Sam scrounges a British uniform (pre-owned by a dead Tommy, but still…) and does a bit of business with some freezing Chinese Labour Corps lads. Plus a romantic interlude… but not for him! And, at last, back to dear old Blighty…

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 Memoirconcludes with the Centenary of the July 19, 1919, Peace parade in London…

All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s Memoir will always go to the British Red Cross – and the current running donations total as of December 4 is £3,772.16 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!)

Dear all

A hundred years ago this week, in the aftermath of the Armistice… Intermittently organised chaos proceeded with Germany beginning to frame its response to defeat and the end of Empire/monarchy. In Berlin, the Conference Of Soldiers And Workmen (December 16-19) decided on the “socialisation” of industry and set a January 19 date for election of the National Assembly – which would in turn work out a new system of government for the country. Even then (i.e. way before the Treaty Of Versailles and back-stab theory) it seems this did not look like resolving disagreements between the Social Democratic Party, the Spartacists and monarchy loyalists.

    Meanwhile, further east, the 200,000 German troops commanded by Field Marshall Mackensen’s march home from Romania was interrupted near Budapest by an Allied force up from the Salonika campaign and beyond – a wonderfully multinational mix of Greeks, French, Serbians, British and Italians – led by French General Franchet D’Espèry. Mackensen, who’d hoped never to surrender and later as a right-wing politician said he had never surrendered, had to surrender (December 16). 

    Meanwhile, the turmoil around the Baltic evolved uncertainly as the last German troops left Finland, British Naval ships bombarded Bolshevik positions in formerly Russian Wesenberg, Estonia, and Bolshevik troops advanced near Pskov on the Russian side of the Estonian border (all December 16) and entered Walk (18; lately evacuated by the German Army, on the border of Estonia and Latvia, formerly in Russian Livonia).

    Further south, the Ukrainian upheaval continued with the “revolutionary” force led by General Petiyura taking Kiev (December 20). I can’t find any reference to their political angle – do say if you know! – but it’s of only passing significance given that control of the capital (since 1917) changed hands 16 times in the next 20 months.

[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 (he spent his 19th birthday, July 6, 1917, in a Sheffield hospital). In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied for Brigade HQ in Arras and at the nearby Front. In mid-March, he ran into his own Essex 2/7th Battalion; they moved into the trenches near Fampoux, east of Arras, just in time for the German Spring Offensive. A last stand by the Battalion on March 28, 1918, left 80 alive and “fit” out of the 520 who started the day – the 440 in between being dead, wounded or, like Sam, “missing” and, in his case, a POW (Blog March 25, 2018). For several months he wandered occupied France in randomly-assembled half-starved POW groups doing all sorts of hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany between the Rhine and the Black Forest near a village called Hügelheim (tending sick German war horses) and finally moving westwards to a village in Lorraine where they remained until Armistice – at which his long walk towards the French Front began and the events below ensued…

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

November 25ish-December 10, 1918, a British RAMC hospital in Nancy, France… where, last week, after eight months of slow starvation as a POW and, post-Armistice, a four-day walk back to the French lines – my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe, was recovering from these privations following an initial stint in a French military hospital where he experienced a brief, purgative emotional breakdown, a Champagne-and-brandy cocktail diet to ease his delicate stomach, and the kindness of wounded poilus comrades with whom he shared a massive ward.

    Then, when somewhat restored, he moved on to the RAMC’s returned POWs hospital, to therapeutic Guinness and some light meals. He also witnessed how the degradation of POW life led to a mass theft of bread from the hospital bakery by the patients for whom it was intended anyway – and, walking through the town, found the French Army uniform he’d acquired leading him into awkward situations as local people, naturally expected him to be French and acted accordingly… including a brothel Madame…

    Having, oddly enough, retained his virginity yet again – partly out of enduring innocence, partly because one symptom of malnutrition proved to be total absence of sexual desire – now he tries to tackle at least the superficial problem of his attire:

‘Back at the hospital I asked the storekeeper whether he could give me a British uniform, but he said they had none to issue. So my intention to procure a khaki outfit of some sort set me searching in a marquee, the side curtains or brailing of which I noticed were always closed and secured by cords. I detached one cord loop from its ground-peg and slipped under the canvas.

     Immediately, I saw a large, rectangular stack of clothing and kitbags, much of which had belonged to soldiers of the British Empire. Although the RAMC had established this Field Hospital to care for Independent Air Force personnel, in some emergency they must have taken in and treated ground Forces. Discovering some bundles comprising complete kits – a kitbag filled with underwear, boots, socks, tied to a uniform, greatcoat and headgear – I realised that the former owners had died.

