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.

’”There is an Armistice!” one Soldat bellowed…’ Sam’s November 11: the real Armistice Day as experienced by a Tommy in a German POW camp…

Sam’s Memoir – 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.

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

For details of how to buy Sam’s full Memoir(1) in paperback or e-book & excerpted Gallipoli & Somme& Arras 1918/POW etc mini-e-books & reader reviews see right-hand column

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

All proceeds from all versions of Sam’s Memoir will always go to the British Red Cross - and the current running donations total at November 1 is £3,644.84 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!)

Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… Henry Nicholas John Gunther found a sad place in history as the averred “last soldier killed” in World War 1: at 10.59am on November 11, one minute before the legendary “11th hour”; this German-American, aged 23, a Private following demotion from Sergeant because an intercepted letter home criticised front-line conditions, was said to be trying to prove himself and regain his rank when he bayonet-charged a German machine-gun post, fired some shots despite the “enemy” soldiers trying to indicate it was all over and was killed. This happened at Chaumont-devant-Damvillers in Lorraine (the German-occupied province where, that day, my father was still a POW – see below)

    On Monday, November 11, at 5am, Allied Commander Marshall Foch signed the Armistice on a train at Rethondes station in the Compiègne forest. Bar British troops’ dawn retaking of Mons, Belgium (notoriously lost on August 24 1914), and the Allies subsequent unopposed advance into Germany (from November 16) and the German Army’s exit from France (complete by the 18th) that was more or less it for military action. But the diplomatic and political wires were buzzing.

    In Germany a clutch of dukes and kings followed the Kaiser in abdicating (November 11 and later that week), while the German Navy’s surrender was negotiated in the Firth Of Forth aboard the cruiser Königsbergby representatives of the Workmen’s And Soldiers Council Of The Fleet (15 onwards; this body had emerged from the wave of German Naval mutinies). The Emperor Of Austria abdicated and a German-Austrian Republic was proclaimed instead (13) – it promptly requested union with Germany. Then the Hungarian government concluded a separate Armistice in Belgrade (15) and declared itself independent the following day.

    Around eastern Europe, in the immediate aftermath a new national Government formed in Estonia (11), Jan Masaryk became first President of the still-hyphenated Czecho-Slovak republic (14), and Poland declared independence with Jozef Pilsudski Head Of State (16 – and a revolt began in Ukraine (15).

    Down in Africa, among the last to hear of the Armistice was General Von Lettow-Vorbeck who led his former East Africa force, which had fought for months on the run from the former German colony, to the Zambesi in then Rhodesia before the news reached him (November 14) and he surrendered the next day.

[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. So 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 Company Officer offered him training for a commission, but Sam detested ordering men around so he refused; he may have requested his subsequent “reversion” to Private, or perhaps it was a “punishment”, I don’t know. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France and dogsbodied for Brigade HQ in Arras and at the nearby Front until, 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 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, until a train took his latest band down to a rural area between the Rhine and the Black Forest near a village called Hügelheim. There they settled into a slightly less filthy camp for the summer, tending sick German war horses, before moving on yet again, westwards to a village in Lorraine… ]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

November 11, 1918, Armistice Day in occupied Lorraine: my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe, now eight months a slowly starving POW – of late in an improvised “camp” which is actually a village hall – last week stayed practical as rumours of war’s imminent end abounded by stealing a cabbage. This he shared with his Tommy pals Wally and George, partners in a snaffled-food syndicate which had helped keep them alive of late.

    Now it’s the morning of that historic day – not that, as yet, the POWs knew for sure what was going on, much less what day it was…

‘When dawn came, however, so did the Soldaten(2). But with differences. Gone were the black-and-white Iron Cross(3)ribbons, worn on the breast – decorations for bravery won by every man in their Army, it seemed to me. These they had replaced with bright red decorations, and Regimental buttons worn on their caps had given way to red ones.

     We saw no more German officers, not at any time after that sudden move to the political left. If this was the revolution – and it looked like it – then it must, we decided, be the most peaceful ever.

     The guards gave us the usual piece of bread and litre of acorn juice(4). Then we awaited events. Lorries hurried past, each displaying a large, red flag and filled with shouting troops. They all went one way – eastwards. “Fertig(5),” occurred frequently among the excited words they called out to our guards, and even the dimmest among us knew that meant “finished”.

     “There is an Armistice!” one Soldat bellowed at us as he passed by, driving a pair of horses pulling a haywain covered with rope netting under which sat many chickens. That evoked a cheer from those of us who heard the thrilling bit of news.

