Sam’s Signallers, blushfully dubbed “the cream”, get the jammy jobs and no “lion patrol” – but their detested RSM vows to “make the sods sweat!”...

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

All proceeds to British Red Cross

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

Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… Verdun entered its third week – meaning that the German Army’s surprise attack had already failed to quite a degree. Yet, in the Western Front mindset, that didn’t mean anyone significant stopped and thought about whether attritional slaughter of tens of thousands really was the best way to proceed.

    The “second phase” began on March 6 with the German capture of Forges, then hills 360 and 265 and Fresnes (March 7). The French recovered ground in Corbeaux wood (8), lost some of it again (10), but beat back a German attack on Fort Vaux (11). On both sides, enormous artillery barrages dominated the action and did most damage – German strategists being startled by the strength of the French response.

    Elsewhere, the German declaration of war on Portugal (9) was reciprocated (after much skirmishing in Africa), and on the Eastern Front the Russian Army held off a new wave of German attacks at Dahlen Island in the River Dvina, at Cebrow (Galicia, around current Poland/Ukraine border)… and near a place apparently called Kosloff I can’t find online (7-10).

    The Russian Army continued to prosper on a remarkable range of fronts, with the steady advance towards Trebizond in Turkey continuing via the capture of Rizeh (7) and subsequent crossing of the River Kalopotamus (9) while in Iran they took Cola (7), Sennah (8) and Kerind (11).

    The major event of the British week saw a second attempt to relieve the Ottoman siege of Kut (on the Tigris, southeast of Baghdad; the 6th (Poona) Division trapped there since December) come up short at the Battle Of Dujaila Redoubt (8; 4,000 British/Indian casualties, 1,290 Ottoman). However, in East Africa – now Kenya – a British/South African force drove German invaders back at Taveta and Latema Nek (10-12).

    Meanwhile, the 200-odd 2/1st City Of London Battalion Royal Fusiliers comrades who’d come through Gallipoli, had taken up residence 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, and given rumours of what was happening in Europe, 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 would persist in interfering with their rest and relaxation…

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week, the Battalion’s new CO, straight from London with friends in high places, ousted their trusted Gallipoli leader-cum-hero Major Booth, then did Sam’s Signallers the desperate disservice of praising them as “the cream”. So nobody liked them… and the Regimental Sergeant Major set about avenging himself for the new Colonel’s favouritism, but with particular reference to my father, a close-up witness when he disgraced himself on the battlefield at Suvla Bay:

‘The haphazard way in which we had fixed ourselves up to share living quarters with compatible mates was scrubbed right away. The new regime re-allocated tents away in the rear of the camp to officers, with separate marquees for Officers’ Mess and Sergeants’ Mess now dividing them from “other ranks”. Each diminutive Company had its own tents. We unfortunate Signallers in two tents of our own stood out like sore thumbs, being fairly close – much too close – to a tent called Battalion Headquarters in which lived the Regimental Sergeant Major.

     Do you remember him?* The man seconded earlier, on Malta, from the Royal Marines, briefly a hero with our men, but later, on the Peninsula, disliked for several good reasons and held in some contempt by the Major on account of incorrect behaviour on the front line, such as brandishing a revolver and threatening to shoot men who were already having enough trouble from Turkish guns.

     The RSM seemed to positively hate Signallers, probably because the new Colonel had praised us, and he decided to humiliate us at every opportunity – in fact, he picked on me in particular, having viewed me with disfavour since our days in two adjacent holes at Suvla Bay.

     We had laid out a system of field telephones from each Company HQ to Battalion HQ, and one of our men was on duty at each point. The work, of course, was a piece of cake so it caused some further resentment among the rest of the Battalion, doing hours of training, drill and various jobs of hard work around the growing camp.

     But their resentment was as nothing compared to that of the RSM; he pledged himself vocally, loudly, to have the Cream Of The Battalion off the jammy jobs and on to something which would make the sods sweat – he may even have had some support among our comrades, given that the usurper Colonel’s high opinion of Signallers (along with some skilful wangling on our part, I should admit) meant that we were excused certain unpopular tasks, especially “Lion Patrol”, the humourous title for a chore which took a party of men prowling about at night in the desert darkness looking for Gawd knows what. Sometimes, when I heard the jackals howling in the distance, I thought of our brave lads out there and then thanked Heaven I was part of the Cream Of The Battalion.

     One of us, of course, had to take his turn at manning the phone in the RSM’s Battalion HQ tent and that was an unpopular number, you bet. One of our lines ran from Battalion to Brigade HQ, whence all the big, dirty jobs were dished out. When one of those requests landed on the RSM’s table he would jump up and yell one name, joyfully it seemed to me: “Corporal Norcliffe!”** He knew I would then have the painful duty of detailing a man or men to do whatever scruffy chore had come along.’

* For previous stories of this blustering RSM see: Blog 64, September 27, 2015, when, under an early burst of shellfire at Suvla Bay, Gallipoli, he panicked and, brandishing a revolver from his “trench”/hole (unfortunately next to Sam’s) yelled “Keep down! I’ll shoot the first man who shows himself above ground without permission!” – as my father wrote “the RSM’s queer behaviour deepened the gloom… he failed us on our first night in the line”; then during the night the RSM and his batman, digging vigourously, broke through into my father’s hole – he wrote that “It introduced an unwelcome intimacy. My feelings must have shown for this RSM never loved me.”; and in a later chapter Sam notes that Major Booth (alias for Harry Nathan) had accidentally created a catchphrase for the whole Battalion when, under fire, he spotted the RSM skulking and roared at him, “Keep your head up, Sergeant Major!”

