Sam dodges Turkish snipers and mysterious “big, black bangers”, sees his first ever warplanes, and the seasoned professionalism of the Royal Scots brings him to tears…

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Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… the enormous Russian Army, so battered for so long, had a successful week on the Eastern Front, driving the German Army back on the Styr river (Nov 9), Chartorysk (10, Ukraine) and Riga (14th, Latvia)… but also much further south-east pushing towards Teheran, Persia (12th), and defeating Turkish and German opposition en route.

    As the Western Front subsided into winter, the French repelled a German attack in Artois (14, a battle supposed to have been over on the 4th), but further south the 4th Battle Of The Isonzo began (Nov 10-Dec 2) with the Italian Army advancing on the Austro-Hungarian near Gorizia and the invasion of Serbia proceeded with the Bulgarian/German Kosovo Offensive driving the Serb Army towards Albania, while French and British troops assisted the retreat and held the line around the Greek border in Salonika.

    Meanwhile, rather significantly, at Gallipoli, Lord Kitchener arrived (Nov 10), met C-in-C Monro and the commanders at Helles, Suvla Bay and Anzac, and as a result recommended evacuation to the British Cabinet, who agreed it should start in December.

    However, about six weeks into their stint at Suvla and entirely unaware of these developments, the thousand men of the 2/1st City Of London Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, including my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London (still under-age at 17) and a couple of his pals, continued their by then attritional struggle with the Turks… but also fatigue induced by poor food, water shortage, disease, lack of sleep, and the emotional wear and tear of fear and the constant effort to keep it in check…

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week, in the Signallers’ hole up on the hilltop overlooking the Turkish front line, young Sam executed his cunning plan to end his near-blind comrade, family man Bill Jackson’s participation in the campaign by “accidentally” kneeling on his glasses while he slept. Then his hilltop neighbours, the Essex Regiment machine-gun team, relieved the increasing gloom emanating from his moany new companion Harry Green by scrounging a whole leg of beer, whereon they feasted for some days – nicely easing the hungry ache the poor provisions usually left them with.

    Now Sam decides to break the monotony of relentless 24-hour 7-days-a-week duty the two Signallers shared by going off on a small trans-battlefield expedition (sorry, the non-date-tied rhythm of may father’s writing threw the “100 years ago” measure a little out synch and he’s still in late October here):

‘One quite pleasant day around the end of October, I had planned to walk some distance across country to make a request to the Quartermaster of our Battalion. But, that morning, the Turks commenced a huge bombardment.

     While all the familiar field guns flung their shrapnel at us, additional bigger reports high up in the hills were followed by large explosions among our positions. This provoked the general belief that a great enemy attack would follow – the attempt to drive us into the sea would take place that day. The bombardment continued for hours… eventually to our puzzlement. We had expected it would stop suddenly, signalling the start of the Turk infantry advance.

     Eventually, I decided to set off on my errand and safely reached one end of Essex Ravine, where our Headquarters sheltered, and dropped down into a communication trench which would take me in the right direction. But just before I reached the end of the trench, a huge shell exploded above me. It baffled me because, although it exploded in the air, it produced black smoke and all the shrapnel shells I’d so far seen gave white smoke.

     I never did learn what the difference signified, but I wondered and waited, feeling another of these big, black bangers must be on its way – and, while I paused, I thought with some dread about how shells of many shapes and sizes were booming and crashing over the whole countryside, and about the large number of casualties our Army and the Anzac boys must be suffering… Getting them all down to the beaches, on to lighters, and then transferring them all to hospital ships, would be almost as difficult as the original landings…

     The next black shell exploded above and I commenced counting. When I reached 60 I almost decided to stop, but then a third one went off and I started running, counting still, and, well before 60, I had jumped out of that trench, turned sharp left and joined our chaps in the shelter of Essex Ravine.

     This being our Battalion HQ, the lucky people there had covers over their holes. I had come to ask the Quartermaster if we two, stationed on the hill with the machine gunners, could be attached to the men of the Second Essex Regiment for rations, to save men having to bring the stuff up to us two Royal Fusiliers separately. But, while we talked, an unusual thing happened.

     High above us, shells exploded and I saw that, near the white puffs of smoke, were two flying machines, their wings somewhat swept backwards like a large bird’s. Although I had never seen a warplane in action before, I was able to recognise them as German Taubes*

     Only a year or two earlier, I had seen my first aeroplanes taking part in a race from London to Manchester and back – now the things had already been adapted to combat uses. Moments later, various oddments from the shells buzzed down among us and went phut as they hit the ground. I told a man nearby that I’d recently heard a nose cap from one of those high shells had struck a man in the back of his chest and come out through his belly, but this cheery piece of information only provoked a disbelieving laugh.’

