RETRO 6 – Sam, 14 in 1912, leaves school for lack of money and joins the world of work, discovers great working-men’s caffs and snaffles crumbs (and cigars… and gin) from the rich men’s table, and finds himself looking down the barrel of a working lad’s wasted life existential blues until… 1914 looms…

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 June 1, 2019, is £4,228.17 (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… In Paris the Peace Conference approached conclusion with an exchange of unpleasantries between the Allies and Weimar Germany. First the combined victors issued an ultimatum (June 16), namely that Chancellor Philipp Scheidemann must accept the draft peace treaty within five days. He resigned and his successor Gustav Bauer said he’d sign if certain changes were made in the draft (22). The Allies refused and told him that, if he didn’t, their forces would cross the Rhine and invade in 24 hours. Bauer signed.

    Still the German Navy waved a last two fingers by scuttling the fleet parked at Scapa Flow in the Orkneys. Well planned by Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, the mass plug-pulling put 52 of 74 ships on the bottom, including 15 battleships. British rescue ships stopped the other 22 from sinking, but also evacuated 1,774 German sailors and shot another nine.

    Elsewhere, bloody after-battled continued. In Russia, anti-Bolshevik White forces retreated on the Eastern Front (June 16), but overthrew the Crimean Socialist Soviet government and occupied the capital Simferopol. The Ukrainian Army maintained its early success in attempting to take Eastern Galicia from Poland with a victory at Berezhany (21). Hungarian troops took control of the Slovak Soviet Republic (16). And at the Battle Of Cesis (19-23), Estonian and Latvian Regiments attacked the occupying German Baltische Landwehr, who had installed a puppet government a couple of months earlier, but were beaten back at first.

    Further south, in Anatolia, the Greek/Turkey to and fro proceeded violently after the Greeks massacred 200 Turkish soldiers at Menemen (June 17) and then recovered Bergama (20) – 60 miles north of their base in Smyrna – whence they’d been driven five days earlier. A hundred thousand terrified civilians fled the town. But then Turkish irregulars defeated their raids on Erkili and Erbeyli (21-2).

    And back in the UK a little local difficulty occurred in Epsom when 400 Canadian soldiers awaiting demob attacked the police station to bust one of their number out. One bobby ended up dead and four Canadians were convicted, but sent home instead of serving jail time.

[Memoir background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London, 16-year-old underage volunteer in September, 1914, fought at Gallipoli with the 2/1st Royal Fusiliers (Blogs September 20, 2015, to January 3, 2016), then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons (Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)… until officialdom spotted his real age – 18, legally too young for the battlefield. They told him he could take a break from the fighting until he turned 19. He accepted, though with an enduring sense of guilt. December, 1916, saw him posted to Harrogate, Yorkshire, and re-allocated to the Essex Regiment Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied around Arras until mid-March when he ran into his own Essex 2/7th Battalion. They moved into the trenches near Fampoux just in time for the German Spring Offensive. A last stand by the Battalion on March 28, 1918, left 80 alive and “fit” out of the 520 who started the day – the 440 in between being dead, wounded or, like Sam, “missing” and, in his case, a POW (Blog March 25, 2018). For several months he wandered occupied France in randomly-assembled half-starved POW groups doing hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany and finally moving westwards to Lorraine – whence, the day after Armistice, his long trek towards the French Front began. He reached safety after tiptoeing through a German minefield (November 15 probably). Then began his recovery from chronic near-starvation – and a brief emotional breakdown – until, finally, on December 10, 1918, he returned to England and another few days in hospital before reuniting with parents and siblings, especially brother Ted, home on a week’s leave but suffering badly from gas damage. Civilian life offered Sam a warm welcome… until, in February, 1919, the Army called him back - though only to a “Dad’s Army” unit. Meaning, at first, a few weeks de factoholiday in Brighton. But then, something completely different… through the spring, Sam and others ex-POWs guard German POWs at a camp in Sussex, while making various attempts to get back to “normal” life… At which point, for the time being, the story breaks off as explained below…]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

RETRO 6: With my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe’s a-century-ago-this-week(ish) story taking a break – because he just didn’t write enough about his late spring/early summer period of 1919 – I’m revisiting the (in-hindsight) theme of his Memoir’s opening chapters about his childhood and teens: that is, The Making Of Foot Soldier Sam, the young Tommy who got through Gallipoli, the Somme, the Spring Offensive and eight months as a POW… 

    So, Retros so far covered 

1) his wealthy toddlerhood in Manchester for just a couple of years after his birth (on July 6, 1898) and then, after the collapse of the family tile business, real hungry poverty in London 

2) his developing immersion in the tumultuous life of 1900s Edmonton, a suburb then on the northern edge of London – streets full of horses, cattle and sheep, roads thrusting out into the surrounding countryside and a market place steaming with humanity, tooth and claw 

3) his schooldays, including a gradual discovery of his own talents, despite relentlessly daunting comparisons with his older brother Ted’s sparky brilliance, and the frustration of both boys when they had to leave education at 14 because the family couldn’t afford to pay for more 

4) the many ways in which Edmonton’s “tin church” missions to the poor and then the main parish church itself developed and influenced Sam’s life from the time he was five, and onwards to WW1 – not so much the religious side of churchgoing per se as how he and his parents gathered self-respect via involvement in entertaining and/or useful activity like organising a fete to raise funds for a new church hall

5) how recreational life for poor people like Sam who lived on the (then) outskirts of London embraced the (free) great outdoors: hiking, chiefly in Epping Forest, whether as a family group or as a church or Boy Scouts activity – the last very much Sam’s saviour as the new organisation also presented him with a whole range of fun and skills he could never have experienced otherwise, including sports and camping but also the more fringe-preparation-for-war training such as shooting, first aid and signalling. In addition, last week’s blog covered Sam’s Big Fight against school bully Hoy whom he defeated heroically/with a lucky punch…

    Now The Making Of moves on to the last two years before World War 1 when he had to go out to work. So here’s Sam’s transition into the working life and, one way and another, his introduction to a sense of what social class was all about – something which, of course, the British Army still reflected and enforced via the specifics of rank in an even more upfront way than civilian customs and mores ever could.

(NB: My father wrote the early chapters in the third person, calling himself “the boy” or “Tommy”, while he temporarily aliased brother Ted as “George”):

‘Suddenly, what had been a school day was a working day. But nothing to do. A sense of urgency soon built up and the necessity for finding work and earning money became quite oppressive. Tommy felt he was not doing his bit.’

The first job he landed was as a junior warehouseman, the only oddity about it being that his employer, Howell’s, based in Old Street, sold just one thing – walking sticks:

‘But some sticks in the more expensive grades of wood had to be made to order. In that case, the man in charge wrote a specification in accordance with the customer’s wishes. This the boy took through the works to the bench of the craftsman who would shape that stick. Tommy noted the tools of the trade: a heated tank of water, usually boiling, a flame of the Bunsen burner type, clamps – the craftsman would have to know all the various types of cane and wood and be able to select them and bend them into the required shape, perhaps having first turned them in a lathe. A skilful job.

     In short order, Tommy too had to learn about the materials used, high and low grade, their colour, graining and finish – and the correct names for them: natural canes such as Nilgiri and Malacca, whose names indicated their countries of origin(2)*; others with a manufactured colour and finish. In addition, either the craftsman or the production line might ornament them with genuine silver and gold bands, or complete handles finely chased, or with cheap imitations of the precious metals. So Tommy learned how to polish the gold and silver parts using a fine rouge powder with a buffing stick – a piece of wood with leather wound round it.

     Howell’s made swordsticks too – still popular in those days. Tommy never heard of anybody drawing his sword from his stick and jabbing it into anyone, but perhaps it did occur in some remote part of the British Empire…

     The job and its location made for a longish day. Tommy left home at about 6 in the morning, caught the train at 6.20(3) and hung about near the works until 8 when they opened, then he worked through to 12, an hour for lunch, and on till 6 with the train journey of about an hour to come.’

(2) The Nilgiri mountains in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, Southern India; Malacca, now one of the southern states of Malaysia.

