turnaround in the Second Battle Of The Marne (July 15-August 5) continued as the Allies converted the last great German attack into a long retreat (from July 20 onwards). The French and Americans first held off counterattacks between the rivers Ourcq and Marne, then crossed the Marne, while the British occupied Marfaux, 12 miles southwest of Reims.

    Thence, the Franco-American advance moved on to recover Main de Messiges (25; 40 miles east of Reims) and Fère-en-Tardenois (28), while the British occupied Montagne de Bligny (also 28; Ardre valley, southeast of Soissons). Meanwhile the Battle Of Soissons proceeded – though the usual sources take confusingly different views of its duration, one saying July 18-22, another July 22-August 2 (the prodigious casualties, even based on the shorter duration, were officially 168,000 German and 107,000 Allied, the total dead numbering 85,158). But at the end of this week, the German Army did still hold the town they won on May 30 during the Third Battle Of The Aisne.

    Elsewhere, by comparison, bloody skirmishing prevailed. The Czechoslovak Legions, 40,000 men spread along thousands of miles of the Trans-Siberian Railway, displaced another Bolshevik city government when they ousted them from Simbirsk (July 25; on the Volga, 438 miles east of Moscow). A day later, a French Expeditionary Force joined with British and Tsarist Russian troops at Murmansk (northwest Russia, on the Barents Sea) and, further indicating how shaky the Revolution remained, in Baku the self-styled Central-Caspian Dictatorship executed a coup generated by a short-lived alliance of Mensheviks (socialist rivals of the Bolsheviks) and Dashnaks (the Armenian Revolutionary Federation).

    And down in Albania, the Allied offensive led by France and Italy against the Austrian occupiers stalled on July 22 and resumed two days later.

[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)… untilofficialdom spotted his real age – 18, legally too young for the battlefield. So they told him he could take a break from the fighting until he turned 19. He accepted, 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 (many Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017).An interesting year ensued – weeks of it passed in various northern hospitals because of a meningitis scare, German Measles, and recovery from the effects of trench warfare’s privations (he spent his 19th birthday, July 6, 1917, at Wharncliffe War Hospital, Sheffield). During that summer, his Company Officer offered him the chance to train for a commission, but Sam detested ordering men around so he refused; he may have requested his subsequent “reversion” to Private, or perhaps it was a “punishment”, I don’t know. Come November/December, 1917, during his final home leave, he assured his parents that he would survive. In December/January, he returned to France, unattached to any specific Battalion pro tem, and dogsbodied for Brigade HQ in Arras – including excursions to the 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 opening artillery bombardment of the German Spring Offensive and a last stand by the Battalion on March 28 which left 80 alive and OK 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.]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week – taken prisoner outside Arras to become part of randomly-assembled, half-starved bands of POWs wandering occupied France, then down into southern Germany between the Rhine and the Black Forest – my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe, settled into a new line of often satisfying hard labour, grooming sick and wounded German war horses.

    Despite the guard who woke them every morning with the point of his bayonet, for the enfeebled and desperate POWs doing “someone” a bit of good raised morale. As did the indoor latrines and the chance to nick a spud or two from the animals’ feed… 

    And now Sam has to consider the offer of further easements in exchange for a sliver of POW honour and decency:

‘Always curious to learn a few more words of the lingo – to no specific end that I recall – I’d try to comprehend when the guards talked casually to one another, leaning or squatting outside their hut, particularly on Sundays, the day off for everybody in the camp.

     I’d listen to our interpreter too, whenever the Jerries called him into service. I did have doubts about him, though. An ordinary prisoner, aged about 25, so keen was he to please his masters that he frequently walked around quietly mouthing German phrases. At such times, he appeared unaware he was being observed. When passing on to any of us his interpretation of an order, he would show petty annoyance if one of us didn’t grasp his meaning immediately – rather as a German guard might have done. Sometimes his behaviour came too close to preferring enemy company to that of his own nationals and I noted the potential hazards of such a role. Luckily, as it turned out.

     One day at the stables, the chief officer called to an aide telling him to order me to fetch his mount from a nearby stable. I understood and, without thinking, set off before the aide had delivered the instruction. I found the already saddled horse and took it to His Highness, holding its bridle while he mounted. The puzzled looks on their faces made me realise I had acted in an unexpected way. Then, while we were marching back that afternoon, a Gefreiter(2) came alongside me and spoke words among which I recognised “Dolmetscher” – interpreter – but I assured him, truthfully, that I spoke very little German.

