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& Somme episode mini-e-books & reader
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Dear all
A hundred years ago this week… On
the Western Front the Allies drew the Battle Of Ancre Heights (October
1-November 11) to a close via advances, interrupted by bad weather, concluding
with a gas bombardment of Beaumont Hamel (November 11), followed up that night by
British and Canadian infantry.
But
the Somme didn’t really cease for the winter until a week later – the French
advanced north of St Pierre Vaast Wood (November 6), captured Ablaincourt and
Pressoir (7), and reoccupied most of Sallisel (11), while British forces raided
around Hébuterne and east of Butte De Warlencourt (7).
Food
strikes in Russia showed their economy had begun to collapse – leading to
Revolution only a year later – their military effort continued to defy its cost
in men and money. On the Eastern Front, they won a battle against the German
Army at Dorna Vatra (November 7, Bukovina) and further south their support for
Romania in the Battle Of Transylvania (August 27-November 26) saw them at least
detain German/Austro-Hungarian forces by defending the Roter Turm and Vulkan
passes and occupying the towns of Hirshova, Dunarea (9) and Topalu (11). The
trend, though, was retreat – particularly in the Aluta and Jiu valleys (12).
The
exiled Serbian Army continued to lead the counterattack on the Bulgarians who
ousted them; the remarkably multinational Monastir Offensive in Macedonia
forged on, taking the Chuke Heights (10) and Polog (11), and combining with the
French to capture Iven (12) which left them only 15 miles from their objective
(Monastir is now called Bitola).
Outside
Europe, the “world” part of the Great War’s now commonly applied title
continued to prove the point bloodily enough as 1) an Anglo-Egyptian force
defeated an Army led by Ali Dinar, a former Sultan of Darfur, at Gyuba (November
6) – Sudan then taking over Darfur (a matter still unresolved, of course) 2)
British troops occupied Shiraz in South Persia (12), the campaign conducted in
co-operation with the Russians, and 3) in vast German East Africa, Portugal took
Lulindi (8-12, now in Tanzania).
Meanwhile, my father, under-age volunteer Corporal Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London, 18
on July 6, 1916, had fought with the Kensingtons Battalion from mid-May to
September, at Hébuterne/Gommecourt on the north end of the Somme Front, then
around Leuze Wood and Morval to the south (FootSoldierSam’s Blogs dated May 15 to September 25, 2016). About September 30 he was told his
age had been officially noticed, he was still legally too young for the
battlefield and he could take a break until his 19th birthday if he wished. He
wished all right – though not without a sense of guilt. He left the Front for
the British base camp at Harfleur and a surprise, temporary move into catering…
But for the two Remembrance
week blogs, today, the 6th, and on the 13th, we’ll leave my father enjoying his
respite from the battlefield and turn to some excerpts from the two major
campaigns he’d already fought in. First, Gallipoli. At 16 in 1914, he joined up
with the 2/1st Royal Fusiliers and did a lot of training in London, Tonbridge
and Malta – where he became a Lance Corporal Signaller. Then, in September,
1915, they sailed for Suvla Bay…
FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
In Remembrance of my father, his brother Ted
(who died in 1922 from the aftereffects of poison gas), all their pals and
comrades and all the millions who suffered…
Here
are some brief quotes from my father’s personal memories of and insights into
the Gallipoli campaign – all seen through the eyes of a front-line Tommy. A
long blog, but worth it, I hope.
I’ll
start with a couple of “firsts”, the right-between-the-eyes experience of a
teenage boy confronting the realities of war.
Here his Battalion is
sailing towards Suvla, at night:
‘Our small ship carried G and H Companies, and each assembled
without fuss on its appointed side of the boat. Where the dark cliff had
towered above us, I now saw the lighter colour of the sky. Across a wider
stretch of water than earlier, on land rifles fired continuously and artillery
lit up the blackness, each flash followed by a bang, a shriek or a strange
whine which often increased in volume then ended up in a big explosion. Guns
were being fired with intent to kill and here was my first experience of
warfare.’
