Sam and mates discover the gentle art of “going missing” to escape the RSM’s tyranny – and realise the new CO’s regime has its good points. Such as getting paid…

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Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… the Battle Of Verdun, which of course nobody yet knew would come to be seen as the greatest and longest in all history, “progressed” via a week of German attacks at Bethincourt (March 14), Vaux (16) and Poivre Hill (19) – all repulsed, except that the first saw the capture of Côte (Hill) 265. In the standard historic timelines nothing else on the Western Front rates a mention bar a French advance at Saint-Souplet in Champagne (15) and an Allied bombing raid on Zeebrugge, Belgium (18). But deadly attrition continued…

    The Verdun effect had begun to spread to other areas though. On the Eastern Front, following a steady run of winter successes, the Russian Army launched the Lake Narach Offensive, in modern-day Belarus (March 18-30), hoping to distract German attention from Verdun – a typical WW1 battle of artillery and machine-guns saw the Russians gain 10 kilometres then lose them (conflicting casualty figures show up to 110,000 Russian, 40,000 German).

    Down on the Italy/Austro-Hungarian border, again urged on by the French, the Italian Army instigated the Fifth Battle Of The Isonzo (out of 12!) near Gorizia (March 9-15). It petered out because of bad weather with almost 2,000 casualties on each side.

    Much further south, and unrelated to Verdun, in East Africa, now Kenya, South African and British forces defeated the Germans at the Battle Of Kahe and pushed them west beyond Mount Kilimanjaro (March 18; 686 German casualties, 21 British/South African).

    Meanwhile, the 200-odd 2/1st City Of London Battalion Royal Fusiliers comrades who’d come through Gallipoli – plus maybe 50 reinforcements – proceeded with a rather strange period of R&R in a tented town at Beni Salama, on the banks of the Nile and the edge of the Sahara 30 miles north-west of Cairo. After that terrible campaign, it wasn’t such a bad life for my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London (still under-age at 17), his older brother Ted (19, lately converted from foot-slogging to horse wrangling), and their mates. Except that the Army dumped a new CO on them, replacing the Major they loved, and then…

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week, the Signallers got their comeuppance for the detested straight-from-London new CO calling them the “cream” of the Battalion. The puffed-up RSM who’d made a fool of himself in Gallipoli* got his revenge on them, and Sam in particular, by making them his dogsbodies, lumbered with every petty task he could think of. And Sam tried to do all the jobs himself to avoid the embarrassment and ill-will caused by passing them on to others:

‘Not even by detailing myself to telephone duty in [the RSM’s] Headquarters tent could I get him off my back. He would hand me the order or, if I’d written down the message myself from a verbal instruction over the phone, he would still have me supply the required men from my small group of Signallers. Well, if available…

     Something had to be done to end this victimisation, so when a gap appeared in the brailing** of our tent at the back, we enlarged it. The fabric was old and tender and the hole we’d improved on sometimes let in a draught, but we deemed occasional discomfort preferable to satisfying the unending demands of the unjust RSM.

     Thereafter, when we decided we’d done our share of the odd jobs for the day, we simply went missing. Before the man had completed his shouting the lads would be through that hole, racing through the lines of tents and on the far side of a ridge at the back of camp, where they would continue their siestas or meditations in peace and quiet. This would force the RSM to call on another junior Lance Jack for the required labour; although, on parade, the RSM was great at yelling orders, stamping about noisily, and saluting ostentatiously, he appeared to be almost afraid to give orders to older men.’

With this partial solution to the RSM problem in place, my father’s attention could turn again to the more engaging aspects of life by the Nile – eccentric characters, training in archaic Signals skills, and even a recognition that the usurper CO’s organisational ability did bring certain benefits to the men:

‘Our Signals Sergeant at that time lived strangely. What enabled him to arrange his personal comings and goings without reference to us and our work remained a mystery. Believe it or not, he had taken up oil painting, scenic and portraits.

     His pictures looked good to me. I’d never been able to achieve any kind of understanding with him, perhaps because he considered me too young. So I had the pleasure of his company only on rare occasions, moments when he perhaps felt that the war should sometimes be permitted to interfere with his hobby. All this sounds daft, so shall we assume that this quite brainy Sergeant performed duties about which nothing was known by his associates?

     Meanwhile, our new, young officer in charge of Signals, Lieutenant Wickinson, began to organise training schedules which soon occupied most of our waking hours and would eventually bring us up to a level of efficiency justifying, to some extent, the Colonel’s inclusion of the word “cream” in a sentence which also contained reference to ourselves.

     As opportunity offered, I had washed my uniform and underwear piece by piece. In the warm weather everything dried quickly so, although one spare pair of socks was my only item of clothing beyond what I wore, I never had to go about partly undressed for long. Whatever my appearance, at least I was clean.