(3) From Edmonton Green to Old Street, still a 50-minute journey.

He immediately realised that a crucial aspect of the working man’s day was lunch and where to eat it – cheap cafés were very heaven:

‘You can imagine how delighted he was when he found that his old pal from choirboy days, Reg Curtis, worked near him. They could meet at lunchtimes and Reggie knew of one or two places to sit and listen to music and singing for half an hour. He also knew the places where, for a penny, you could get a large cup of tea – one, part of a chain called Lockharts (bless the promoter of them), where just buying a mug of tea entitled you to sit there and eat the sandwich lunch mother had prepared for you. Rest and refreshment for a penny…

     Another place Reg introduced Tommy to was known as the Alexandra Trust, where hundreds of people went for cheap food. And it was cheap too – apart from the tea, a large, toasted teacake cost a penny(4)*.’

(4) The Alexandra Trust Dining Rooms: built in 1898 by philanthropist tea mogul Sir Thomas Lipton, 1848-1931, close to the tram and bus junction at Old Street. In three halls, capacity 500 each, it offered cheap meals to the working classes; six boilers heated 500 gallons of hot soup, “steam chests” boiled a ton and a half of potatoes an hour, and, in 1898, fourpence-halfpenny bought a three-course meal comprising “soup, a choice at will of a large steak-pudding, roast pork, roast or boiled beef, roast or boiled mutton, Irish stew, boiled pickled pork, stewed steak, or liver and bacon [with] two vegetables and bread, and a choice between pastry, or a mug of tea, coffee, or cocoa”. Some 100 waitresses could serve up to 12,000 meals a day – details quoted from Arthur H Beavan’s Imperial London, 1901. An 1898 £1 with inflation would be worth £1,288.99 in 2019, so fourpence-halfpenny in 240d to the £ old money would now be… have you got a calculator?

He was doing OK, but then he had an accident, fell off a high ladder in the warehouse, and after two weeks recuperation told his father he didn’t want to go back, Cue more worries about “doing his bit” for the family, but fortunately…

‘… to his relief, he got another job, in the City of London, at a company quite near the place where his brother George worked. Even better, his work didn’t start until 9am so he could take a later train, 7.15 rather than 6.20 – although that meant he still ended up in the City almost an hour before he had to start. Still, often he could travel in with both his brother and his father; Liverpool Street happened to be the nearest station to all of their workplaces. So, arriving early, together they would go to one of the little squares in the area and, if it was a light morning, look at the paper or just sit and talk if it was dark. Tommy could meet George at lunchtime too, another advantage.

     A job of a different nature – only the office boy this time – but he quickly realised he had much to learn. It would be up to him as to how he progressed. The firm, Lake & Currie, had large interests centred on the tin-mining and smelting industry and scattered around the world: in various parts of Nigeria, in Penang(5), New Zealand and, at home, in Cornwall at Helston and Redruth.

     Promptly at 9, Tommy’s routine commenced under the supervision of the commissionaire, whom everyone called “Sergeant” – the day’s first task the opening of all incoming mail and sorting it into piles, department by department, except that addressed personally to one of the partners, or to the Secretary Of Companies, which Tommy would place in their individual in-trays. He dealt with mail deliveries throughout the day too. And once the directors, the Company Secretary, and the rest of the staff entered their offices, the product of their thought and labours would soon start emerging. A very varied correspondence it made too, Tommy discovered – by reading most of it because, as office boy, he had to make copies of every letter that came in or went out.

     Sergeant taught him their old-fashioned method of copying letters and signatures into a large book: place each letter on a blank page of its very fine, soft paper; cover it with a damp cloth and a waterproof oilboard (to prevent the moisture spoiling the previous copy); then put the book in a heavy, iron press. A clear facsimile resulted, complete with signature. Tommy completed the job by filing the typed carbon duplicate supplied by the typist in the book alongside this copy…

     The Sergeant taught Tommy… how to operate the company’s small telephone switchboard, which directed calls to every department in the building. In fact, Sergeant told the boys under his supervision they would have to learn to do all the jobs he did, because he didn’t intend to remain there. He was perfectly sure a big war was coming up shortly and, in the natural order of things, he would go to the War Office to take a job which had been waiting for him in that event.’

(5) Penang: then one of the Straits Settlements, a British territory, now a state in Malaysia.

Apart from the lessons in basic office skills, the Sergeant indirectly taught him a lot about social class. Not that Sam swallowed everything he was told – at least, not in the longer-term, at first he admits he did fall into sucking up to this bitter man who’d become his immediate boss. Still, a lot of Sam’s conclusions derived from what he observed rather than taking the Sergeant’s word as Gospel (his perspective was doubtless affected by the peculiarities of his own background: born into prosperity then descending the social scale to poor working-class):

‘Tommy did come to realise that, in practice, Sergeant fulfilled his role very well in regard to callers of higher status, but often gave short shrift to those, in his view, beneath his own social level… ‘

But the office did give “Tommy”/Sam the chance to see power and wealth in action – and note sub-strata even within the layers of power:

‘Out and along a short corridor, the Company Secretary, F.C. Bull, FCB as he was known, a truly important man, possessing vast knowledge of company law and of his own company’s subsidiaries around the world. He stood about 5 foot 4, slim, balding, dark, some grey hair, quick in movement, with rather a harsh voice and a middle-class accent, very different from that of the partners; sharp distinctions existed in those days between working-, middle- and upper-class accents.

     … further along, one company director, Mr Currie, a huge Scotsman with a large estate out in Buckinghamshire. On the same side, next door along, the office of the other director, Mr Lake. A big man indeed. The squire of quite a large village up in Norfolk and the possessor of a dwelling in the fashionable Boltons area of Kensington(6) and a flat in one of those small streets at the back of Trafalgar Square.

     Tommy soon realised that F.C. Bull occupied a particular and peculiar place in Sergeant’s view of social class and status. Because, despite his eminence within the company, he didn’t come from what the Sergeant called “the upper crust”, Sergeant treated him with respect to his face, then derided him behind his back. Tommy would snigger at these jibes.

     After a while, when Tommy felt more comfortable with the job, a mad mood seized him; a six-verse limerick about FCB resulted. It was libellous and it was untrue, but Tommy asked his brother to get it typed – his wholesale paper firm had offices nearby in Upper Thames Street – and Miss Violet Turner, prim, young secretary to George’s boss, presented it very tastefully on mauve-tinted paper. What a strange thing to do. But George persuaded her, and with some trepidation Tommy showed this script to Sergeant. He laughed heartily and evilly at Tommy’s vile, cheap sarcasm, then furtively passed it around other departments, accounting, shipping, the draftsmen.

     Some members of staff stopped to congratulate Tommy and he progressed through fear of dismissal at perpetrating this crime to a swelled head because of the kudos he had gained. Only later did he realise, guiltily, how far he had let himself become Sergeant’s lickspittle. F.C. Bull was a man who deserved better of his underlings.

     … Gradually, Tommy became aware of the complications in these relationships Sergeant fostered. He learned that, to obtain this uniformed but civilian job, Sergeant had deposited a sum of money with the Corps Of Commissionaires(7), by way of security – in case of exactly what eventualities Tommy wasn’t entirely clear.

     More valuable than the deposit was his apparent integrity. Men like him knew and maintained an expected code of conduct – although, curiously, they had, and they showed, contempt for anyone of their own class who attempted to improve their status by study and hard work. Yet these old and trusted servants also felt they were themselves aping the gentry and becoming traitors to their kind thereby – if one can follow that line of thought.

     Many a tirade on these matters assaulted Tommy’s ears. Sergeant in his lunchtime strode the office floor: a bite of his sandwich, a champing of the jaw muscles, a long swig from a tankard of beer, and out flowed the bitter words. FCB, and Sampson, head of accounts, and Otley, the top draftsman, all came in for it, the last classed as a “homo” as well as an upstart.