     Apart from the practical matter of my slight knowledge, I had not yet made up my mind whether giving orders to our chaps on behalf of enemy soldiers was correct or even decent. Memories of how indignant I felt when I saw that git Goldberg mounted on his plinth yelling directions at newly captured Britishers helped me to a decision(3); the Dolmetscher lark was out. I still wanted to chat whenever possible, though.

     Around that time, a guard engaged me in conversation (the usual: a few German words, a few English words, lots of actions). He started by telling me he had been in the front line until recently. He said he felt sorry for some of us prisoners. Others though, he disliked, because they dodged work whenever possible – especially by spending too much time at the latrine. His belief that some of us would perch on a pole over a foul-smelling trench full of human excrement in preference to doing a share of the work lowered his opinion of us Engländer Schweinereien. Well, perhaps one or two of us did make that choice, but I presumed – although expressing the thought was beyond me – that this guard had never experienced the combined effects of malnutrition and dysentery.

     He had a question too. He’d heard us using a word which he pronounced “fick” — “Warum die Engländer immer‘fick’?” he asked. Why do the English always day ‘fick’? “Ich weiss nicht,” I said. I don’t know. Nor did I, nor do I, now that it has become so poseur popular. Bloody, bugger, sod, damn and blast all serve their purposes, but the connotations of “fuck” make it an ugly sort of curse, and those Jocks and Brummies(4) I’ve mentioned befouled the air in their vicinity with their effing repetitions. Although the guard was just an ordinary bloke, not familiar with the word or its meaning, he guessed it and resented the association of swearing and the sex act(5).’

(2) Gefreiter: the equivalent of a Private First Class.

(3) “That git Goldberg” cropped up in Blog 197 April 15, 2018.

(4) Readers of previous blogs will know that my father’s poor opinion of these men was not a blanket prejudice against “Jocks and Brummies” (he’d fought alongside Scots at the Somme), but a volunteer veteran’s animus against what he saw as conscripts’ lack of commitment and discipline – got to be clear which prejudice we’re dealing with, you know, when my father’s delivering some of his harsher judgements!

(5) Sam’s interpretation of the guard’s feelings may well be correct; according to the unscientific testimony of a German friend of mine, who happens to be from the Black Forest vicinity, “Scheisse!” (shit) is the apogee of cursing in her language, with no “fuck” equivalent to drag sex into it.

All the best– FSS

Next week: Sam and pals’ POW summer days have their downs and ups – guards set them up for a kicking from the horses… but a friendly one lets them eat windfall greengages.

(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote Nobody Of Any Importance, a Memoirof his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.

Sam and POW pals get a rude awakening from a bully with a bayonet. But their new hard labour – tending sick war horses – feels worthwhile and… it’s farming country so he can steal spuds from the animals’ feed!

For details of how to buy Sam’s full Memoir(1) in paperback or e-book & excerpted Gallipoli & Somme episode & Arras 1918/POW etc mini-e-books & reader reviews see right-hand column

All proceeds to the British Red Cross

For AUDIO excerpts click Here  Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook Here

Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… The last substantial German offensive on the Western Front began: the Second Battle Of The Marne (July 15-August 5). Launched on a front running from Château-Thierry (58 kilometres/36 miles southwest of Reims) to La Main de Massiges (about 60 kilometres/37 miles east of Reims), its objective was to cross the Marne and pull Allied troops away from Flanders where Ludendorff intended an even bigger attack.

    While the German advance (July 15) made inroads west of Reims between Dormans and Fossoy, using all sorts of boats and a few skeleton bridges they erected, the French defended well to the east, good intelligence having allowed them to prepare for the intended surprise onslaught. Then British, American and Italian reinforcements arrived and a major counterattack (18) featuring 350 tanks pushed the Germans back on at least half of this front between Fontenoy and Belleau. Within two days (20), German troops had retreated across the Marne, with the Allies progressing in the Ardre valley and the Allies took Meteren (19; Nord department) and Bois de Courton (20; a forest south of Reims). The Italians’ losses on one day alone (19) – 9,334 casualties out of a 24,000-strong force – indicated the scale of the action.