They transfer to a
lighter for the landing itself – and Sam discovers mortal fear:
‘A howl became a shriek, then a shattering explosion — and a
short silence was followed by numerous thuds as what had gone up came down on
the nearby beach. While still at sea I heard for the first time that sad, though
urgent call, “Stretcher-bearers!” A tightening of the gut and clamping together
of the jaws accompanied an inner alarm which then and many times afterwards
seemed to produce an acid-like smell on hands and other parts of the body.’
Soon after they scramble
on to the beach and advance a few hundred yards their first comrade dies:
‘We hugged the ground, of course, to let the bullets pass
harmlessly above us, but one of those wretched things broke that rule. When one
move forward started, young Nibs, more of a boy even than I was, didn’t get up.
The Captain was told, all paused again, and the shocking news came along that
he was dead, shot through the head. Had he been standing up, that bullet would
presumably have damaged a foot or ankle. Stretcher-bearers carried him to the
beach.’
But within a few days,
even in the strange hell that every battlefield must be, routines – sort of
comforting or not – begin to assert themselves, such as well-tended latrines
and terrible food:
‘Others routinely in danger because of the nature of their
work were our Pioneers; back in Egypt, the Regiment had formed this section
composed of men prepared to take care of sanitation. In places without
water-flushed WCs, even on the front line, these men erected shelters, emptied
and cleansed the waste buckets and seats housed in them, and sprinkled chloride
of lime about the place. Now, in the battlefield, their work was of great
importance. Canvas screens surrounded the bucket areas. With bullets and shells
wreaking their havoc, these men exercised great self-discipline in servicing
the latrines. Men needing to use them sat in real peril, their excretory
movements probably accelerated by bursting shells and whining bullets. Holes
appearing in the canvas screens added urgency to these operations.’
‘Most days there were only two items of “solid” food
available, namely, hard biscuits and apricot jam. How come? It appeared that,
for some weeks, a ship stuffed with these two eatables plus tea, sugar, and
canned milk, served as our sole source of supplies. We of the PBI (Poor Bloody
Infantry) accepted these rations without question, believing what we were told
without doubt or quibble…
With the best will in the world, our officers could not attain efficient
feeding and welfare of their men under active-service conditions. They had not
received the necessary training and it was easy to let things slide…’
The Battalion Medical
Officer turned out to be a bad joke too:
‘I developed a very painful toothache and, when I eventually
traced him to the hole in the ground wherein he lurked, his advice to me came
in the following words – do believe me, this is true – “I have no instruments
with which to extract teeth. Take this Number 9 pill for your bowels. Perhaps
the artillery can help you by attaching a string from your bad tooth to a
shell. When the gun is fired, your tooth will be pulled out!”’
Still, the most
dispiriting part of “getting used to it” was probably the sense of futility
that assailed the 2/1st Tommies within days of their landing and only got worse
thereafter:
‘All hope of quick action and outcome gave way to pessimism
engendered by the prospect of enduring a long period of this wretched life with
an Army which had no effective leadership. We all felt it and cursed it. News
filtered through that the General in charge of the whole operation, Hamilton,
lived in a battleship some miles out to sea and sent home wordy reports of our
progress – progress of which we, in the front line, were quite unaware. Poetry
was his speciality, they said, and he wrote as if for the school history books
in flowery language, the sort of bilge which had persuaded children that mass
murderers like Napoleon were somehow brave and wonderful men.’
The most consoling aspect
of the whole wearing experience for Sam was simply sharing good comradeship
while trying to survive together – in this case, when he got sent to a hilltop
overlooking the Turkish lines to set up a signalling post:
‘My first Signaller mate there was a pleasant chap, quite a
philosopher in his way, probably my senior by four or five years. He showed me
photographs of his parents and a sister, and I warmed myself in the glow of
love emanating from him as he talked about them and their life together before
the war. A good worker too, meticulous in his time-keeping, he woke quickly
during the night when the luminous dial on my watch told me four hours had
passed and I nudged him to take over… we catnapped day and night and just made
the best of a terrible existence. The resulting fatigue, along with poor diet,
was reducing us to shadows of ourselves.’
Beyond the chances of
getting shot, shelled or laid low by dysentery, the notorious November 27
blizzard proved perhaps the greatest physical threat and privation of all. A
day or so later, with no provisions reaching his hilltop, my father slid his
way down to Battalion HQ to beg some food, but this is what he found:
‘A dreadful sight confronted me when I reached low-lying Essex Ravine.