     But the upper classes, equally, could bring on a rant. The very men with whom Sergeant shared a number of confidences on a servant-and-master basis, who trusted him – rightly so – were, apart from business considerations, enemies of his class. Wont to growl, “God bless the Squire and his relations/Long may they keep us in our stations”(8)  – probably the only couplet of verse he knew – he repeated it endlessly in the course of his lunchtimes orations. The boy listened, but kept his own council.

     … Let’s have a look at Sergeant and Tommy for a moment. The old boy’s train home went from Liverpool Street too so Tommy, the most junior boy in the office at that stage, was permitted to walk with him. Probably 5 foot 2 then, at 14, to Sergeant’s 5 foot 9, he strode out to keep step. Comical he must have looked in his skintight trousers and short, bum-freezer jacket, topped off with the square, bowler hard hat. The gentry favoured a different bowler with the brim curled up at the sides and a half-spherical crown. Thus one could easily distinguish the officers from the other ranks – though a closer look would further reveal jackets of fine-quality cloth, more fully cut too, and trousers more fully shaped from the top to the narrow bottom (permanent turn-ups had not been heard of; a man turned up the bottoms of his working trousers only if they were too long for him).’

(6) The Boltons: the name referred to a street and the surrounding area; it’s still “fashionable” in a sense – houses fetching £55m upwards!

(7) Corps Of Commissionaires: founded 1859 to offer work to ex-Servicemen; now a not-for-profit private company called Corps Security with the monarch still nominally its “head”.

(8) The popular written source of the rhyme seems to be a lesser-known Dickens novel, The Chimes (1844). It’s quoted by Lady Bowley, wife of the philanthropist MP who is the butt of the book’s radical social satire. Her version is slightly different to Sergeant’s: “O let us love our occupations,/Bless the Squire and his relations/Live upon our daily rations/And always know our proper stations”.

Part of “Tommy”/Sam’s job enabled him to snaffle rather more than crumbs from the rich man’s table – who could resist?

‘The company regularly held meetings with business associates and others, and when the partners considered those attending worth entertaining fairly well, a lunch would be laid on, bought in from nearby caterers. If a small, intimate group were invited, they would gather in the senior partner’s office. A day or so beforehand, Tommy had to visit the supplier to hand over the order – often at a famous restaurant and bar over in Cheapside called Sweetings(9), where he observed really prosperous City businessmen, bosses all, who wouldn’t even spare the time to sit down to have their lunch. These toffs, as Cockneys called them, clad in fine morning suits, lined the long counter, munching and drinking their ale or whatever they favoured. The smell of all these delicious foods pleased Tommy; he loved to stand there and look and breathe it in. White-hatted waiters dressed up as chefs carved succulent slices of beef or ham.

     When the customers finished eating, they would just throw down some silver on the counter and walk out – no question of bills or talking about the cost. As Tommy came to understand, much company business was based on trust, confidence. A word, perhaps a handshake, even a nod, would seal a bargain. City men expected all their associates to deal with them in this way. And all the people who served them, who wined and beered them you might say, came out very well from that sort of arrangement. They were never let down.

     In addition to the special drinks and foods the restaurant supplied, Tommy had to buy certain cheeses and a special type of coffee. This task took him to a shop of the old style where soft cream cheeses hung from the ceiling in muslin bags… Fortunately, in due course, Tommy would get the chance to do more than look at all this enticing provender.

     When one of these feasts had concluded, the bosses would take their guests to a club, maybe to continue the discussion or just enjoy good company. Often, when they left Mr Lake’s office – the temporary dining room – Tommy went in to clear up before the caterers came to collect any utensils and crockery they had provided. But he’d pause to inhale the fumes of cigars and cigarettes, the aroma of all this good food – and of an appetising cocktail they regularly took called gin cup(10) which they drank from small, silver tankards, a sprig of a small mauve flower with a yellow centre floating in each one.

     And, until the men from Sweetings arrived, Tommy could eat and drink anything left over – often quite a lot. Quickly as he could, he’d run through the menu. The lovely cream cheese, the crisp little rolls, some meat, ham or tongue or beef, a little salad, and then, of course, the gin cups had not always been emptied so he sampled them as well. It was very good. And one further pleasure he would save for later; some of the senior partner’s Turkish cigarettes – made for him by a chap in Burlington Arcade(11) – would be left lying on the table and Tommy, who sometimes collected parcels of them from the tobacconist, felt free to take some of them if he wished. For a brief while, the boy would think of himself as a man. And fare like a lord.’

(9) Sweetings, in Queen Victoria Street, near the Lord Mayor of London’s official residence, The Mansion House, opened in 1889 and, as of 2019, serves lunch (only) to the same kind of clientele, though as a specialist fish restaurant; one review notes, “many customers first went to dine there before they even started at their chosen public school”.

(10) Gin cup: gin with mint, sugar and lemon juice.

(11) Burlington Arcade: in Mayfair, off Piccadilly.

“Tommy”/Sam’s teenaged struggles with the “know your place” ethos even had a bearing on his deciding he had to break up with a girl called Bessie Dibbs whom he liked and had known off and on for years in Edmonton:

‘On his next homeward train journey sitting with Bessie, Tommy noted the appearance she had of being well-fed, well-clothed – everything right in her world. Then he appraised himself: his home-made grey mac, the cheap suit beneath it, the cheap shoes. Comparing the obvious difference in circumstances between himself and the girl, he knew he would have to break away before he got in too deep. That wasn’t easy for a naturally shy lad who wasn’t too good at expressing his feelings. But he did tell her… that they’d have to discontinue their walking home and talking on the phone.’

In fact, come early 1914, when he was still 15, his wider feelings about “life” and his own life in particular had rather slumped into a slough of despond, a sense that he’d got lost in London’s anonymous mass of workers and that this might well be a permanent condition:

‘The walk stationwards took them through several of the City’s narrower streets. With his recent history lessons in mind, Tommy concluded that these deep gulleys between tall buildings must have been laid out before the Great Fire Of London — Wren’s contemporaries would surely never have planned so foolishly after the lessons of so great a disaster(12). As soon as their route crossed in front of the Royal Exchange they became members of a huge, walking army. Across into Broad Street and past the Stock Exchange, the solid, advancing mass filled the pavements and the whole roadway – useless for vehicles to try to move during this great exodus.

     On Saturdays, for his half-day’s work Tommy had to get up just as early as on weekdays and hurry to catch the 7.18 train. On those days he often felt stale and played out. Leaving the office around 1pm, it seemed that he, his clothes, the big station, and the crowds rushing away from the City, were all dingy, condemned to a life of hopelessness and frustration.’

(12) The Great Fire occurred in 1666. On the planning and rebuilding, the Royal Institute Of British Architects website says that Sir Christopher Wren, 1632-1723, submitted a plan for rebuilding the city with “wide, straight streets", but it didn’t happen because "building was financed by private enterprise and the desire was to rebuild quickly", whereas more radical change would have required the Government taking control.

I should note that his weekend sessions with the Boy Scouts still reliably uplifted him and he had his times of good-fun horsing around like any youngster. But, of course, the big change in his life loomed willy-nilly, as European politics headed inexorably for August, 1914…

All the best– FSS

Next week: RETRO 7 – Sam, 15, studies war via the weekly boys’ magazines: Fu Manchu, While England Slept and such. And then the fever grabs him, brother Ted, the whole family, patriotism and fear and “all over by Christmas” complacency all rising – as well as the persecution of German pillars of the Edmonton community, as the great fraud Horatio Bottomley peddles paranoia. And, finally, Sam and pals enlist... and march proudly around town… then have to tell their parents… but then the uniforms come through…

(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.

RETRO 5 – Young Sam and a 1900s city boy’s outdoor life. The poverty-ground family find they’re happy when they’re hiking out in the nearby woods… then he joins the Scouts and it’s all dibdib camping and dobdob… signalling and shooting(!). Also Sam has a Big Fight with the school bully… and meets the costermongers and their backslang; top o’ reeb anyone?