    The only other seismic event of the week was the “mysterious” massacre of ex-Tsar Nicholas II and his family at Ekaterinburg (the night of July 16-17; Sverdlovsk province, east of the Urals) – “believed shot by Bolsheviks” seems to be the now accepted account. 

    Otherwise, a pre-war “celebrity” liner, the Carpathia, was torpedoed and sunk by a U-boat (July 17) shortly before she would have reached Boston. Five of her crew were lost. She had gained fame in 1912 for rescuing more than 700 Titanicpassengers from the sea. She was the fifth Cunard liner sunk in five weeks, leaving the company with only five ships afloat.

[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)… untilofficialdom spotted his real age – 18, legally too young for the battlefield. So they told him he could take a break from the fighting until he turned 19. He accepted, 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 (many Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017).An interesting year ensued – weeks of it passed in various northern hospitals because of a meningitis scare, German Measles, and recovery from the effects of trench warfare’s privations (he spent his 19th birthday, July 6, 1917, at Wharncliffe War Hospital, Sheffield). During that summer, his Company Officer told him he’d been offered the chance to train for a commission, but Sam detested ordering men around so he refused; he may have requested his subsequent “reversion” to Private, or perhaps it was a “punishment”, I don’t know. Come November/December, 1917, during his final home leave, he assured his that he would survive. In December/January, he returned to France, unattached to any specific Battalion pro tem, and dogsbodied for Brigade HQ in Arras – including excursions to the front. In mid-March he found his own Essex Battalion; they moved into the trenches near Fampoux, about six miles east of Arras… just in time for the opening artillery bombardment of the German Spring Offensive and a last stand by the Battalion on March 28 which left 80 alive and OK 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.]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week, my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe – taken prisoner outside Arras to become part of randomly-assembled, half-starved and often battered bands of POWs wandering around occupied France, then down into southern Germany – arrived late in the day at a camp outside “a pleasant country town” just east of the Rhine and close to the Black Forest.

    Although they were to reside in Army huts, he found that, as in previous POW accommodations, they had to kip down on wooden shelves, each sleeping ten men. However, always suffering degrees of dysentery, Sam appeciated undercover toilets instead of the usual stinking pole-over-trench al fresco facilities. His narrative resumes the following morning:

‘At daybreak, a Jerry guard shoved the hut door open, banged on the floorboards with his rifle butt, and prodded men with his bayonet, yelling, “Los! Raus! Aufmachen du Schlavina!”(2) – or that’s how it sounded. An evil-looking swine, with a yellowish complexion, dark, beady eyes, he had a face that never had and never would smile. This part of his work was evidently his pleasure and his delight.

     I had known such wretched sorts in England, but they had not had power over me like this specimen did – backed by a loaded rifle. Give your dear old working man some authority over his fellows and usually he will relish the job of asserting it; the non-commissioned officer, the bobby on the beat, the factory foreman, the traffic warden, all at times lean more heavily on their victims than is, to say the least, appropriate. Give a born bossy type like that authority over prisoners captured on the battlefield and he may swell into a bullying tyrant…

     So we tumbled off those wooden sleep benches, hoping to avoid a jab from his bayonet. I was lucky.

     After the black bread and coffee substitute, we were divided into working parties. I found myself in the largest group and guarded by two Soldaten and one Gefreiter(3). A couple or so kilometres brought us near to that small town we had passed through the previous day and into a big field with several long, wooden sheds. The guards split us up three or four per shed.

     I was glad to find myself in a stable housing some 40 horses of various sizes and colours on either side of a gangway. By each horse’s stall hung a board giving the animal’s identification number, colour, and, in large letters, its disease or injury. One word frequently occurred: Rhaude(4).

     A man with rolled-up shirtsleeves – the groom I suppose – instructed me; he took a handful of straw, dipped it into a bucket of paraffin oil, then rubbed the horse’s coat vigorously. When I took my turn, as I rubbed the oil in, I saw why treatment was needed; among the tough horsehair was a thick layer of what we had always known as scurf – dried, flaked-off skin. Hopefully, the oil would soften the unhealthy stuff and the harsh straw disperse it. That did not happen at first go; I passed on to the next stall and treated another horse, which my teacher then inspected. This one wasn’t so bad and the groom handed me a currycomb – something I had seen in childhood when visiting the stable at the end of our road… I remembered the whistling noise the groom in Edmonton made as his right arm arced long sweeps through the animal’s coat. And, as I went at it, I blew through my teeth with each swipe.