     I spread out one of these outfits, tried on the trousers and found they fitted perfectly. The quality of every item in the bundle was much superior to that of the usual Army garments – the grey socks of thick wool, plain not ribbed, the greatcoat a gem of fine, close-woven wool with shoulders somewhat padded to produce a natty squareness. No epaulettes, though, and I feared their absence might be noticed (almost unbelievably, it was never commented on).

     Knowing that all this gear would be destroyed or sold off, I dressed myself in the fine, warm clothes, with a cosy cardigan under the tunic – this must have been late November or early December – and filled a kitbag with spare underwear, socks, shaving tackle, towels, and even tablets of soap. I easily found a comfortable pair of boots in my medium size, and very well-made of supple leather, not too heavy. My French blue uniform I folded neatly, laying that too-small forage cap on top before selecting a replacement with no Regimental badge, but definitely of a size large enough for my big bonce (it had ear flaps too which folded neatly round the brim when not in use). My old, dingy underwear I threw into a corner of the tent, together with those tattered German jackboots I had worn for several months past.

     Donning all these fine clothes, I felt warm in a way that had been unknown to me as a war prisoner. Kitbag over my shoulder, I marched away from the marquee feeling, at last, a Britisher once more.

Nearing the end of the year, living under canvas could have been unpleasantly cold, but a huge, anthracite stove kept each marquee warm inside. Its metal chimney poked through a fire-proofed exit hole in the ridge of the tent.

     Fuel was brought in by men of a nation I had previously encountered only in the pages of cheap magazines which portrayed them as rather sinister people who moved in the sleazy atmosphere of Docklands eating houses, opium dens, the cabins of mist-enshrouded ships – even sewers. Occasionally, the action took place in a London West End mansion, the interior a replica of a Chinese temple wherein the vile Fu Manchu tortured and murdered his victims. Unless, of course, the great and remorseless Mr Something Smith(2) chanced to be around to circumvent him.

     Nothing sinister, though, about the two Chinese men who refilled our stove so frequently. I made friends of them and we talked for a moment or two at each of their visits. No language problem; they spoke English well enough for me to learn they belonged to the Chinese Labour Corps(3) formed to do chores for our Army and, thus, free the maximum number of British men to fight in the front line. I never heard of a similar scheme to free Staff Officers for front-line duty.

     These chaps told me they did most of their work in the officers’ kitchens and mess, not far from the hospital. Although well-fed, they found living in tents in winter-time very cold. They said they needed warmer clothing as the cotton garments they wore were thin and they shivered all the time – none of them knew the English for “shivering”, they conveyed it by illustration.

     This reminded me of the dead men’s clothes tent and that pile of cardigans, one of which I had appropriated, lying spare. Soon we had devised a contract which resulted in a daily rendezvous near the entrance to the officers’ quarters and the swift exchange of small parcels, a cardigan for a piece of cheese or some other tasty morsel.

     This did not seem to me a terribly wicked trade, for my friends needed warm clothing and I, still weak and thin, could benefit from additions to the necessarily austere diet available to an ordinary soldier at the end of a long war. So, as long as the supply of cardigans lasted, I met my customers’ requirements, conscience easily salved by averring that the transfer of unused clothing from one branch of our Service to another served the purposes of all concerned. Certainly my Chinese friends agreed with my line of argument, and their smiles and thanks and reciprocal nourishing gifts did me a power of good(4).

Washing and shaving daily, showering when my turn came, and feeling comfortably warm in my new clothing, all helped to restore lost confidence. In fact, throughout my stay at the Independent Air Force Field Hospital happiness was my lot, with the generous spirit of the Major matched by the all-male staff’s efforts to rehabilitate us.

     But decisions made somewhere resulted in us returned prisoners being removed to an American hospital near Rouen(5). Strange that, at the end of the war, I should spend the last of my days in France in the place where I had camped after arriving from Egypt in 1916… That seemed way back to me.

     This time, I was not allowed to go into town, but such was the kindly treatment freely given by the American doctors and the lovely nurses that only an ingrate would have wished for more freedom. They told me I could be examined and treated by doctors at any time, and a cheery chap showed me round the place.

     When we entered the large hall where they served meals, he told me that an order issued regarding returned prisoners gave us the privilege of going back to the service counter after finishing our first plateful – up to three times if we so wished. I did this, but not three times, two proving the limit of my greedy capacity. First the generous American Air Force officer in Nancy, now the open-handed Yanks at Rouen… I could think of no way to show my appreciation of their many kindnesses, except by thanking them on every appropriate occasion.

     The hospital wards consisted of roomy Nissen huts with two rows of beds separated by a gangway – quite similar to the civilian equivalent. We had no money, but GIs welcomed us into their combined canteen and entertainment hall, curious about us because they had not met many Britishers. Some of them had come straight to France without landing in Britain, I gathered.