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/POWetc 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 June 1, 2019, is £4,228.17 (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… At the Paris Peace Conference, the Allies performed the ritual dance of notional negotiation with the defeated foe as Austria protested their draft terms (June 10; received June 2) and Germany did likewise (15; received May 7). Meanwhile, in America Senator Philander C. Knox, Pennsylvania’s eminent Republican, called for the Peace Treaty to be separated from the League Of Nations proposal (10), a substantial early indication that President Wilson would have a hard time getting his plans through Congress.

    Otherwise, post-war (relative) skirmishing proceeded, directly related to WW1 and not. In the Chortkiv Offensive (June 8-28), Ukraine’s attempt to take Eastern Galicia from Poland continued its early successes with the occupation of Yazlovets (10), Buchach (11), Pidhaitsi, Nyznhiv and Tarnopol (all 14-15). 

    Down in the Anatolian peninsula, the Battle Of Bergama (June 15-20) saw Turkish troops and irregulars drive the Greek Army out of the city and back to Menemen, 43 miles south. This reversed the Greeks’ incursion from the port of Smyrna, the only Turkish territory granted to them thus far by the Paris wheeler-dealings. Another group of Turkish irregulars conducted the Malgac raid, dynamiting a bridge on the Izmir-Aydin railway.

    More remotely, Pancho Villa and his Mexican rebels instigated the Battle Of Ciudad Juarez (June 15-16) and lost it when American troops in El Paso piled across the border and drove them out.

    In the UK, while strikes and riots abounded, often triggered by the failure to rapidly demob servicemen (British, but also Canadians and Australians too long in transit), a bit of good news arose when John Alcock of Manchester and Arthur Brown of Glasgow, both former POWs after being shot down in Turkey and Germany respectively, completed the first non-stop Transatlantic flight (June 14-15; St John’s, Newfoundland, to Connemara, Ireland, in a modified WW1 Vickers Vimy bomber).

[Memoir background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London, 16-year-old underage volunteer in September, 1914, fought at Gallipoli with the 2/1st Royal Fusiliers (Blogs September 20, 2015, to January 3, 2016), then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons (Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)… until officialdom spotted his real age – 18, legally too young for the battlefield. They told him he could take a break from the fighting until he turned 19. He accepted, though with an enduring sense of guilt. December, 1916, saw him posted to Harrogate, Yorkshire, and re-allocated to the Essex Regiment Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied around Arras until mid-March when he ran into his own Essex 2/7th Battalion. They moved into the trenches near Fampoux just in time for the German Spring Offensive. A last stand by the Battalion on March 28, 1918, left 80 alive and “fit” out of the 520 who started the day – the 440 in between being dead, wounded or, like Sam, “missing” and, in his case, a POW (Blog March 25, 2018). For several months he wandered occupied France in randomly-assembled half-starved POW groups doing hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany and finally moving westwards to Lorraine – whence, the day after Armistice, his long trek towards the French Front began. He reached safety after tiptoeing through a German minefield (November 15 probably). Then began his recovery from chronic near-starvation – and a brief emotional breakdown – until, finally, on December 10, 1918, he returned to England and another few days in hospital before reuniting with parents and siblings, especially brother Ted, home on a week’s leave but suffering badly from gas damage. Civilian life offered Sam a warm welcome… until, in February, 1919, the Army called him back - though only to a “Dad’s Army” unit. Meaning, at first, a few weeks de factoholiday in Brighton. But then, something completely different… through the spring, Sam and others ex-POWs guard German POWs at a camp in Sussex, while making various attempts to get back to “normal” life… At which point, for the time being, the story breaks off as explained below…]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

RETRO 5: With my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe’s a-century-ago-this-week(ish) story taking a break – because he just didn’t write enough about his late spring/early summer period of 1919 – I’m revisiting the (in-hindsight) theme of his Memoir’s opening chapters about his childhood and teens: that is, The Making Of Foot Soldier Sam, the young Tommy who got through Gallipoli, the Somme, the Spring Offensive and eight months as a POW… to peace and a normal life. 

    So, Retros 1 to 4 covered 

a) his wealthy toddlerhood in Manchester for just a couple of years after his birth (on July 6, 1898) and then, after the collapse of the family tile business, real hungry poverty in London 

b) his developing immersion in the tumultuous life of 1900s Edmonton, a suburb then on the northern edge of north London – streets full of horses, cattle and sheep, roads thrusting out into the surrounding countryside and a market place steaming with humanity, tooth and claw 

c) his schooldays, including a gradual discovery of his own talents, despite relentlessly daunting comparisons with his older brother Ted’s sparky brilliance, and the frustration of both boys when they had to leave education at 14 for lack of money to pay for more 

d) the many ways in which Edmonton’s “tin church” missions to the poor and then the main parish church itself developed and influenced Sam’s life from the time he was five, and onwards to WW1 – not so much the religious side of churchgoing per se as how he and his parents gathered self-respect via involvement in entertaining and/or useful activity like organising a fete to raise funds for a new church hall.

    This week, I’m turning to the family’s outdoor recreational life, perhaps a surprising aspect of life in a down-at-heel 1900s London suburb, but something that, crucially, could be enjoyed for free on the outer edge of the city, as Edmonton was back then – at first, as a family, later via membership of Baden Powell’s all-new Boy Scouts. Here, Sam’s father, morale boosted by getting a job after a long, penniless struggle, leads the way into happy hiking…

(NB: My father wrote the early chapters in the third person, calling himself “the boy” and then “Tommy”, while he temporarily aliased brother Ted as “George”, and, when necessary, cunningly(!) switching Sutcliffe to “Norcliffe”):

‘…  home life remained variable. Despite recent slight improvements, the trial of all the years since the family’s tile company in Manchester collapsed had sharpened the mother’s temper. Her hand would whip out with a smack at very slight provocation. She frequently recounted the quality and style of their life as it used to be and had ceased to be and the blame for all this, of course, she laid at father’s door. Perhaps he was an easy-going, soft type of chap. She classed him as such. He was working hard doing the best he could in all the circumstances, but got not much credit for anything as far as Tommy could hear.

     Even so, about this time the Sunday walks started. The parents would sit back after dinner. Father would look at the paper and have a little doze. But round about 4 he would say, “Well, now we’ll go for a walk”. The children were pleased. Tommy began to learn more and more about the area.

     In the winter as they walked the neighbouring streets, father would talk about any interesting building they passed. In the summertime, they’d set out across the fields. One day, father pointed out a house built at the time of Elizabeth 1 and then another large house standing well back from the fence surrounding it, the garden full of trees. He said it was the So-and-so Hall where Judge Jeffreys used to put up, and told them who he was – “the hanging judge” of “the Bloody Assizes” back in the 17th century(2).

     Walking through the outskirts of town, sometimes they had to pass a very smelly sewage farm. In those days sewage was often disposed of by the simple means of letting it flow into some low-lying open space and dry off in the sun. If you have a township of, say, 40,000 people, and all this waste is allowed to just seep out over the countryside, then there is a hell of a stench.

     There it all depended on the direction of the wind. If it blew towards the town then from morning to night the air would be heavy with this stench. But people were used to this. It must have dated back to the days when all drains were open and life was lived in the perpetual stink of sewage and rotting rubbish… Past that a canal, a busy one with barges pulled by horses constantly passing through the lock. Over the bridge and on to a large area formerly marshes, but now well drained with a natural river on the far side of it, plenty of good fish in it(3).

     To cross the river you had to use a footbridge and, at an adjacent cottage, pay the penny toll demanded. Well, adults would pay. Boys seldom did. There was an art in approaching this bridge without being seen. No gates barred entry, so small boys – thinking they were getting away with it – crept up, then made a mad dash across to the other side… Although, actually, the owners didn’t bother too much about small boys.

     So across more fields, then… an inn and a huge oak tree outside it – hollow, so it joined the claims of many others to have been the hiding place of King Charles when he was on the run(4).

     Father planned a longer jaunt for them. On one of his own long walks, when he was saving every penny he might have spent on a bus or a train fare, he saw a gap in a fence, went through and found himself in a forest(5)… the excursion was thoroughly prepared. Blessed with a fine, hot day, they set off. Mother pushed the pram, carrying sandwiches and bottles of water as well as the baby [this means Sam’s brother Alf, born 1903]. Father walked alongside her and the three children milled about together, a bit ahead or behind.