     And soon, new kit and uniforms did finally arrive, thanks, we understood, to the Colonel’s influence in high places. With weekly pay parades restored – the basic enhanced by the refunding of “credit accumulated” – we now had money, almost wealth it seemed for a moment, and, with Lieutenant Wickinson keeping us fully occupied, our Signallers group no longer loitered at the RSM’s beck and call.

     The further we penetrated into the desert in the course of our exercises, the more hilly it became – ideal for visual signalling practice. Some days we would set up a chain of hilltop stations using heliographs, well-made instruments mounted on tripods. The simple, yet exact process of using them involved flashing Morse messages to a distant station by observing and controlling the positions relative to one another of two mirrors – often while you noted incoming messages at the same time. By means of a graded sight, your sending mirror had to be kept in a position yielding clear signals to the man at the receiving end. This work kept two men quite busy.

     I did find it difficult to assess the heliograph’s place in modern warfare, except perhaps in dealing with dissident tribes in desert areas. Flags might also have a role in those circumstances, and, at night, possibly the electric lamps. But, in the recent campaign, the only communications media we used were field telegraphs and phones – except that, sea to shore during the landings, flags and signal lamps still proved very quick (though even then, ship-to-ship wireless Morse signalling had come into its own).

     These activities once again restored interest to our lives after a period of heavy, manual labour, or equally exhausting efforts to avoid same. The Colonel with the hefty leather-clad calves did effect substantial changes in the lives of all ranks so, although our loyalty and sympathies remained firmly with the Major, we nonetheless found ourselves feeling and looking somewhat the better for the new regime.’

* See last week’s Blog 87, March 6, for a footnote detailing how the RSM’s various misdeeds led to notoriety and widespread scorn among the troops.

** Brailings: rope loops along the bottom of the tent canvas through which pegs were hammered to hold the sides of the tent to the ground.

All the best – FSS

Next week: Sam gets treats from home and makes his getaway from Beni Salama – though only on legitimate leave – accompanied by some lively entertainment from a magician and a pigeon…

Sam meets his new Signaller mates – especially the small, yet perfectly formed Peter Miter!

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

All proceeds to British Red Cross

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Dear all

A hundred years ago… to lead this summary update with the international politics, for once, on May 23 Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary, finally deserting their former three-way alliance with Germany after a de facto auction of their favours wherein the Allies gave them the better offer of potential post-war spoils (their wish list of Trieste, Istria, Zara and Dalmatia and more).

    The entrenched attrition of the Western Front continued at Festubert and Ypres while, on the Eastern, the Russian and German/Austro-Hungarian Armies battered one another across Poland at Gorlice-Tarnów, Drohobycz, Stryj and Konary.

    Over in Gallipoli, on May 19 the Ottoman Army launched a disastrous attack on Anzac Cove. Beaten back by the following day, they suffered 10,000 casualties (3,000 dead) to the ANZACs’ 636 – no doubt the sort of outcome which eased Turkish tactics away from the quest for quick victory towards sit tight and wear their enemy down.

    Back in UK, Kitchener took his grievance about supplies of ammunition, especially artillery shells, to the House of Lords (May 18) and a zeppelin dropped its bombs on Ramsgate (16-17, two dead, £1,600 worth of damage).

    Meanwhile.... at St George’s Barracks, Malta, the thousand men of the 2/1st City Of London Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, including my father, Private Sam Sutcliffe (still just 16), his older brother Ted (18), and their pals from Edmonton, north London, continued their often strenuous yet initially under-equipped and somehow desultory training… to prepare themselves for they knew not what, except that it would probably involve getting shot at. Gallipoli? Mesopotamia? Even further east?

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week, Sam volunteered to train as a Signaller, knowing from his Boy Scout years that he had an aptitude for the job. He also fancied the promised reduction in square-bashing. Under the tutelage of Sergeant Cullen (ex-GPO) and Corporal “Glossyboots” Catland (ex-Boys Brigade) he started brushing up his Morse and semaphore and learning a whole realm of new skills with field telephones and suchlike electric wizardry – remember, it wasn’t so long since AG Bell had brandished one of the telephones he’d lately invented and declared “Soon there will be one of these devices in every town!”

    In this passage, Sam introduces some of his new close comrades, a vivid group of people he remembered clearly some 60 years later when working on his Memoir:

‘Sixteen chaps, all Privates, entered into the training with enthusiasm, never begrudging time, spending more hours each day on the job than they had ever done in Company ranks, and often working while the other troops rested. I remember some of them clearly:

– Mossgrove, about 20, tall, slightly pigeon-toed, fair, wavy hair compulsorily short at sides and back where it showed below the cap, unruly otherwise; he would overcome ill humour or garrulous chumminess with his never-failing courtesy and friendly smile. Before he spoke one knew what to expect – the speech of a well-educated fellow. He never patronised people, not even the occasional fawning type.