     This German groom then gave me a brush and showed me I should hold it in my right hand, while still using the comb with my left. So, a sweep along and down with the comb, then a follow-up with the brush.

     And each day thereafter, that was my main chore. Physical weakness spoilt my performance, no doubt, but I gave the job all I’d got, knowing it was worthwhile. Passing from horse to horse, I found each one different in temperament. I learned to avoid standing behind them, just in case – especially the restless horse I treated most days which had a hole in the centre of its forehead, a wound from bullet or shell fragment. Sometimes it lashed out, but I made sure I stayed alongside and, fortunately, it didn’t bite me. I thought it would have been put down in England, but there must have been hopes for its recovery.

     At feeding time, we led horses out, one at a time, to the water trough until all had been served. Then, back in their stalls, we tipped a bucketful of mixed hay, chaff and potatoes into their wooden mangers. Most of the horses were suffering from poor diet and neglect sustained when working around the battle area, but I must confess that out of each bucket I filched a few spuds and pushed them into that sack wrapped around my waist under my tunic – for prisoners, working in a farming area had its benefits.’

(2) “Los! Raus! Aufmachen du Schlavina!”: would translate as something like “Come on! Out!” From checking dictionaries I thought “Schlavina” might be my father’s misremembering of “Sklaven” or possibly the feminine “Sklavinnen” as an extra (uncomprehended) insult – so “Get up, you slaves!” But e-book reader Stephanie M. McDuff, a teacher who lives and works in the Black Forest, wrote to me with a convincing account of the real explanation; she reckons the guard used a local word, “Schlawiener”, meaning “rascal” or, sometimes, “trickster”. So it wasn’t quite the insult my father intuited from the tone of voice.

(3) Soldaten: soldiers. Gefreiter: the equivalent of a Private First Class.

(4) Rhaude: probably my father misremembering the word, but maybe a local spelling for “Räude”, meaning mange.

All the best– FSS

Next week: Sam picking up more German, but he’s observant enough to note the hazards and conflicts of becoming a translator to the POWs – then he’s offered the job himself! On a different linguistic note, a German guard asks him what is this “fick” word the English soldiers are always saying?

(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote Nobody Of Any Importance, a Memoirof his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.

Kindly guard “Heligoland” conducts Sam and his POW comrades on a long journey south to the Black Forest… and a new, rural POW camp with better bogs – and perhaps the possibility of snaring a rabbit…

For details of how to buy Sam’s full Memoir(1) in paperback or e-book & excerpted Gallipoli & Somme episode & Arras 1918/POW etc mini-e-books & reader reviews see right-hand column

All proceeds to the British Red Cross

For AUDIO excerpts click Here  Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook Here

Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… Looking back, we know the final confrontation was being marshalled, but in early July, 1918, did they know that? From the outside, the events of this seven days seem like the movement of pawns on a chess board, any endgame strategies hardly to be guessed at.

    The striking developments all occurred east of what had been the Eastern Front, as the Russian Revolution and Germany’s invasive war entwined and threw up strange, albeit temporary outcomes. In southwest Russia, the Bolsheviks extended their reach, taking control of Sirzan and Bulgulma in Tatarstan (July 8). Yet, 330 kilometres northwest, still in Tatarstan, the marauding White-Russian-supporting Czechoslovak Legion, whose “revolt” is dated May-August, captured the Volga city of Kazan from the Bolsheviks. This was another stop on the Trans-Siberian Railway which had enabled them to run a line of substantial outposts all the way to Vladivostok – where their General Horvath now declared a provisional government and Allied protectorate (10). They also occupied Irkutsk, near Lake Baikal, Siberia (8 or 13 say different sources); to put the Legion’s reach in geographic perspective, Irkutsk is 3,880 kilometres west of Vladivostok and 4,375 east of Kazan (they had numbered 100,000 at one point, but this improbable revolt must have spread them pretty thin).