     Wally, George, and I found ourselves in a state of intense, excited joy, though unable to tell each other of the relief from the worry, doubt and general misery which, since becoming prisoners, had defeated most of our efforts to remain normally hopeful. Although Wally had managed to smile sometimes, I felt sure that in happier times he would have been just the cheery chappie everyone loved to have around. Now the grin, which I and my parents were to find so pleasing at a later date, began to illuminate his somewhat Punchish face – his nose was not quite so big nor quite so hookish as Punch’s, but his mug nicely suggested the puppet’s profile.

     I certainly had benefitted from my association with that young man, whose fair dealing and lack of wile and guile put new life into my ability to trust my fellow men – which had faded because of the deplorable overall standard of behaviour and of honour among those with whom I had dwelt recently. The discomforts, food shortages and absence of any of life’s pleasures had so quickly reduced them to the level of wild animals with all their snarling and violent grabbing of anything edible…

     Not so, Wally, though he was nobody’s fool and capable of protecting his own. His word, given to me and to George, really was his bond and he expected and got the same from me. From George – older, married with children, and therefore “been through the hoop” – Wally asked slightly less, reckoning George couldn’t be expected to contribute quite as much as we youngsters. That seemed reasonable to me, even gave me a feeling of some slight superiority, walking ragbag, skeleton-with-a-skin-covering though I was. Stinking pride, as my mother used to call it, can be a morale-booster at times.’

So passed Armistice Day, 1918(6), with us prisoners leaderless, but not without our well-nourished Preacher(7) sounding off in loud prayers of thanks for deliverance. Although he and his cohort sang hymns and, later on, sober songs like Will Ye No Come Back Again and Auld Lang Syne, belting them out full-strength, no reproof came from the Germans, who seemed to spend all their time in discussion, while keeping up only the appearance of maintaining a watch over us.

     Late that evening, we got the usual stewed veg dished out, not by the Jerries, but by our Preacher and several of his cronies – a further indication of our guards’ loss of interest in us.’

(2) Soldaten: soldiers.

(3) The Iron Cross: originated in Prussia during the Napoleonic Wars, says Wikipedia, it became degraded by mass awards in World War I, during which the German Army handed out at least 5.4 million, including two to Adolph Hitler.

(4) Acorn juice posed as coffee in times of shortage.

(5) Fertig: finished.

(6) The final steps towards Armistice had begun on September 29, 1918, when General Ludendorff told the Kaiser he could not guarantee holding the line for another 24 hours; he called for an immediate ceasefire, ceding to the demands of President Woodrow Wilson’s “14 Points”, issued in January, 1918. Soon after that, Ludendorff changed his mind about suing for peace, but by then the German Army’s morale had collapsed and the Navy mutiny of October 29-30 (at Wilhelmshaven on the North Sea, then Kiel on the Baltic) incited a revolutionary spirit which rapidly spread across the country. The combatants agreed the Armistice on November 11, the day after the Kaiser’s abdication, and it came into force at 11am Paris time (hence “the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month” of sonorous cliché). The German soldier whom my father heard shouting about it may have got the news a day or so later or perhaps he was echoing a false rumour in advance of the actual signing – although my father’s assumption remained that this was indeed November 11 and he may well have been right, although generally he hadn’t been able to keep track of dates. Having nothing else definite to go on, I’m tentatively dating events from here on as if the German soldier and my father were indeed correct. Under the Armistice terms, Germany agreed to complete demilitarisation and the occupation of the Rhineland by American, Belgian, British and French Armies. The parties did not agree and sign the final Peace Treaty (of Versailles) until June 28, 1919. The establishment of Germany’s Weimar Republic followed in August.

(7) See the October 28 Blog for a characterisation of the Preacher, ostentatious in his religiosity, Sam reckoned, because he had grown modestly fat while others wasted away because he took full advantage of his position as a POW “trusty” in the camp cookhouse.

All the best– FSS

Next week: Sam’s long walk westwards begins… the still hate-filled guard he calls “Haybag” drives the POWs past a blazing ammunition dump… and before the day is out Sam is tottering along on his own… “I felt like the last man on Earth”.

(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 and POW pals suddenly find themselves on a “Pay Parade” – of a sort. Oddly, it makes them feel more like men again. Also he sneaks some contraband through the wire, then finds a blessing in the pages of a prayer book: they make a handsome roll-up!

Sam’s Memoir – 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 Sam’s full Memoir(1) in paperback or e-book & excerpted Gallipoli & Somme& Arras 1918/POW etc mini-e-books & reader reviews see right-hand column

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

All proceeds to the British Red Cross - and the current running donations total at October 2 is £3,542.64 (I can't update it in the Donations box below because the "edit" tool has vanished!)

Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… The Allies’ apparent plans for an autumn advance followed by a winter rest and triumph in 1919 were revised forward because of success on the battlefield and the evident wilting of German resistance and ability to conduct rearguard actions.