     When fully satisfied with regard to food and drink, one could mooch across to the rows of chairs facing a stage on which some kind of performer would be doing his stuff. Certainly the best of all the “turns”, in my opinion, was the American chaplain, whose straight-faced jokes and yarns kept the troops in stitches – without, of course, using any smutty gags, he kept going for longer than any comedian I had seen before and could have converted me to whatever his religion was, had he been so inclined.

     German prisoners did chores around this hospital… And how, I felt, have the tables been turned. I sometimes watched them working in the grounds and noticed that they often found reason to be in the vicinity of the kitchens. I moved closer and saw that, when the cooks dumped food waste into tubs outside the kitchen doors there, the Germans would dash to get at the swill and reach in up to their elbows, searching for solids. When all had been taken, they returned to their labours. But on one occasion – as I could see from my position on the highest point of the grounds – soon after raiding the tubs and resuming their tasks, most of them began to totter around and then collapse. Unaffected prisoners ran for help and soon stretcher-bearers were carrying sick men away.

     Later, I learnt that, by some accident, a poisonous substance had found its way into the waste food. Conjecture was rife about an American taking revenge on the Jerries for the horrible treatment inflicted on some Allied prisoners. But I thought it more likely that someone who had no knowledge that the German prisoners searched the waste tubs for food had dumped the poisonous stuff there.

Lying in my bed one dark night when most of the men were asleep, I heard the voices of a man and a girl, then some quiet laughter and kissing. I realised the couple were leaning against the thin wall of our hut about six inches from my head. Your imagination can improve on what would have been my description of subsequent developments, but I recall feeling glad for them. What sort of a war had they had, I wondered. At last, the stream of bloody and broken men had dried up and they could relax and give some really leisurely attention to more attractive occupations.

     With improving health and strength, I thought even I might, ere long, have opportunities to try something along similar lines. Not that I believed war had put a stop to love-making, but thousands of couples, married or courting (that word meant going steady in those distant days), had been deprived of their oats (that meant loving in those etc) and Peace would release all their pent-up emotions…

     For the first time in many a day I thought about girls and all that. Evidently nothing wrong with me that a few stouts and oysters wouldn’t put right – I hadn’t so far tried that diet, but had often heard it recommended for older men who had failed to rise to significant occasions.

     “The bloody war is over, the ruddy war is finished…” Thoughts of that kind swirled around my nut constantly as I roamed the hospital grounds, canteen and community hall. Happy days indeed and most of those kind American guys obviously had similar joyful feelings, although some thousands of miles and a long, maybe rough, sea crossing lay between them and home – at that time, not even Alcock and Brown(6) had made an air crossing…

Then suddenly, I was joining a hospital train, off to Boulogne, across the Channel, “The white cliffs of Dover!”, disembarkation and off through the lovely English countryside into Victoria station and dear old London town…(7) ‘

(2) Mr Something Smith: that’s Denis Nayland Smith who, along with his Dr Watson-style back-up, Dr Petrie, regularly foiled Fu Manchu in the Sax Rohmer “Yellow Peril” stories published from 1912 onwards.

(3) The Chinese Labour Corps: founded 1916, after then General Haig said he needed 21,000 labourers; the first CLC ship-load sailed from China in January, 1917, and arrived in France three months later; by Armistice Day, they numbered 96,000; most were given transport home in 1919-20; perhaps 10-20,000 are said to have died during the war, chiefly from Spanish Flu; other Labour Corps recruited more than 300,000 men from British colonies, including Egypt, Fiji, India, Malta, Mauritius, Seychelles, the British West Indies and South Africa.

(4) Regular readers of my father’s Blog may recall his holding forth against “scrounging” on several occasions. And here he is, scrounging. Well, I’d say he was a very solid citizen, but not quite saintly in consistent application of his high moral standards to himself.

(5) American hospital near Rouen: information at http://ow.ly/ygaa30kUzLRsuggests this was probably Base Hospital 21, located on the Champs Des Courses racetrack, and staffed mainly by doctors and nurses from Washington University Hospital, St Louis (they took it over from the British in summer, 1917); it had 1,300 beds and remained active caring for former POWs until January, 1919. Although dates are impossible to pin down with certainty after my father crossed the French front line, his reference to staying at the RAMC hospital in what “must have been late November or early December” suggests his short Rouen sojourn occurred roughly December 1-10 (see footnote 7).

(6) Alcock and Brown: John Alcock from Manchester and Arthur Brown from Glasgow, both POWs during World War I, the former shot down in Turkey, the latter in Germany, made the first non-stop Transatlantic flight in June, 1919.