There follows one of those moments where my feeling, as editor but also son, comes down to something slack-jawed and simple like, “My Dad!? He did that!?”. But I guess soldiers were and are doing these things all the time – I mean running across battlefields in plain sight of the enemy, sort of terrified, sort of confident they’ll get away with it…

‘My little bit of business at HQ being finished satisfactorily, I paid attention once more to the near end of the communication trench into which I must run and jump. Sure enough, the black devil was still bursting above that point periodically, but my counting again enabled me to get in and away without injury. I did my open-country run, using whatever shelter I could find along the way, then slipped back into the long communication trench which led, eventually, to our hilltop with the machine gunners.

     This time that communication trench yielded a strange experience; on my right, at a spot I hadn’t previously noticed, an opening caught my eye. I peered in and it revealed a sight almost unbelievable to me: a rather wide, roofed trench, with a long, narrow table, on each side of it a plank seat occupied by men who looked remarkably clean and spruce; on the table, their enamel mugs and plates, knives and forks, symbols of civilisation and decency. They did not appear to see me, perhaps because the light from the candles placed at intervals restricted vision to things close by. I recall standing there, tears, for some emotional reason, streaming down my face… although I was now 17 years old. The difference in the way of life of those trained, experienced soldiers, and that of myself and most of my Territorial comrades was never so apparent to me as at that moment.

     Of course, it all started at the top. Their officers were all career military men, capable of assessing the usefulness of every single thing, place or circumstance within their purview. The very disciplines to which the best of them submitted and which they practised in peacetime too made them admirable leaders when war surrounded their lives with discomforts and dangers. The amateur officer would try to carry out basic standing orders to the very letter, regardless of the health and comfort of his men and the fact that wounds and sickness were daily reducing the numbers of those he commanded; so his surviving men would have to do longer and harder stints and themselves become gradually reduced to mindless, humourless automatons.

     Much of the routine stuff wasted energy at a time when all signs indicated a position of stalemate, be it only temporary. The good officer would use such periods by allowing – or ordering – men otherwise unoccupied to give attention to personal hygiene, improvement of habitation, sanitation and the procurement of maximum rations.

     Memory may play me false here, but I seem to remember that those fine men I glimpsed in that side-trench, who conspicuously insisted on preserving some of the decencies amid conditions which defeated less efficient soldiers, were members of the Royal Scots Regiment** I learned that the small number seated in their improvised dining hall were all that remained of a full Battalion who did marvellous work in the earliest landing on that Turkish peninsula.

     I left the long communication trench when it neared the earlier-mentioned Borderers’ Gully and took the opportunity to search the hole I had shared some time back in hope of finding my sadly missed flageolet***. But no luck.

     Moving up the gully there, you had to pass through two points exposed to snipers on a higher hill ahead. But that day they appeared to be looking elsewhere, perhaps watching the shell bursts going off all over our area. I rejoined my unsmiling assistant on the hill among our Brigade’s machine gunners. No casualties there, but much speculation as to the reason for the massive bombardment…

     At dusk, the hideous noise suddenly ceased.

     On duty that evening, I received a message directed to all units by Army Command HQ. It stated that every available piece of Turkish artillery fired continuously during that day and that our casualties resulting from it were not too heavy; in fact, it said, only one man was injured and he damaged an ankle when jumping into a trench for shelter. All that firing, that huge waste of ammunition, had been in celebration of the last day of the Feast of Ramadan****

* Taube: monoplane fighter/bomber/surveillance aircraft, manufactured from 1910 onwards; apparently Germany’s first mass-produced military plane.

** Several Battalions of Royal Scots did fight at Gallipoli; from the reference to them being involved in the earliest landings, it seems the men who impressed my father may have been members of 1/5th Battalion (Queen’s Edinburgh Rifles), part of the Royal Scots (Lothian Regiment), see http://www.1914-1918.net/royalscots.htm

*** See Blog 67 October 18, 2015.

**** All sources I’ve checked suggest HQ was misinformed; Ramadan 1915 ran from July 13 or 14 to August 12.

All the best – FSS

Next week: The terrible Gallipoli blizzard – Sam goes begging for food, Harry goes delirious with frostbite.

Sam gets used to trench life – the grind of little sleep, poor diet, Turkish snipers – while the Commander-in-Chief swans about on a battleship writing poems!

For details of how to buy Sam’s full Memoir in paperback or e-book & new excerpted Gallipoli episode mini-e-book & reader reviews see right-hand column

All proceeds to British Red Cross

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

Dear all

A hundred years ago… a fresh eruption in the Balkans saw Bulgaria join the German/Austro-Hungarian onslaught against Serbia with attacks from north and south at the Battles of Moravia and Ovche Pole (October 14 onwards). The French Army joined with the Serbs (17, Battle Of Krivolak started), but the British cautiously held back their forces stationed in Greece.