Rising water had forced our men to quit their trenches and, already very
chilled and wet, stand exposed to the biting cold wind and sleet with nowhere
to rest. Their resourceful officer told them to form circles and bend forwards
with arms around each other’s shoulders. He and others then covered each
circular group with their rubberised groundsheets tucked in here and there to
prevent them being blown away. Thus they stood all night, pressed close for
warmth, and most of them were still in that situation when I arrived.’
Rather unusually, my
father evacuated from Gallipoli twice because, after leaving Suvla in
mid-December, the 2/1st got sent back from Lemnos on Boxing Day to help with
the departure from V Beach, Cape Helles. But this scene comes from their
eventually jolly Suvla exit aboard the good little ship Robin Redbreast – when they thought they were done with the much-loathed
peninsula for good:
‘Soon, out of sight of the
explosions, some singing started up, our first for many a day. And then we
really gave vent to the joy and relief we felt. A youngster who had obliged at
concerts back in Malta climbed to a position by the bridge and sang a quickly
improvised parody of that popular song, Moonlight Bay: “We were sailing away
from Suvla Bay/We can hear the Turks a-singing/‘Please don’t go away/You are
breaking our hearts/So please do stay’/‘Not bloody likely, boys/Goodbye to
Suvla Bay’”. All joined in, inventing their own versions as we sang along time
after time.’
But at least the return
trip offered Sam and pals a whole new combat experience – getting bombed by
aeroplanes:
‘That was the first time I’d thought about the possibility
of planes carrying bombs. Probably the pilot hurled it out of his cockpit.
Although it could only have been a small one, it made quite an impressive bang.
Still, no harm done, so nobody worried too much about air-bomb possibilities.
However, soon
after that incident, one of our chaps approached our position, a message in his
hand, when another low-flying plane appeared. Our friend more or less
disintegrated before our eyes. Sheer bad luck placed him in the spot where bomb
Number 2 exploded, poor fellow. So, very early in that distant war, did I see
death from the air strike a man down.’
And yet evacuation could
provide its compensations:
‘Our Signals group landed a lovely job which consisted of going to a
large dump near the beach and gradually dispersing its contents: canned and
bottled food and drink intended as extras for officers — anything that would
keep well in cans, boxes, cartons, with smoked items in cotton wraps, also biscuits,
some cakes and sweets, wines, beers, but not much in the way of spirits. We
loaded these good things on to small mule carts.
We could only work
at night, but during breaks for rest, or while awaiting transports, we were
allowed to eat and drink. Chicken, asparagus, Irish bitter from round
brass-coloured tins, Schweppes lemon squash or Seltzer water, thin lunch
biscuits and other luxuries… for a brief period our small, but fortunate group
guzzled these lush items… we did work
with a will on the job — and so shortened its duration, unfortunately.’
And, finally, here’s my
father’s last sally into the firing line at Gallipoli: a middle-of-the-night
expedition into No Man’s Land – all part of the cunning shadow boxing and fakery that
preceded the early January, 1916, evacuation:
‘No one told us why, at this stage of the campaign, we poor
mugs were digging holes in front of the Turk trenches at great risk to
ourselves and our underpants, but even we of the lower orders could guess that
we played a part in the great game of bluff. Our top brass hoped John Turk
would reason, “They can’t be leaving yet or they wouldn’t be digging works in
advanced positions”. I wonder if they were right – if the enemy even cared what
we were up to? Perhaps he too had seen enough of the farce. We suffered no
casualties.’
My father noted that, of
the thousand 2/1st Royal Fusiliers who sailed for Gallipoli in September, 200 emerged
to take their rest in Egypt for three months before their transfer to the
Western Front. The rest casualties, living or dead, of shot, shell and disease.
For more of Sam’s story see the Blogs dated September 13, 2015,
to January 3, 2016, or his full Memoir or the extracted e-book episodes on
Gallipoli and the Somme.
All
the best –
FSS
Next week: Remembrance:
Sam on the Somme revisited.
* 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.