(7) One of two records of his return to England occurs on an Army pensions document, ‘Medical Report on a Soldier Boarded Prior to Discharge or Transfer to Class W., W (T), P., or P. (T), of the Reserve’ (where “boarded” means examined by doctors to check his medical condition ergo his disability pension entitlement – 10 per cent of Army wages the verdict in my father’s case). It says he was “Repatriated 10.12.18” (see below: scrawled date and “diagnosis” bottom right), which could well be correct or close to (bearing in mind these documents can be wrong - including in my father’s case a couple of times). This date occurs also, in different scrawl, on the second page of his ‘Casualty Form – Active Service’ (also below, noted twice, once in faded ink in the middle of the page, then again last of the list of dates – most correct, one or two probably not – handwritten very small to the lower middle right; apologies, you may need a magnifying glass if you’re curious about all the detail).

See footnote (7) immediately above for details about these two documents.

All the best– FSS

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

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

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

Sam’s Memoir(1) – paperback and e-book – and the e-excerpts from it are now available in their third and final editions with added Endnotes and, in the Memoir, added documentation.

For details of how to buy the Memoir or Gallipoli & Somme & Arras 1918/POW etc mini-e-books click here plus see reader reviews here and here and reviews from the Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association here.

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

The war’s over at last – but Sam’s blog, Facebook page and tweets will continue until his Memoir concludes with the Centenary of the July 19, 1919, Peace parade in London…

All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s Memoir will always go to the British Red Cross – and the current running donations total as of December 4 is £3,772.16 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!)

Dear all

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

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

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

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

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

[Memoir background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London,16-year-old underage volunteer in September, 1914, fought at Gallipoli with the 2/1st Royal Fusiliers (Blogs September 20, 2015, to January 3, 2016), then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons (Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)… until officialdom spotted his real age – 18, legally too young for the battlefield. They told him he could take a break from the fighting until he turned 19. He accepted, though with an enduring sense of guilt. December, 1916, saw him posted to Harrogate, Yorkshire, and re-allocated to the Essex Regiment 2/7th Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations (he spent his 19th birthday, July 6, 1917, in a Sheffield hospital). In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied for Brigade HQ in Arras and at the nearby Front. In mid-March, he ran into his own Essex Battalion; they moved into the trenches near Fampoux, about six miles east of Arras just in time for the German Spring Offensive. A last stand by the Battalion on March 28, 1918, left 80 alive and “fit” out of the 520 who started the day – the 440 in between being dead, wounded or, like Sam, “missing” and, in his case, a POW (Blog March 25, 2018). For several months he wandered occupied France in randomly-assembled half-starved POW groups doing all sorts of hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany between the Rhine and the Black Forest near a village called Hügelheim (tending sick German war horses) and finally moving westwards to a village in Lorraine where they remained until Armistice – at which his long walk towards the French Front began and the events below ensued… ]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(8) Kriegsgefangenenlager means prisoner of war camp.

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

All the best– FSS

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

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

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

Sam’s Memoir(1) – paperback and e-book – and the e-excerpts from it are now available in their third and final editions with added Endnotes and, in the Memoir, added documentation.

For details of how to buy the Memoir or Gallipoli & Somme & Arras 1918/POW etc mini-e-books click here plus see reader reviews here and here and reviews from the Western Front Association and the Gallipoli Association here.

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

The war’s over at last – but Sam’s blog, Facebook page and tweets will continue until his Memoir concludes with the Centenary of the July 19, 1919, Peace parade in London…

All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s Memoir will always go to the British Red Cross – and the current running donations total at December 4 is £3,772.16 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!)

Dear all

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

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

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

[Memoir background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London, 16-year-old underage volunteer in September, 1914,  fought at Gallipoli with the 2/1st Royal Fusiliers (Blogs September 20, 2015, to January 3, 2016), then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons (Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)… until officialdom spotted his real age – 18, legally too young for the battlefield. They told him he could take a break from the fighting until he turned 19. He accepted, though with an enduring sense of guilt. December, 1916, saw him posted to Harrogate, Yorkshire, and re-allocated to the Essex Regiment 2/7th Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations (he spent his 19th birthday, July 6, 1917, in a Sheffield hospital). That summer, his CO offered him training for a commission, but Sam detested ordering men around so he refused. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France – reverting to Private on arrival, I don’t know why – and dogsbodied for Brigade HQ in Arras and at the nearby Front. In mid-March, he ran into his own Essex Battalion; they moved into the trenches near Fampoux, about six miles east of Arras just in time for the German Spring Offensive. A last stand by the Battalion on March 28, 1918, left 80 alive and “fit” out of the 520 who started the day – the 440 in between being dead, wounded or, like Sam, “missing” and, in his case, a POW (Blog March 25, 2018). For several months he wandered occupied France in randomly-assembled half-starved POW groups doing all sorts of hard labour, before spending the summer in southern Germany between the Rhine and the Black Forest near a village called Hügelheim (tending sick German war horses) and finally moving westwards to a village in Lorraine where they remained until Armistice – at which his long walk towards the French Front began… ]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All the best– FSS

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

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