    On the Western Front, the French made modest gains northwest of Longpont, Aisne department (July 8), and Courcy, Calvados (10), and the Australian Flying Corps bombed Merris, in occupied Nord department (11).

    Otherwise, in southern Albania Italian troops took Berat from the Austrians while the French advanced on both banks of the Devoli river (July 10 and 12), and in Palestine the Battle Of El Tellul (July 14; 11 kilometres north of Jericho) saw combined British, Indian and Australian forces beat back what turned out to be the final German/Ottoman attack of the war in that region (casualties: German 1,000, Allies 189).

[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)… untilofficialdom spotted his real age – 18, legally too young for the battlefield. So they told him he could take a break from the fighting until he turned 19. He accepted, 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 (many Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017).An interesting year ensued – weeks of it passed in various northern hospitals because of a meningitis scare, German Measles, and recovery from the effects of trench warfare’s privations (he spent his 19th birthday, July 6, 1917, at Wharncliffe War Hospital, Sheffield). During that summer, his Company Officer told him he’d been offered the chance to train for a commission, but Sam detested ordering men around so he refused; either this defiance brought about his subsequent “reversion” to Private, or he actually requested it, I don’t know. Come November/December, 1917, during his final home leave, he assured his family of his firm conviction that he would survive. In December/January, he returned to France, unattached to any specific Battalion pro tem, and dogsbodied for Brigade HQ in Arras – including excursions to the front. In mid-March he found his own Essex Battalion; they moved into the trenches near Fampoux, about six miles east of Arras… just in time for the opening artillery bombardment of the German Spring Offensive and a last stand by the Battalion on March 28 which left 80 alive and OK 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.]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week, my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe – taken prisoner outside Arras and then part of randomly-assembled half-starved and often battered bands of POWs wandering occupied France east of the Front – found himself on a long train journey south, as ever with no idea where he was going (the Tommy’s usual condition whether with the British Army or a POW).

    En route, an old, kindly guard nicknamed “Heligoland”, a former front-line soldier himself, befriended him in one of Sam’s usual broken English/broken German exchanges. But then came a display of some of the British POWs’ demoralisation by hunger that disgusted Sam – a terrible fight for unusually generous rations provided by the Germans on a station platform.

    But now their change of scene is starting to look promising as they travel deeper into the countryside of southwest Germany:

‘That journey, which could have been so pleasant, so different from the pauperish existence of prisoners behind bars or barbed wire, ended for me and about a dozen others when we stopped at a station – I forget where – and Heligoland told us to follow him off the train.

     Outside the station, we climbed into two low-slung wagons, each drawn by a pair of horses. Time slipped away as we trotted off along a beautiful country road; memory hauled me back to 1916, the end of that year, when I had been sent to the huge base at Harfleur(2) – leaving a Battalion much reduced in numbers and in spirit by Somme battles, but slowly being reinforced in preparation for further General Haig attempts to win the war by nibbling away (the tactics which cost so many lives to achieve so little).

     I digress – that wagon set me reminiscing simply because it had no springs and a similar one at Harfleur had shaken my innards then as this one did, making frequent micturation necessary. Which further recalls Egypt in 1915 where one of our wits nicknamed a bloke who had to pee frequently Mustapha Piss…

     When good old Heligoland gestured at the ascending forest rising to great heights on either side of the road and shouted “Schwarzwald!” I knew what the first part of the word meant, “black”, so I guessed we were in the Black Forest(3). The sun shining, the air sweet — all I then required to make life heavenly was a good meal and a return to normal strength. With neither forthcoming, the lovely surroundings nonetheless raised my hopes of better times to come.

     A certain vagueness about where we went thereafter bothers me(4), but I know we eventually left the wagons, started walking and, feeling flaked out, were allowed to rest awhile by the roadside, and observe what must have been at that time a proud monument to German success in the 19th Century — a huge, grey, stone arch above the spotlessly maintained highway along which we had marched. The massive figures in the centre of the edifice hit one right in the eyeballs: “1870”. A blow to French pride and a sort of threat that history might repeat itself in 1918 if the Americans didn’t add the necessary punch to the Allied counter-offensive.

