Sam suffers torture by Welsh male voice choir, trains like hell to save the Battalion from the menace of Army admin. – and enjoys a Saharan day at the races...

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Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… despite German Chief Of Staff Erich Von Falkenhayn talking of ending the Verdun onslaught to cut his losses (81,607 German casualties by the end of March), the bloody to and fro continued. The French Army reoccupied part of Vaux village (April 3), made progress north of Bois De Caillete (4), and beat back an attack southeast of Haucourt (7); the Germans occupied Haucourt (5), advanced between Bethincourt and Hill 265 (6) and drove the French out of Bethincourt (8).

    Much the same story at the less notorious Battle Of The St Eloi Craters, near Ypres, the Canadian 2nd Division’s first major engagement (March 27-April 16). It began when the British exploded six massive mines. Then they alternately gained and lost the resultant craters until the two sides settled back into their original positions (I couldn’t find casualty figures).

    The Russian and German Armies proceeded with their Eastern Front exchanges, notably at Uxküll bridgehead on the Dvina (April 3) and Lake Naroch, south of Dvinsk (7), both in Latvia. But further south, the Russian Caucasus Army neared palpable victory in their Trebizond Campaign when they began their attack (6) on the Black Sea city they’d been aiming for in a series of fights with the Ottoman Army in Armenia which began on February 5.

    Down in Mesopotamia (now Iraq), another long-running clash drew towards a conclusion with the British and Indian Armies’ final attempt to relieve the Ottoman siege of Kut Al Amara (a little southeast of Baghdad; the 13,000 British troops surrounded since December had barely a fortnight’s rations left). With 30,000 men arrayed on each side, the Allies made headway at first, taking Um-el-Hanna and Falahiya (April 5). But then the entrenched Ottoman troops inflicted heavy losses and beat them back in two assaults at Sanna-i-Yat (6 and 8).

    In German  East Africa (now Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi), the Allies’ advance – South African and British – proceeded briskly with an easy victory at Lol Kissale.

    Meanwhile, in Egypt, the 200-odd 2/1st City Of London Battalion Royal Fusiliers comrades who’d come through Gallipoli remained encamped on the banks of the Nile and the edge of the Sahara at Beni Salama, 30 miles north-west of Cairo. But 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, which proves highly relevant to this week’s excerpt), and their mates were about to see their fond hope that this desert respite might last until Armistice dashed by an announcement from their unpopular upstart Colonel.

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week, Sam’s Egyptian sojourn continued with a misadventure that happily turned to farce when his Company’s callow Lieutenant led the Signallers out on an exercise in a stretch of the Sahara that turned out to be a British Army artillery range – fortunately, the practice barrage which alerted them to the danger passed well overhead and the only casualty was the poor young officer threatened with disciplinary action by a bristling Major General…

    Now, to the alarm of the depleted Gallipoli-veteran Battalion, its future comes under a worse threat – from British Army admin. Sam, the while, enjoys a spot of horse racing and endures a musical menace:

‘… the camp kept on growing. A large contingent of Welsh troops settled close by us. If memory serves, they were the 53rd Welsh Division* and, of course, the thing most of us feared did prove true. They had a large choir. So they had to build a stage, didn’t they?

     The men stood up there on various levels and their Major Choirmaster waved his arms and implored with his hands as, time after time, they sang that stirring anthem Comrades In Arms** till I knew every note of it and hated it like hell. Nonetheless, as soon as they had perfected a few male-voice-choir favourites, we had to attend their concert – by order, although we had done nothing to merit such punishment.

     Apart from that, time passed fairly pleasantly and we were inclined to assume we should spend the rest of the war in the Middle East, perhaps seeing action again in lands east of the Suez Canal.

     But that modest imagining vanished when the Colonel made one of his impressive pronouncements, mounted on the beautiful Black Bess***. Only a faint hope remained, he said, of our staying together as a Battalion. The powers-that-be were in favour of scattering us among other units. Even so, if we could perform exceptionally well, we might yet be treated as a cadre into which reinforcements could be introduced until we eventually constituted a modern Battalion of four Companies – eight hundred men in all.