     To reach the forest they had to walk about four miles, the last stretch across marshland and a river. They were stopped twice on this stretch of road, first by a dark, swarthy man; he stood beside a gate, which he held shut. He had only one arm. The other terminated at the elbow with a metal hook. He wanted to collect a toll. We had no money to spare and told him so and he let us through. A mile or so further on, the same thing happened. Another gate. A sort of blackmail but, again, nothing to be squeezed out of this family. Father suggested a genuine tollgate may have restricted access to the path at some earlier time and that these men had just taken them over when they ceased to be “official”.

     That day, most of the people of the town seemed to be headed in this direction. A cheery sight. At the end of the walk, at the top of a steep hill with tall, shady trees, the children ran about and gradually ventured further and further away. As he roamed, Tommy suddenly became conscious of the silence in the forest. The rustling of leaves high overhead. A slight breeze. A sensation of loneliness, which he had not experienced before… So he went back to the family. They had settled by some brambles – blackberry bushes, said father. He promised that towards the end of summer they would come again and collect them and have stewed blackberries, perhaps with apple.

     The sun was going down. They packed the remains of the picnic in the pram and moved off downhill until, through the bushes beside the path, one of them saw a small cottage in a clearing. Mother said, “We’ve used up all the water. Let’s go and ask if they will let us fill our bottles.”

     The children ran ahead, feeling safe together, and tapped on the door. An old lady in black answered, looking rough, but kind enough for the children to make their request. She said, “I’ll come and speak to your parents”. The two women had a chat and she said, “For 3d I could make you a nice pot of tea. A nice drink for all of you. Could you spare 3d for that?” Mother and father discussed it. It was a lot of money, bearing in mind that tuppence ha’penny would buy a pound of the cheapest breast of mutton. They agreed and the old lady brought them a large pot, which she placed, on a wooden bench. They gathered round and the children thoroughly enjoyed their first bought cup of tea. Somehow the smoke from the wood fire in the cottage had penetrated the water. A new flavour, a new taste. They felt adventurous. They were drinking a cup of tea which father had paid for.

     The long journey home began. They paused at one point on the opposite side of the road to a country inn where a large party of costermongers had gathered. By chance, Tommy had gradually come to know quite a lot about the costermongers because Mr Phillips, the brickmaker next door, was one of them, although he didn’t seem to mix with his fellows very much and he could be friendly enough as a neighbour.

     While not separated from the populace by blood like, say, gypsies, costermongers made themselves a race apart in those days, identifiable by how they dressed when wearing their best. The women had large feathers in their hats, their dresses long, wide, ankle-length, and all black, except possibly a touch of white lace round the neck. The men favoured black as well for the most part: bright-coloured mufflers, but black caps and suits – which they customarily had made to measure when they married – of heavy, good-quality cloth with long jackets not stopping much short of the knee, and trousers narrow at the waist but bell-bottomed, not quite so full as a sailor’s. These suits had to last a lifetime of Sunday walks to the pub, weddings and, particularly, funerals – elaborate affairs for which they would stretch all their resources.

     Although formally clad, they really let themselves go, dancing and singing out in the open air in front of the inn. Looking on as they rested Tommy’s family felt very aware of being outsiders. Had they attempted to join in or even talk to the costermongers they would probably have been laughed at, insulted you might say. Costermongers looked down on poor clerks and the like and their pretensions to correct speech, behaviour and dress and would mock them on the street without any direct provocation. That barrier – which seemed to be of distrust on the costers’ side – could never be broken.

     In public, between themselves, they talked incomprehensible backslang – turning words back to front and still speaking at great speed(6).

     Naturally, when working, they didn’t wear their finery, just a jacket with corduroy trousers and a bright neckerchief. Again typically, they would carry cooked meals to work in a basin with a red and white-spotted handkerchief over the top of it. And, when selling their fruit and vegetables from barrows in the street, they could still cajole and charm and persuade the very people they scorned into believing they offered the best bargains available.’

(2) Lord Chief Justice George Jeffreys oversaw five judges who, over two months in 1685 at various South of England Assize courts, dealt with 1,400 trials of rebels who fought James II’s forces at the Battle Of Sedgemoor (Somerset). This judicial team issued death sentences to almost everyone convicted, but “only” 300 suffered the standard “hung, drawn and quartered” and the rest were transported to the West Indies as cheap plantation labour. Jeffreys died in the Tower of London four years later after the Glorious Revolution saw James II overthrown by his daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange.

(3) The river is the Lea, probably in the vicinity of what’s now known as Pickett’s Lock; I can’t find the name of the canal.

(4) The actual tree – allegedly? – the “Royal Oak”, concealed the future Charles II in 1651 when his army lost the Battle Of Worcester to the Roundheads. The locale didn’t stop myth, legend and boys’ imaginations replanting the tree all over the country, even in a London suburb.

(5) Researcher and FSS reader Stephanie M. McDuff showed me on an old map that this must have been Epping Forest – ancient woodland, but declared “the people’s forest” by Queen Victoria and still “London’s largest open space”. It’s west of Edmonton, but even now not much more than the four miles my father reckoned his family walked to get there.

(6) For example, backslang created “yob” by reversing “boy”; “pot of beer” became “top o’ reeb”, “tobacco” ”occabot”; at http://www.victorianweb.org/history/slang2.html researcher Dick Sullivan points out how many words suggest backslang relates to written as well as spoken English, e.g. “talk” is “klat” where, phonetically, it would be “kwat”, “knife” is “efink” rather than “fine”; no absolute rules though – the difficulty of pronouncing an “h” at the end of a word is overcome by pronouncing and writing it “tch”, so “half” is “flatch”, “horse” is “esrotch”, “have” is “vatch”; moreover, backslang retained the phonetics of “th” and “sh” in preference to attempting a pronunciation based on spelling, so “three” is “earth”, fish is “shif” and so on.

I reckon those early family walks happened when Sam was six or seven (1904-5). He didn’t give a date for the momentous occasion, coming up, of his joining the Boy Scouts, but I reckon it must have been in 1909 when he was 11. That comes from relating it to his progress through the school system, but also the nuts and bolts of the Scouts’ foundation; the organisation began in 1908 as the Battersea Boy Scouts, then went national in May, 1909 (Cubs, for 7-12-year-olds, weren’t introduced until 1916). For “Tommy”/Sam it was rather like first-sight love:

‘… on one of the very rare occasions when he stayed out after dark, he saw something that thrilled him: simply a boy standing under a lamp-post, with the gas light shining down on him, looking at a book – but wearing a uniform Tommy had never seen before. A hat with three dents in it and a wide brim; a bright-coloured scarf tied around his neck and hanging down the front of his shirt; short trousers held up by a belt; long socks and short boots; and in one hand he carried a staff, a pole. Tommy had to find out who he was, what he belonged to, and why he dressed like that. He couldn’t bring himself to approach the boy and ask him, but he soon found out that he must have been an early member of the Boy Scouts.

     With family fortunes gradually improving, shortly after Tommy had seen his first Scout, his brother joined them, got rigged out in that uniform, and was soon acquiring many skills and the badges that went with them. Tommy looked forward to the day when his parents could afford to buy a uniform for him – and it wasn’t too long in coming.

     He enjoyed everything about it. The pleasure of going to the outfitter’s shop. The smell of the clothing. The khaki shirt, red scarf, blue trousers, black hose with scarlet tops. In addition, he had to buy a lanyard with a whistle, a belt to which he attached a clasp knife, and a staff with three dents in it, like the hat – to remind him of the three main promises he would make on becoming enrolled as a Scout(7). Each patrol had its own flag; Tommy’s bore the head of a buffalo in red. But even when he got used to the uniform, Tommy never felt he looked so eye-catching as that boy standing under the street gas lamp…

     Baden Powell, the movement’s founder, had carefully considered the significance of every detail and set out the principles and rules in a book called Scouting For Boys(8). He had organised the first experiment in camp living on Brownsea Island(9) and formed the first Scout Troops shortly after that.