     Grass-lined, graced by grand, towering trees on both sides, this highway at that point with that arch marked the entrance to territory known to us as Alsace-Lorraine(5), but which I later gathered the Germans regarded as two separate provinces, Elsass and Lothringen.

     A short walk from there brought us to a large, ancient fort and barracks, where we spent some time and were given a drink of the familiar ersatz coffee, memorable because sweetened, albeit with sugar substitute. Our guards permitted us to rest in the cool shelter of a paved area, fronted by arches and looking out into a large, sanded parade ground… where, unexpectedly, an American soldier appeared. Immaculately dressed, he walked up and down, presumably for exercise, without any visible supervision. He took no notice of us.

     What had secured this preferential treatment for him? Mystery indeed! If this American had been captured during a front-line battle, how come his uniform remained spotless? I had plenty of time to speculate about this point as I sprawled in the shade. Back and forth he strolled, looking neither to left nor right, so perhaps he had the same worries about survival prospects as some of us.

A further rail journey of several hours gave me a view of much attractive countryside with prosperous farms and villages and occasionally a town such as Freiburg(6) certainly a place of some architectural worth; even from the train I reckoned it the sort of town I would like to explore in time of peace.

     I always felt that inward ache when I looked at a beautiful town or village which had so far avoided damage by the opposing armies, and so carried on some sort of fairly steady existence which might, with luck, continue until a treaty relieved its people of the fears caused by war.

     A town of considerable size called, at that time, Mühlhausen(7) loomed up, but we stayed on the train. Ahead we saw a wide river and soon we crossed it by way of a bridge, which seemed endless. This, I guessed, must be the Rhine, though its width surprised me, considering how far south we had travelled.

     Soon after that, we detrained and our guards conducted us through a very pleasant country town and a little way beyond it until they marched about 40 of us into a barbed-wire enclosure containing several Army huts. This turned out to be our base for two or three months. A wooden shelf sleeping ten men, with a similar shelf below it, comprised the war-prisoner accommodation we had come to expect.

     As first priority, I had to seek out the latrine because the after-effects of dysentery made several night visits to that usually stinking place unavoidable. But in this small Gefangenenlager(8), instead of the standard pole-over-trench open-air outfit, we had an enclosed bog. This superior sanitary convenience gave me a sense of things looking up, that perhaps, in this lovely area, life might become more easily bearable — might there be even some hope of supplementing our meagre vegetable diet by catching a bird or a rabbit?’

(2) This was after he was revealed to be still underage for battlefield service.

(3) The Black Forest: wooded mountains, 159 kilometres (99 miles) long, 59 kilometres (37 miles) wide, in Baden-Württemberg state, southwestern Germany, source of the Danube.

(4) Oddly, the “vagueness” my father refers to in this paragraph seems to embrace lacking any recollection of his group of prisoners parting company with Heligoland, “the kindliest German” as Sam called him in last week’s blog.

(5) Alsace-Lorraine: annexed by the German Empire in 1871 as one of the spoils of the Franco-Prussian War; in July, 1915, the German Government banned the French language from the region; the Allies annexed Alsace back to France in December, 1918, and, in the early ’20s, deported the Germans remaining there and banned their language; Hitler re-annexed Alsace in 1940-45, then lost it again.

(6) Freiburg: in the Breisgau region of Baden-Württemberg on the western edge of the Black Forest, 611 kilometres (380 miles) southeast of Arras.

(7) Mühlhausen or Mulhouse: in Alsace, 637 kilometres (396 miles) south-east of Arras; formerly known as “the French Manchester” because of its textile industry; part of the Holy Roman Empire until it joined the Swiss Confederation, 1515-1798, then transferred to France during the Revolution, until annexed by the German Empire 1870-1918, after which it returned to France until 1940-45; hometown of Alfred Dreyfus and also of Dr Karl Brandt, Hitler’s personal physician and chief administrator of the “action T4” programme which exterminated 275,000 German and Austrian citizens deemed incurably ill.

(8) Prison camp.

All the best– FSS

Next week: Sam and POW pals get a rude awakening from a bully with a bayonet. But their new work – tending war horses sick from the battlefield – feels worthwhile and it’s farming country so there’s always food to be scrounged, scavenged… or stolen from horses!

(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote Nobody Of Any Importance, a Memoirof his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.