    On the Western Front, the Loos-Artois Offensive and the 2nd Battle Of Champagne remained mired in attrition, as did the Russo-German conflict in the East (this week concentrated mainly around Dvinsk, Latvia).

    And, in Brussels, one death occurred which proved of enduring symbolic significance: on October 12, a German firing squad executed Nurse Edith Cavell for “treason” because she had assisted many British, French and Belgian troops to recover from wounds, evade capture and, potentially, return to their respective armies. International protests failed to halt the judicially strange process (“treason” against Germany by a British citizen living in Belgium? capital punishment for what had not, apparently, previously been a capital crime under German law?).

    Meanwhile, in Gallipoli... 12 months on from joining up, the thousand men of the 2/1st City Of London Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, including my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London (still underage at 17), had landed at Suvla Bay on September 25. Their first experience of a real battlefield: real bullets and shells, their first deaths…

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week, after describing the Battalion’s 24 hours after landing in great detail, Sam moved on to more general observations about unlikely but practical heroes such as the front-line sanitary men – and the Battalion eccentric, Lieutenant Chalk, taking his hip bath within the rather inadequate protection of a clump of trees.

    Now he turns to the ways in which these deadly circumstances soon became, to a degree, routine – with cleanliness, oddly, almost as much of a concern as getting shot at:

‘We ordinary soldiers, in our trenches and holes in the ground, had no protection from the weather. Time passed, but for me and those among whom I worked, no opportunity for stripping down and washing occurred.

     Mostly, I would sit on the floor of a trench, headphones over ears, sending or receiving the occasional message. If the trench was narrow, passers-by would step over my legs, exchanging curses if they tripped over them. I could work more easily in the front-line trench where those on duty stood on a firing step, a ledge about 30 inches above floor level from which they could observe enemy positions – and, on a bad day, stop the occasional sniper’s bullet; the step provided a seat for me.

     The Battalion had built a recognisable, if roughly constructed, trench system. A front line of bays and traverses, if skilfully used, offered some protection from frontal or flank enemy fire or attack. Some distance behind this and parallel ran a support trench and, a long way further back, a reserve trench. One Company would man the front trench for a spell, then exchange places with the support Company, and finally swap with the reserve.

     Front-line duty allowed for very little rest; in support, regular spells of duty and sleep could be arranged; in reserve one might be able to sleep through much of the day, but then you moved forward to do work which could only be done in darkness.

     While the trench system suggested permanence, we had some small indication that progress had not been ruled out – we were building up a series of advance posts in “No Man’s Land”, that horrible space between the combatants’ front lines. These “posts” amounted to walls of sandbags… Shrapnel from airbursts caused casualties but, until the advance posts’ walls could be thickened – to at least two sandbags wide – the rifle bullet remained the main threat to the occupants’ safety.

     All of us had to beware of a constant danger from some Turk marksmen’s practice of making careful observations to find places where British troops frequently passed, and setting their rifles on small tripods with their aim fixed on those spots. During hours of darkness, one man could move around, fire each rifle and replace the used bullet. This caused many casualties. Even when sighted on a sandbag wall, each gun’s repeated shots had the sand draining away unnoticed in the dark until the next bullet cut through freely and, perhaps, fatally.

     Once, in ridiculous circumstances, I garnered the contemptuous dislike of an officer. I had run out a telephone link to an advance post still under construction. After I returned to the front line, bursts of rifle fire from the post brought our Captain out of his hidey-hole; in quite a rage this normally kindly man yelled at me, “What the hell are they up to out there?” Elderly, quite as old as my father, he must have suffered cruelly under the wretched conditions obtaining there. “Get hold of the officer in charge, then give me the phone!”

     Easier said than done. To operate the microphone – a small, round thing, containing carbon granules – one pressed its small button, shook it until the granules vibrated against a disc and, with luck, reproduced your voice in the distant receiver. I eventually had Lieutenant XXXX at the other end, so I handed the whole headphones-and-microphone paraphernalia to the Captain. His struggles to fit the phones to his head, then to manipulate the mike were productive of more expletives until he finally gave up the effort and thrust them back at me.

     “Take the damn things and repeat exactly what I say,” said he. I obeyed his instruction. “Who is speaking up there?” the Captain/I asked. “Lieutenant XXXX,” came the reply from the advance post. “This is Captain YYYY.” “Yes, sir.” “Now, what the devil are your men doing all that firing for?” I repeated the Captain’s words exactly, you understand. “Because there’s a Turk patrol… (pause)… You’re not Captain YYYY, who the devil are you?” “Signaller Norcliffe*.”

     A terrific thump landed in the middle of my back. “You bloody fool, you are Captain XXXX if I say you are. Chuck it! Give it up if you can’t do better than that with your bloody sinecure of a job.”