     We immediately put all we’d got into training to reach that high standard. I never again had the experience of working with such dedicated men and the results must surely have impressed the men at the top. Even leisure we devoted to games aimed at improving fitness, and the Quartermaster’s department seemed to enter into the spirit of the thing, providing even better food and more of it.

However, one successful innovation in no way concerned with enhancing our military skills does deserve mention. Horse racing it was, the riders being officers who had mounts.

     Several painted posters placed in prominent positions advertised what some bright spark had dubbed the Desert Derby. These named and described the horses and the events in which they would run. The riders would be listed on the day, they said – and, since neither my brother nor I could imagine the hefty Colonel participating, we hoped the ride on Black Bess would be given to him, since he was so used to handling the misnomered stallion.

     Much grooming and trial racing went on until the great day arrived. We were amazed to see men streaming in their hundreds towards the course our Battalion had marked out. Using a natural ridge and lines of sandbags to mark the boundary, we had made an oval track about one and a half miles in length for the longer races, with short sprints to measure the length of the ridge.

     A festive air prevailed. Last-minute acceptances of entries from outsiders were arranged and an enterprising clerk assembled the final list and ran off copies on one of those gelatine slabs, and sold them at a piastre a time. I saw a Yeomanry Sergeant, brandishing one of these “programmes”, shouting the odds and taking bets, writing slips for betting cards while his assistant made up the book.

     The excitement of the occasion must have gone to the Colonel’s head, for he insisted on riding the black and denying me the pleasure of seeing Ted win a race which I was certain he would and the Colonel wouldn’t – and, indeed, he didn’t. But the meeting’s terrific success made us all feel, for the moment, that we were human beings once more and not just anonymous pieces in a game of kill or be killed.’

* My father’s memory may well have been as accurate as usual on this. The 53rd Welsh Division, like the Royal Fusiliers, fought at Suvla Bay, Gallipoli, and evacuated to Egypt (but then remained in the Middle East for the rest of the war).

** Comrades In Arms: words by Frederic T. Cardoze, music Reginald DeKoven, possibly written in 1901. Hear the Barry Male Voice Choir’s rendering at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTx5UKZAawc – I don’t remember the origin of my father’s loathing for male voice choirs, especially Welsh ones, but he sustained it loyally until his dying day.

*** Oddly enough, a stallion – see Blog 86 February 28 for non-explanation of the name, but also a reference to Sam’s brother Ted being his groom.

All the best – FSS

Next week: After three months recovering from Gallipoli, Sam and the 2/1st are about to sail for France where they’ll discover their fate as a Battalion – for most, including Sam, it’ll mean the Somme. Before that, this blog is a brief retrospective on what’s happened to Sam so far in WW1... bearing in mind he’s still only 17.

A young Lieutenant nearly gets Sam’s Signallers killed on a Saharan artillery range and gets a “rocket” from a Major-General…

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… at bloody Verdun the German Army made costly progress, entering Malancourt village (March 29) after being repulsed there the day before, and eventually forcing the French Army to evacuate (31). The French recovered Avocourt Redoubt (29), but lost part of Vaux village (April 1). To and back…

    A more active week of airship raids on Britain saw 48 killed in and around London (31) ­– but Zeppelin L15 brought down by gunfire near the Thames estuary – 22 killed in the North-East (April 1), and 13 killed on Scotland’s East Coast (2).

    The Russian Army continued its encouraging spring with Eastern Front successes against the Germans north of Bojan, Galicia (March 28), near Pinsk (30) and in the Liakhovichi region (April 2), both Belarus. And further south, their Trebizond Campaign (February 5-April 15) to take Armenia from the Ottomans proceeded with the crossing of the Baltachi Darassi river (27), victory in a battle at Kara Malachkan (31) and crossing the Upper Chorok river to take Ottoman fortifications (2).

    Meanwhile, in Egypt, the grand development was the 1st Anzac Corps’ departure for France, while the newly formed 2nd Anzac Corps acquired its first commander, General Alexander Godley.