     Becoming a member of this movement opened a new phase of living for Tommy. Life had been hard and grim. Now very pleasant pastimes came to occupy many of his out-of-school hours and he began to enjoy the company of other boys under happy conditions, free from the pressures of schoolwork and the overseeing of the form teacher. He experienced more tolerance and kindness from the Scoutmaster and his assistants, this being a voluntary organisation. The object was to give the boys the greatest possible amount of good.

     Troop members had a complete gym available to them for one hour every Thursday night, and several hours on Saturday afternoons. Vaulting horses, parallel bars, and rings stood or hung eight feet apart in rows the length of the hall. They could stand on a platform at one end, grasp a ring one-handed and jump and swing through the air and grasp the next ring with the other hand, then work themselves backwards and forwards to gather momentum before swinging on to the next ring and so on. A refinement, known as a half-dislocation, was to swing your body right around clockwise, heels over head, while holding on to a ring one-handed ready to reach out to the next row.

     They worked on climbing ropes too. Up to the top and down again with legs crossed in the approved manner. Tommy’s brother wanted to demonstrate his skill and climbed up faster than anyone else could. Then, to descend, he almost let go and just slid down. The boys thought this was fine. But then they saw the friction had burnt the insides of both legs. He had to have dressings on these abrasions and they took some weeks to heal. Tommy did not try to emulate that trick.

     At the Easter and Whitsun holidays – and sometimes on ordinary Saturdays, as an alternative to gym – the Troop would assemble outside their hut and put together what they called their trek cart. They fitted the wheels on the shaft and loaded up with tents, containers of water, packed lunches, and anything else the leaders thought useful. They formed up and marched off – usually in the direction of that large forest, four or five miles distant. The boys hauled the cart along by means of long ropes attached to the wheel hubs on each side, three boys on each rope – and a couple behind, pushing.

     At the selected place, they set up their tents and a day of fun and games and sports would commence. They practiced running, vaulting with the pole over brooks and other obstacles, tracking in woodland areas – and tying knots, of course. The leaders imparted some knowledge of wildlife and they collected wild flowers to dry and place in a book with its name and details underneath. They fenced, not with swords, but stout sticks. They tried cock-fighting, as it was called, with the pole passed behind the bent knees, the arms underneath the pole, each boy edging up to the other and trying to upset him by swinging the pole round to get him off balance. The older boys took boxing lessons – Tommy did, in due course. And yet they still seemed to have plenty of leisure time when they could wander through the forest by themselves or in groups.

     Even from those early days, the Scouts would also take care to show the parents what their sons could do, given the opportunity. Every three months the Troop presented an entertainment in the hall where they held their gym sessions. Some of the mothers volunteered to serve a light meal beforehand with tea, orange drinks and so forth all arranged on a long, trestle table covered with white, cotton cloths. Then, the older boys and the Scoutmasters entertained to the best of their abilities, and a happy afternoon would be had by all…

     The Scouts demanded discipline – particularly self-discipline – of all. Any who rebelled against it, especially more senior boys, found themselves quickly turned out of the Troop. The Scoutmaster, Mr Frusher [see last week’s blog for more detail on the Vicar/choirmaster/Scoutmaster/music teacher and all-round mentor], believed that an older boy who elected to rebel against accepted rules of conduct would contaminate younger members and must be got rid of.’

(7) The American Boy Scouts Handbook, 1911, the oldest I could find online, listed the promises as: “On my honor I will do my best: 1. To do my duty to God and my country, and to obey the Scout law; 2. To help other people at all times; 3. To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.”

(8) Published 1908.

(9) In Poole Harbour, Dorset, August 1-8, 1907; the National Trust now owns the island.

What do Scouts do, apart from the high ideals and badges and walking about a lot? They raise funds! By now, we’re in 1910, and “Tommy”/Sam’s 11 or 12:

‘… to raise money for the Scout movement, Mr Frusher began to train the lads to sing choruses from the Gilbert and Sullivan light operas – The Mikado, HMS Pinafore, and one or two others. It was work Mr Frusher loved. The time came when the parts had been fairly well mastered and they took to the stage of the local institute opposite the church(10). He had no difficulty in persuading quite good professionals and semi-professionals to come along for one rehearsal and then three productions of the show. Full houses provided useful money to hire tents for the annual Scout camp.

     Now old enough to be appointed a Patrol Leader, Tommy had his own group of lads to look after and a certain responsibility at these beautifully organised camps. The lads had the assistance of four or five young men in their late teens or early twenties who would go ahead and set up the tents and make arrangements for the supply of food in quantity. By the time the Troops arrived with their kit bags, everything was prepared.

     The site comprised a hill at the edge of a large farming estate, with the tents set up in a row at the top, their water supply a spring at the bottom. A line of youngsters took it in turns to lower their buckets into the small pool around the spring – very carefully, so as not to disturb the silt at the bottom. The water looked clean and unadulterated, but for safety’s sake they boiled it anyway.

     At 6.30 each morning, a bugle call, reveille! Up and out of those beds and, given fine weather, the Scoutmaster, assistant Scoutmasters, and all of the boys in their pants and vests rushed down to the river and in they went. The water came up to their waists or shoulders. They took their soap, so a cold bath and a quick towelling on the riverbank, then back up the hill to breakfast; large containers of hard-boiled eggs or saveloys(11) – very popular with the lads – and bacon with plenty of bread and butter and boiling tea. Done over campfires, it all went off with the precision of a military camp.

     On the first morning, just after breakfast, the senior assistant dashed into his tent, reappeared with a sports gun and fired at a few ducks flying overhead. No duck for dinner, but it brought a shocked Mr Frusher hurrying from his tent. Shooting was not on the agenda and he didn’t approve. But the same young man took them running across the fields, after which they formed into a square and some exercises did them a power of good.

     Nearby lived a family who, from the old, bearded, grandfather down, worked on this huge farm. Tommy learned that the old man earned the princely sum of 18/- a week [not sarcastic, a very big wage at the time](12). Other family members got proportionate sums, the boys probably 4/- or 5/-. But they had certain perquisites which helped them along; for instance, at the back of the barn behind their house, free-running poultry nested – they ranged over the fields to feed themselves, but the majority came to this row of nest boxes to lay their eggs. The family could take as many as they wished and, no doubt, a cockerel whenever they felt like it.

     They had enough ground to grow all the vegetables they needed too – all this far more valuable than their wages. Lots of rabbits to be trapped, milk from the dairy a mile or so across the field – a gallon for a few coppers. They seemed a remarkably happy family. Full of jokes. They gave the lads a good impression of life on the land. The farmer seldom came round the place. As head of the family, the grandfather took responsibility for organising the work and employing any extra labourers.

     One of the farm girls was a merry lass, 20 or so, considerably older than the boys and her name was Mary Anne. A popular song of the time went, “Mary Anne she’s after me/Full of love she seems to be/My mother says that Mary Anne/Wants me for her young man”. Once or twice groups of the young lads got under Mary Anne’s bedroom window late at night and serenaded her with this beautiful song(13). Mr Frusher was inclined to frown on these efforts, but Mary Anne appeared to be flattered and very well pleased.

     One wet night, rain leaked into some of the tents. The boys were quickly moved into the barn. They threw their camp mattresses down on the floor – covered with hay, fresh and sweet-smelling – wrapped themselves up in their blankets, snug and warm, and spent what was, to them, quite a thrilling night – for the barn had other occupants, owls and bats, who flew in and out, a busy traffic.

     On one occasion in camp, when Tommy got a rather nasty cold he was given a bed in the tent with the four assistant Scoutmasters. He enjoyed that. Waking in the morning he looked at them as they lay there.

     The senior one attracted his attention. His face still, absolutely immobile. Tommy thought, “How different, how young he looks, compared to when I’ve seen him going to the station for work”. Employed by a firm of stockbrokers, on some occasions the Scoutmaster had to wear the uniform of tall, silk hat, cutaway morning coat and striped trousers. Tommy had seen him with his coat tails flying and tightly rolled umbrella, the picture of health and activity. Yet here he slept, almost boyish.