– Nicholas, short, Inner-London resident, 18 unofficially, he’d been on some extended-education scheme until that age, very bright, impatient and unkind to dullards.

– “Fatty” Mills, big and fat and plodding and pleasant.

– Dickie Dixon, five-nine, dark, a smiler, but nobody’s fool.

– little Hamilton, small, perky, always busy.

– Stanley Drake, also something in the GPO with the speech and manners of the then popular conception of a Lord, though no one could imagine how he came by these qualities – a good sport.

– Loehr, dark with bright, blue eyes, schoolgirl complexion and mannerisms, but only slightly – a kindly bloke.

– Benning, five-ten, earnest, honest, diligent, with no time for easy-going chaps.’

Editorial interruption here to note that Sam took a special shine to the final character in this list, coming up now – later justified by his stout conduct and demeanour when they shared a hole/”trench” on top of a hill in Gallipoli later that year:

‘– Peter Miter*, of Swiss birth but English upbringing, must be mentioned; his father managed a famous London hotel. Dad had taken Peter into the trade very young, starting him right at the bottom as kitchen boy. He progressed through many stages by the time the war started, rising to the role of receptionist.

     About five-two but, as far as appearance goes, conjure up what you believe to be the perfect manly figure and that would be Peter. Just turned 20, he already had what novelists then called a blue chin, requiring a second shave if going out for the night. He was justifiably vain about his physical assets and probably truthful about the trail of deflowerings illuminating his experience of life so far. Before leaving barracks for an assignation with a dame whom none of us ever met or saw, he would relate what occurred during his last visit; by then he may have worked up an anticipatory horn, as it was then termed, and would perhaps show to admiring comrades a penetratory organ which looked much too big to belong to a little man.

     Thereafter, a really well-groomed soldier of that shabbily dressed period, he would swagger off to do his stint in amatory battle. A foreigner in looks and by birth, he yet was the most consistently patriotic Britisher I have known. He enlisted to prove that, and always performed his military duties with liberal determination. On active service later, always in very trying circumstances, he retained his manliness and faith in the cause long after others had said to hell with it all. Usually, his type could only be found doing jobs so important that they were compelled to be separated from the actual battlefield by a hundred or more miles, poor chaps — their belief in a man doing his bit for his country often stronger than that of a soldier up to his knees in mud and shit, say near Ypres or the French funeral factory, Verdun.’

My father concludes this assessment of his colleagues with another of his reflections on his own inadequacies and remaining fears that his age – and the lie he told and swore to on enlisting the previous September – would be his undoing. “Those men were all superior to me in most respects,” he writes, “if only because of their three or four years more experience of life.”

    But this passage about Peter Miter did set me thinking back to the childhood and teens sections of the Memoir – because Sam’s tolerance of his friend’s lairy attitude to women and sex so contradicts the church-trained choirboy and Scout attitudes he learned from the Edmonton vicar, Mr Frusher, which, quite remarkably, he maintained throughout the war.

    The direct comparison that struck me, as son and editor, was with his rather scornful view of a young man he, and brother Ted, encountered in his days as an office boy in the Liverpool Street area of the City:

‘… often, he was able to join his brother in a lunchtime visit to a local Italian shop… Sometimes an older fellow joined them – always well dressed in a City suit, hair well cut and a white face, very pale indeed, with rather small eyes. Neither Tommy nor his brother really liked him, but he fascinated them because of the tales he told. He was engaged to a beautiful girl and one gathered they hadn’t waited on the formalities of marriage for consummation. He described how, if her parents were out when he visited her, she would undress completely, and he would lay her out on the dining-room table and “have” her. The brothers concluded that he was a bit of a bird-hound and, no doubt, his wishes were father to his thoughts with regard to many of his stories, if not all of them.

     Living where they did, neither brother could be ignorant of what went on around them in the world, some of it not entirely beautiful or creditable. And yet the thoughts and conduct inculcated in them by dear old Frusher still governed them. Well, they governed Tommy at any rate – he realised he couldn’t speak for his older brother with complete certainty.’

* Writing about his Swiss friend in Gallipoli, Sam changes his name slightly to “Nieter”. I think this is part of his instinct to protect the identities of people who might still have been alive as he wrote. So either of those names might have been real or both false!

All the best – FSS

Next week: Sam the soldier at his leisure takes tea in Valletta and a matelot gives him a guided tour of a French battleship