** “Norcliffe” is the vestige of my father’s rather transparent alias in the early part of the Memoir when he wrote in the third person and referred to himself as “our boy” or “Tommy Norcliffe”, before switching to first-person autobiography mode during the Malta chapters.

All the best – FSS

Next week: Haunted by the RSM, Sam and mates discover the gentle art of “going missing” – until a keen new Signals Lieutenant leads them to explore “the heliograph’s place in modern warfare”…

Sam and the 2/1st get paid at last! But the pain-in-the-rear new Colonel just carries on giving them gyp – even when he praises them!

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

All proceeds to British Red Cross

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

Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… the first phase of the German Army’s Verdun onslaught, begun on February 21, petered out around Douamont, held up by snow and the French 33rd Infantry Regiment (27-9). This allowed the French to bring up 90,000 men and a lot more guns and ammunition, enabling their artillery to repulse the German second phase attack at Poivre Hill (March 4) and east of Vacherauville (5) – casualties in the tens of thousands already.

    In the North Sea, German raider Greif and British cruiser Alcantara sank each other (February 29). Of wider strategic significance, especially to America, the German Navy declared the extension of its submarine campaign – according to different sources, this was either just to include “defensively armed merchantmen” or, in fact, everything that sailed, no limits (March 1).

    Further south, the Russian Army developed its push toward Trebizond on the Ottoman Black Sea coast by landing fresh troops at Atna (March 4) and, separately, occupied Bitlis, eastern Turkey, mainly through its 1st Battalion of Armenian volunteers (avenging the 1915 genocidal attack).

    And in Africa the Allies had two successes when the German Government of Cameroon surrendered to the British and French (February 28) and the British began an advance towards Mount Kilimanjaro in German East Africa (March 5; now partly in Tanzania, plus Rwanda and Burundi).

    Meanwhile, the 200-odd 2/1st City Of London Battalion Royal Fusiliers comrades who’d come through Gallipoli, had constructed a tented town, shared with other Battalions, adjacent to a village called Beni Salama, on the banks of the Nile and the edge of the Sahara 30 miles north-west of Cairo. After that terrible campaign – for them, featuring two evacuations, Suvla Bay and then V Beach – this 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 – not for long, though…

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week, Sam wrote about the general sense of comradeship the 2/1st’s remnants shared in the aftermath of Gallipoli – and the threat to it immediately perceived in the appearance, straight from London, of a new Colonel who soon elbowed aside the beloved CO who had led them through their first months of war, Major “Booth” (my father’s alias for Major Harry Nathan, see details in footnote last week).

    Now my father recalls how the Colonel turned their worries to bitterness with a series of tactless missteps:

‘We drew our first pay for a long time*, followed shortly by our first ration of fresh meat (tough, probably camel, but a step in the right direction). In fact, we had started to achieve something towards becoming cleaner and healthier… when along comes this Colonel** to take over and humiliate our guvnor.

     A parade – us, mind you, ordered to fall in, stand to attention, at ease, and all that stuff! – was ordered. Groups representing former Companies*** lined up, an officer standing in front of each. We Signallers stood together and found, for the first time, that we too had an officer, a slick, young man in light breeches, soft cap tilted a little to one side, a cane under his arm. Our gallant Major did indeed stand before us all, called us to attention and then turned and waited as, on the lovely Black Bess****, the new, unwanted Colonel rode forward.

     The final degradation came when our Major saluted the Colonel, then strode away out of our sight. All this seemed unreal… taking place on a flat, sandy waste under a hot, African sun, like a scene from a Foreign Legion yarn in one of the weeklies I’d read before I enlisted.

     Formalities over, astride the big, black horse, the Colonel addressed us. The Battalion had acquitted itself well on active service, he knew, but now the time had come for reorganisation, for training in up-to-date skills of warfare. He had been deputed to originate and carry out the new programme and felt sure that all would co-operate… And so on and on while the resentment boiling up among those glaring at him must have been almost visible like a green cloud ascending from the tops of our heads.

     He crowned his unpopularity and poisoned the minds of all except us, the Signals Section, when he turned in our direction and proclaimed, “And I expect special attention to the details of your work from you, the Signals Section. You are the cream of the Battalion and will be expected to set the pace in this new effort.”

     That blackballed our little group to the rest of the men – ensured that our name stank among them for good and always. Had the Major made such a statement we could have strutted around with haloes illuminating our bonces but, coming from the unwanted Colonel, it infected us like some dirty plague and separated us from all but the most generous among our former good friends.

     And, of course, down there in the Transport lines was my brother Ted who groomed, polished and trained the horse between the new man’s beefy thighs. Wouldn’t Ted be the popular one now it had been revealed for whom he was labouring!’

* Their first pay since before Gallipoli (September, 1915).

** Almost certainly Lieutenant Colonel A.C.H. Kennard, as detailed in a footnote to last week’s Blog (No. 85, February 21).

*** Meaning that when recruited in September, 1914, the Battalion’s eight Companies comprised around 125 men each. After Gallipoli, with numbers reduced erratically across the Companies, they averaged 31/32 men each.

**** A stallion! No, nobody ever heard an explanation for the misnomer, but no doubt Kennard got the blame and the mockery (as well as Ted).

All the best – FSS

Next week: Sam’s Signallers, now officially the “cream of the Battalion” get the jammy jobs to go with it – arousing the ire of their detested RSM who vows to “make the sods sweat!”...