     He vanished, but in my ear there snarled the Lieutenant’s voice, “Right, Norcliffe, I shan’t forget this!”’

* For his own reasons, which remained mysterious even to me, whenever he needed to name himself in the Memoir my father used this rather obvious alias.

The prevailing late-Gallipoli-campaign sense of attritional grind imposed itself quite quickly:

‘All hope of quick action and outcome gave way to pessimism engendered by the prospect of enduring a long period of this wretched life with an Army which had no effective leadership. We all felt it and cursed it.

     News filtered through that the General in charge of the whole operation, Hamilton**, lived in a battleship some miles out to sea and sent home wordy reports of our progress – progress of which we, in the front line, were quite unaware. Poetry was his speciality, they said, and he wrote as if for the school history books in flowery language, the sort of bilge which had persuaded children that mass murderers like Napoleon were somehow brave and wonderful men.

     From towering hills the Turks looked down on us continually; we lived in their sights from dawn to dusk, and the fact that we sustained some sort of existence in that situation proves how difficult it is to destroy an Army except by physically and individually killing every soldier…

     Rough seas meant poor rations, slack organisation of supplies back at the bases resulted in monotonous repetition of the same food items, as with the already mentioned apricot jam and hard biscuits – the oft-abused corned beef became, at times, a welcome luxury. If some bully beef came our way we felt stronger, the nourishment taking effect rapidly in our debilitated bodies. If a piece of bread and a chunk of cheese filtered down through the hands of all those who organised supplies to the ranker, the lowest level of Army life, then there was much slow, careful chewing and such pleasure evinced as would warm the heart of whoever had consigned the delicious grub to such humble men. Unfortunately, long gaps lingered between such treats.

     With the best will in the world, our officers could not attain efficient feeding and welfare of their men under active-service conditions. They had not received the necessary training and it was easy to let things slide, to let the willing workers overtax themselves while slackers lurked in places they believed safe spots. A good officer would see that every man had his share of what’s available; not many of ours took so much trouble, probably because they themselves were overcome by discomforts and lack of rest and sleep.

     Anxious though I was to prove myself a man who could stick it out, I became aware of a slowing down of my movements…

     I did sometimes wonder where our top officers were. One of them, at least – our adjutant*** – had what it takes I knew, although I saw him once only in our front line… As I sat in a trench with my headphones on, sending or receiving a message, he appeared above me. He stood up there, on the rim of the trench, in a very exposed position, one arm in a sling, his face showing the pain and tiredness he was suffering. Why he was there in that awful condition I did not know. Had a ranker exposed himself thus to enemy fire without good reason, he would have been put on a charge. Obviously wounded, he should have been sent away from the line by the Medical Officer; but then we all knew of that peculiar medico’s terrible reputation…

     I saw our Colonel**** only once, and that in the early days, not long after we had come ashore and dug in. We had gone forward and occupied a series of holes in the ground just vacated by the members of a famous Battalion, by then much reduced in numbers. They had dug these holes into both sides of a gully; somebody appropriately labelled it “Borderers’ Gully”***** At dusk, just after our arrival there, a party of officers entered the lower end of the gully, walked rapidly through the middle of it and disappeared – among them our Colonel, almost bent double.

    “He’ll get a medal for this,” said somebody, and we concluded he may have come ashore for that specific purpose, for we never saw him again.’

** General Sir Ian Standish Monteith Hamilton, 1853-1947, whom World War I Prime Minister Herbert Asquith described as “having too much feather in his brain”; in the Boer Wars he received two recommendations for the Victoria Cross, both ultimately rejected; he did write a volume of poetry and his reports from Gallipoli appeared in the London Gazette, collected as Sir Ian Hamilton’s Despatches From The Dardanelles (1915,) and reissued  as Gallipoli Diary (1920). An oddity of my father locating these comments roughly 100 years ago this week is that on October 15, 1915, Hamilton was replaced as Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, by General Sir Charles Monro – but the PBI heard nothing of this till many weeks later, as a subsequent blog will reveal.

*** The “adjutant” here seems to be the officer my father called “Captain Blunt”, an alias I presume.

**** Possibly a Colonel Ekin – H. Montgomery Hyde, biographer of Sam’s ever trusted Harry Nathan (alias “Booth” in the Memoir, promoted from Lieutenant to Major in Gallipoli), notes that Ekin had remained in Malta because of illness, then returned to command the Battalion in Gallipoli, but left for good after a fortnight.

***** Probably named for the South Wales Borderers 2nd Battalion who fought at both Cape Helles and Suvla Bay, suffering heavy casualties.

All the best – FSS

Next week: Sam nearly dies of an infected centipede bite after the Battalion’s daft MO prescribes a laxative…