    Big stuff, but unknown to the 200-odd 2/1st City Of London Battalion Royal Fusiliers comrades who’d come through Gallipoli and, along with maybe 50 reinforcements, encamped for a couple of months on the banks of the Nile and the edge of the Sahara at Beni Salama, 30 miles north-west of Cairo. 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 took more or less anything that didn’t involve getting shot at as a blessing. Speaking of which…

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week, my father enjoyed a package from home – his Ma’s fruitcake and a sprauncy new shirt – plus an entertaining train journey to Cairo on a day’s leave. Now he recalls a fine – and dangerous – mess nice, young Lieutenant Wickinson gets them into:

‘Lieutenant Wickinson liked to have a programme of work ready for each day and, presumably because our Sergeant was able to avoid working with us*, he occasionally asked me to go to his tent of an evening. We would sit and discuss progress and make plans. I enjoyed this unusual procedure, smoked his very nice cigarettes, and got to know this shy, young officer fairly well. I needed no telling that this relaxed relationship began as I entered his tent and ended when I left it. I can’t recall ever having discussed it with my mates and was probably more punctilious than they in behaving correctly when on parade.

     My heart almost bled for the young Lieutenant on one occasion when we had set up a chain of signal stations at half-mile intervals.

     Suddenly, gunfire broke the silence and shells shrieked overhead. Fear did things to my stomach. I had by now achieved freedom from the day-and-night tension one endured in Gallipoli, and this sudden artillery outburst shocked me and temporarily I thought war had spread to this part of Egypt.

     Then, as the explosions and shell-shrieks ceased, I saw a party of mounted officers heading towards us. Closer view of them revealed that several of them wore red bands round their caps and bits of red on epaulettes and tunic collars. A grey-moustached, red-faced senior officer yelled “Who’s in charge here?” and, as our Lieutenant stepped forward, the old boy yelled at him, “You bloody young fool, you’ve placed your men in line across an artillery range. You are endangering their lives and interfering with our Brigade training. I am Major General [So-And-So] and I’ll have you disciplined for this. Now clear off and take all your men with you.”

     Still, for the most part, our training went rather better than that. Our energetic Colonel quite rightly said we must be terribly out of touch with shooting. I think I can say that we all thoroughly approved of arrangements made for our firing practice.

     The desert was anything but flat, and the range comprised a fairly extensive hillside dotted with clearly numbered, empty, petrol cans. The instructors allotted each man a can. We followed load and fire orders which varied from taking careful, single shots to ten rounds rapid fire. Using then-new Mark VII ammo and the short rifle, I didn’t suffer so much from the kick as I had done with the old, long rifle**. At conclusion, we each handed in our empty cartridge cases, plus the remaining live ammunition and the total had to be equal to the number of bullets first issued.

     It was good sport, for who wouldn’t enjoy taking pot shots at a petrol can, even with stones, let alone a powerful rifle. We ended with a walk out to our cans to count the holes in them. Results were pretty good.’

* Because he spent most of his days at work on his oil paintings - don’t ask… but see Blog 88 March 13, 2016.

** Lee-Enfield supplied the main British Army rifle 1895-1926; bolt-action, ten .303 rounds in the magazine, loaded either a round at a time or in 5-round “chargers”; the First World War model was the SMLE MK III, price £3 15/-, introduced in 1907 along with the Pattern 1907 sword bayonet; however, training in Malta February-August, 1915, my father’s Battalion had been issued with the older, “long” version (30.2-inch barrel compared to 21.2-inch); redesigns simplified the Mk III during the war, for ease of manufacture more than usage, apparently; Lee-Enfield took its name from the designer of the bolt-action system, James Paris Lee, and the Royal Small Arms Factory in Enfield – adjacent to the district where my father grew up, Edmonton, North London.

All the best – FSS

Next week: Sam’s Fusiliers suffer torture by Welsh male voice choir, train like hell to persuade the powers-that-be to let the Gallipoli-bonded band stay together as a Battalion – and enjoy a desert day at the races...