     How could Tommy possibly have known that, soon, this splendid young chap, with many others, would be lying at the bottom of the North Sea after the Battle Of Jutland(14)…

     Near him lay a younger man, the soul of kindness. He could not be faulted in his treatment of the lads. He was liked and Tommy admired him. He was shattered on the Somme battlefield(15)…’

(10) Charles Lamb Institute, Church Street, opened 1908 – now a gym apparently. This is the parish church, All Saints, where Mr Frusher presided. Ah, I should mention that “Frusher” is one of my father’s habitual aliases

(11) English, red, pork sausages.

(12) Time to explain the money for post-decimalisation readers. And old shilling – designated by the /- symbol – was 12 pence when we had 240 pence to a £, but it equals 5p in modern money i.e. that 18 shillings a week translates to 90p… but with inflation since 1910 the modern equivalent would be £105.13.

(13) Mary Anne: written by Fred W. Leigh (1871-1924) and music-hall singer George Bastow (1872-1914), who recorded it in 1911; see lyrics at http://mainlynorfolk.info/folk/songs/maryanne.html 

(14) May 31-June 1, 1916, the biggest naval battle of WW1, a total of 25 British and German ships were sunk and 8,600 seamen killed. The outcome remains disputed but all the statistics suggest a British defeat.

(15) On the Western Front that same summer of 1916 and on through to the early winter – Sam was to fight there for five months.

And now two anecdotes of the outdoor life, in different senses, one a farcical night “in the wilds” with a bunch of mates (this vaguely reminds me of The Blair Witch Project), the other one of the main events of “Tommy”/Sam’s late schooldays – The Big Fight:

‘That summer(15), Tommy sometimes joined a group headed by an Irish lad called Joe Sheahan who was a couple of years older than him and a very enthusiastic outdoors man.

     Several of the lads followed Joe on one of his enterprises which was to get up early two or three mornings a week – before breakfast, around 6 o’clock – and run the three or four miles to a nearby town and a lake where swimming was allowed. Although it had an irregular shape, with islands and trees, chains fixed around the outer banks ensured you could always get hold of something to help you out of the water. They would run back home in time to eat and go to school.

     As the summer sun continued until autumn, Joe proposed they go and camp in the forest for a night or two. Tommy’s parents were difficult to persuade, but they agreed and furnished him with a little tea and something to eat. Joe provided two methylated water heaters. Each could boil a pint of water.

     They spent the day in and around the forest and, when it began to get dark, they brewed up. As night came on, the birds ceased their singing and new noises took over: the rustling of the trees, the leaves, odd branches cracking. Unexpected movements around them… in the end, without too much discussion, they grabbed up all their equipment and ran for it to the nearest road. They arrived home about 9 or 10, but in no mind to admit what had made them forsake their intended adventure.

     When he wasn’t off with Joe Sheahan’s group, Tommy often joined his schoolfriends, all aged 13 or so by then, to stage mock battles on the old brickfields. Each kiln had an open space in the middle, so they made good forts. But came the day when a rival gang, led by a boy called Wayland, started a quite vicious and serious attack – because, it seemed, they had a grudge against Tommy.

     This was hard for him to understand. No particular incident had provoked it. But he sensed it may have arisen from his close friendship with Charlie Bolton, the brainiest lad in the school (once Tommy’s brother George had left to go out to work). Within their own group, Charlie insisted on Tommy taking the lead in any activity such as the brickfield battles. Maybe he saw himself as the organiser of strategy and Tommy as the chief when it came to fighting (albeit play-fighting, usually). People did tend to cast Tommy in that role in his later life, for reasons he could never fathom; he always shed the ill-fitting cloak at the earliest possible moment.

     But Tommy had become aware that Wayland’s crowd referred to his group of quieter types who tried their best in class and did quite well as “The Good Boys”. When Tommy considered this, he realised that, while he and his friends pitched into school activities like the bazaar and the waxworks show, Wayland and company did not. Even though Wayland always appeared assured and competent, he spent his time criticising and complaining about teachers or anyone else in authority over the children. After the waxworks show [see last week], particularly, he started to behave towards Tommy as if he hated his guts. He insulted and persecuted him, as children can.

     Then came the battle at the brickfield. Tommy and his friends took shelter in the middle of a kiln and returned the shower of bricks and pieces of brick coming their way. It went on for some time quite evenly until Tommy, standing up to look for a possible target, caught a brick on the top of his head. Then the battle stopped. A great deal of blood poured from the wound. The aggressors departed in a hurry and Tommy’s friends saw him home.

     Over the following weeks, the one-sided feud took a strange turn. A boy called Hoy, normally a bad-tempered lone wolf who snapped at anybody who dared to disagree with him, seemed to appoint himself Wayland’s deputy. At school, he picked a quarrel with Tommy and a fight started. Tommy’s pals stopped it, but all agreed that the matter needed settling. Between them, they fixed a time and venue: lunch break the following day in the neglected field in front of the school (in a spot concealed from the main road by tall hoardings which Tommy remembered carrying huge pictures of the great John Philip Sousa(16) and his Military Band).

     They didn’t make the arrangements in any casual way. Both boys appointed seconds – Tommy, naturally, had Charlie – and they asked another boy, Arthur Fowler, to referee because he had nothing to do with the conflict and both sides rated him a “good sport”. Son of a carpenter and joiner, Arthur was considered very affluent because he had a halfpenny a day pocket money compared to Tommy’s penny a week, but he’d often share his sweets with other boys, including Tommy.

     So, at midday, a crowd gathered, the two gangs among them, but keeping well apart as they filed through a gate into the field; fighting on school premises was forbidden but they understood this pre-arranged affair outside the grounds had the approval of AEP himself [teacher AE Page, see blog two weeks ago]. The two sides had agreed that each round should last only a minute, Arthur blowing his Scout whistle to signify start and end, as they didn’t have a bell. Between rounds they rested for two minutes and the bout was to continue for as long as they could keep going. All the “officials” saw that everything went according to the book(17).

     Tommy fell into the boxer’s stance he’d learnt during Boy Scout training and shuffled about. Bigger and stronger, Hoy lashed out frequently, but somewhat blindly. His face evinced murderous malice throughout. Tommy himself found real hatred rising in him as soon as the bout got going. He was being hurt. Yet a certain coolness, fruit of those boxing lessons, kept his emotions in check and helped to compensate for Hoy’s physical superiority.

     While resigned to a beating, Tommy got in the occasional whack. Round after round, the battle raged. Tommy’s mouth and face began to feel like a huge, puffed-up thing, ten times their actual size and, although, clearly, both boys were becoming exhausted, neither capable of landing a knockout blow, Tommy felt sure he was going to lose. How much longer could he hold out?, he wondered. When should they finish? When they sank to their knees? It seemed endless.

     With Hoy’s friends yelling at him to finish his foe off, by an indescribable piece of luck Tommy swung his arm over, missed his target and struck Hoy on the upper right arm. It dropped to his side and he yelled at Arthur, ”I can’t hold it up! It’s paralysed! It’s paralysed!” That finished it. Arthur awarded the win to Tommy, despite the opposition’s protests. Fearing a general attack, Tommy’s friends hurried him away, shouting congratulations and slapping him on the back – Tommy pretended to be unimpressed and said nothing about the sheer good fortune of the punch hitting a nerve to end the fight.

     While the others withdrew to the playground, Tommy ran off home, joyful yet scarcely aware of what he was doing, so great had been the strain of the punishment he had taken. When he got there he dashed to the sink, turned on the tap, and ran icy cold water over his face and neck time after time until the pain eased somewhat. Looking around, he saw a large basin full of Benger’s Food his mother had prepared for the baby(18). Without thought, he snatched this up and drank the lot.

     Then he went upstairs and lay down on his bed, hoping to gain strength to face his mother, and then make his way back to school for the afternoon session. He made it, but went about as in a dream for several hours.’

(15) Probably 1911, the year before my father left school; a heat wave set temperature records not broken until 1990 and the weather held until September.

(16) John Philip Sousa: 1854-1932, American composer and conductor of marches including The Stars And Stripes Forever. Of Spanish and Bavarian ancestry, he started out as an apprentice US Marine Bandsman and later ran his own band; by and amazing coincidence he developed the sousaphone.

(17) In fact, the Queensbury Rules then in force for boxing included three-minute rounds and a one-minute break.

(18) “The baby”? Not Alf by this time. No mention of this boy’s birth in my father’s Memoir, but he was named John Fleetwood (from his mother’s maiden name), born April 1, 1911, at 26, Lowden Road, Edmonton – he died within a year having “failed to thrive” (three months later in 1912, Sam’s 12-year-old brother Frank Sydney died of diphtheria. My father mentioned neither death in his writings nor ever spoke of them to me, much though he talked about everything else in his early life so I never knew of the existence of either of these uncles of mine until I researched the family for these notes to the Memoir.

         Benger’s Food: an earlier Complan, made in Strangeways, Manchester, originated for the sick but used by the well too – a 1914 ad in The Graphic said “with this food the digestive system, whether enfeebled by illness, overwork or advancing age, is rested and restored, and while this takes place, complete nourishment is maintained… you never tire of it, as with ordinary milk foods”.

This interim passage covers how he maintained contact with the Scouts and Mr Frusher after going out to work in 1912, aged 14:

‘… he carried on with his Scouting activities, two meetings a week, Thursdays and Saturdays, and he now attended evening classes twice weekly too. It had been decided he should learn commercial book-keeping and typewriting, two useful skills whatever job he chose or had to do. So most of his weekdays concluded at about 9.30pm…

     Tommy no longer had the benefit of free piano lessons from Mr Frusher [see last week]. Certain advantages available to a schoolboy were not on offer to the worker, however small his wage packet. But, as Scout- and choirmaster, the Governor – as the boys called Mr Frusher, though only in his absence – did provide compensations relative to Tommy’s age and new standing.

     He introduced new subjects to the Troop’s training schemes: so Tommy learnt signalling, semaphore and Morse code (the last, he particularly liked). Using flags – one for Morse, two for semaphore – and, at night, signal lamps, they sent messages across fair distances. Furthermore, after training at the church hall on Saturday afternoons, Tommy and other seniors could go to a rifle club where, for half an hour, they practised shooting on a covered range about 300 yards long, using old Army rifles (surplus from the Boer War, fitted with Morris tubes which allowed them to fire .22 ammunition). Supervisors checked their scores and entered them on competition cards. They paid a nominal sum for bullets used, but some kind person unknown had paid for their club membership. Dear old Frusher, they guessed.

     He also undertook courses in first aid. Adapting his instruction from the Red Cross manual, he paid a good deal of attention to treating wounds.’

And now comes a fateful, largely coincidental connection between all that outdoor activity, that fit and healthy life despite varying levels of poverty through the years, those skills learned in the Scouts and… what was to follow for “Tommy”/Sam’s entire generation. It’s early summer, 1914:

‘However, he soon discovered that Scouts were not alone in camping out on the edge of London. Walking by himself one Sunday, Tommy came to a wide open space beside one of the main routes from London to the North(19) and he saw with great excitement that this usually uninspiring area had become a town of tents; soldiers with rifles on their shoulders, men filling bowls with water from tanks on wheels, then holding the bowls for one another to help with shaving and washing. They emptied the used water into a large hole dug for waste disposal.

     Tommy watched it all, for an hour or more. In another area, men were cooking a meal in large containers heated by open fires in shallow trenches. They fried bacon, boiled water for tea. When the bugle sounded, the soldiers lined up in orderly fashion until the cooks forked and ladled good helpings of bacon and tea into their mess tins (the lid, with a folding handle, held solid foods or acted as a frying pan, the larger bottom part contained all liquids). Soon afterwards, the clatter of eating changed to the noises of an Army striking camp, taking down tents and packing them and generally getting ready for departure, their work accompanied by much banter and laughter…

     Scouting, Tommy realised, had taught him a good deal that would be useful to a soldier. He could help erect a tent, use a rifle, and communicate efficiently by semaphore or Morse code or a simple field telegraph. As a Patrol Leader, he had acquired the ability to stand up in front of a group of lads and give brief orders.

     If any of these things might appear to have been intended to prepare youngsters for military service this was certainly not the intention behind Mr Frusher’s work. As a practising Christian, at heart a pacifist, he never said anything to Scout meetings about the war scare and the training had nothing of a military character to it – no yelling of orders or foot-stamping drill. Saluting, with three fingers raised and thumb and little finger touching, served as a frequent reminder of the three promises a Scout made when joining the movement.’

(19) Probably the Great Cambridge Road, aka the Old North Road, now the A10.

By September, 1914 “Tommy”/Sam and “George”/Ted had enlisted, underage both… and suddenly remembered their regular Scouts meeting. There Mr Frusher made one last, maybe despairing attempt to hold on to them… and, no doubt, their youth and innocence, even their lives:

‘… in all the excitement, he had overlooked Thursday evening’s meeting of his troop. In fact, having become a soldier, the thought of putting on the uniform of a Boy Scout suddenly seemed incongruous – more so when he briefly imagined appearing in front of the mass of men among whom he had spent recent days wearing the dented frontiersman’s hat, khaki shirt adorned with various badges and shoulder ribbons, short, blue knickers and bare knees, with, final touch, in his hand a stout five-foot staff. Yes, what sort of greeting would this apparition receive from that mixed crowd? Horrible thought.

     That Saturday afternoon, Ted and Tommy went along to the hall where the troop assembled. They intended to tell Mr Frusher they were now soldiers and would therefore have to give up membership of the troop. They arrived purposely a little late, perhaps 20 minutes after the usual time, assuming the programme for the afternoon would by then have commenced without help from them. They would have a few words with the Governor, then walk out, severing the association of several years just like that.

     “There you are, at last, and not in uniform. Is something wrong, Mr Norcliffe?” This to Ted, now a qualified assistant Scoutmaster, therefore addressed as a man. “Do please tell me about it.” Ted explained and Mr Frusher’s usually pale face flushed. This may have been due to relief that nothing awful had occurred in the Norcliffe family, but Tommy, studying the Governor’s bearded face, suspected that annoyance really caused the blush, which was accompanied by three rapid blinks and a long stare – signs of his inner struggle to subdue anger.

     When Ted ventured to speak of leaving the Scouts, back came the assertion, “Once a Scout, always a Scout!” and the brothers found themselves assigned to their respective duties for that afternoon and getting on with them – after having exchanged glances which conveyed the advisability of tolerance and co-operation at this juncture.

     Tommy’s feelings were strangely mixed. Facing his patrol he felt it was good to be back among familiar faces and subjects and where his falsehood regarding his age was of no consequence. No exciting, unknown future. Here, he would always be allowed to play his small part. This thought helped to soften his sadness at the coming separation from familiar faces and places. He knew the new life to which he was committed would have some awful periods, but youthful optimism kept him from dwelling on such possibilities.

     The meeting over, Mr Frusher called his seniors together, told them of the brothers’ enlistment and expressed the hope that all the others would not desert him. Those able to give assurances did so, but the senior assistant Scoutmaster had to tell him that, as an officer in the Royal Navy Voluntary Reserve, he would have to report for duty shortly. The brothers promised they would give what help they could in future, but they said their goodbyes just in case military duties prevented their return.

     The farewells might have been said with deeper regret had those present been able to foresee that years would pass before the few who survived would be able to get together again.’

All the best– FSS

Next week: RETRO 6 – Sam, 14, has to leave school for lack of money and starts his two years in the world of work before… he jumped at becoming a Tommy: he comes a cropper over walking sticks; as a junior office boy at a tin-mining company in the City he encounters the class system and all its fine tunings of English snobbery as tutored by “Sergeant”, the company Commissionaire; he… discovers great working-men’s caffs and snaffles crumbs (and cigars… and gin) from the rich men’s table… makes a foolish foul-up of a near-romance…  and, by the time he’s 16, finds himself looking down the barrel of a working-lad’s wasted life existential blues…

(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.