    The Battle Of Courtrai (October 14-19) picked up the Flanders Advance after a couple of weeks recovery as Belgian, British and French troops, led by King Albert 1 of Belgium (who had often appeared in the front lines during the war), attacked briskly on a line from Comines north to Dixmude capturing Menin, Roulers (15), Ostend, Lille and Douai (17; the latter two in France), Courtrai, Bruges, Zeebrugge and Marchienne (19).

    The Battle Of The Selle (October 17-25) followed failed German counterattacks (14 and 16) by following up the Allies’ Cambrai victory on a 10-mile front south of Le Cateau. British, American and French troops crossed the river (20) as the Germans retreated northeastwards.

    In the long Meuse Argonne Offensive (September 26-November 11), at the Battle Of Montfaucon (14-17; later, as a “destroyed village”, the place became a monument to WW1), after a series of bloody setbacks, the Americans broke through the Hindenburg Line then pushed on along a front from Grandpré to Vouziers (18; Grandpré is about 50 miles east of Reims).

    Meanwhile, Allied, but chiefly British interventions in Russia gathered pace as forces who had landed at Vladivostok on the Pacific reached Irkutsk (October 14; a journey west of almost 2,500 miles ) and Omsk (18; almost 1.500 miles further west – which sounds as though it must have been different Battalions, surely). Other incursions, enormous distances apart, saw the British capture Dushak in Transcaspia from the Bolsheviks (17), advance to Soroka on the White Sea (18) and repel Bolshevik forces at Seletsko (18; 160 miles up the Dvina from Archangel).

    Elsewhere, Italian troops retook Durazzo, Albania, and the French Ipek, Montenegro (both October 14) from the Austrian Army, while the French also supported the Serbians’ recovery of their country from the Bulgarians, occupying Knyazhevats and Krushevats (17), the French the penetrating Bulgaria as far as Vidin on the Danube (19).

    Further south and east, the multinational Egyptian Expeditionary Force’s Pursuit To Haritan saw Homs (of current notoriety in the Syrian civil war) occupied (October 15), after which the combined cavalry, including many armoured cars by this stage, set off towards Aleppo (20, 115 miles north).

[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. So 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). He passed many weeks in various hospitals because of a meningitis scare, German Measles, and recovery from the effects of trench warfare’s privations (he spent his 19th birthday, July 6, 1917, in a Sheffield hospital). During that summer, his Company Officer offered him training for a commission, but Sam detested ordering men around so he refused; he may have requested his subsequent “reversion” to Private, or perhaps it was a “punishment”, I don’t know. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France and dogsbodied for Brigade HQ in Arras and at the nearby Front until, 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 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. For three or four months he wandered occupied France in randomly-assembled half-starved POW groups, until a train took his latest band down to a rural area between the Rhine and the Black Forest near a village called Hügelheim. There they settled into a slightly less filthy camp for the summer, tending sick German war horses, before moving on yet again to a village in Lorraine… ]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

October, 1918, occupied Lorraine: my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe, now 20 years old and six months a slowly starving POW, is trying to survive what he hopes may be the last few weeks of war – having heard a passing German sailor tell the guards about a Navy mutiny, along with other hints and rumours.

    Part of his strategy is a food partnership with his pals Wally and George – sharing every little extra they can find, swap or snaffle, even though the arrangement comes under strain every time one of them gets hold of some tidbit in absence of the others. Last week, before conscience restrained him, Sam took a bite out of a fruit pie – covertly passed through the wire by a kind, brave village woman. Then George got a Red Cross parcel and scoffed much of the edible contents by himself before coming to Wally and Sam with a apologies and sharing the rest. They understood, forgave and resumed their vows.

    But the parcel included a few items potentially useful for trade, including a hank of wool. For now though, a striking, possibly weird development in relations between the POWs and their guards:

‘With that promising sense of change still in the air, one morning the Jerries lined us all up on a grassy area outside the barbed wire surrounding the village hall. There, they had placed a trestle table with a chair. We stood in two ranks facing the table, aware of several Soldaten(2) in position behind us, rifles at the ready, while in front stood one low-ranking NCO and an impressively immaculate Unteroffizier(3).

     Then two officers appeared – and you would have had to see them to appreciate the elaborate decorations which enhanced their well-cut uniforms. “Bla bla bla!” yelled the obvious senior gent and the UO loudly replied, ending with “Herr Offizier” or “Herr Kapitän”. Everything done at the yell, far louder than our British equivalents. They appeared to hate each other, but I guess it was only “bull”.

     “Komm!”(4) yelled the UO to our man first in line, seating himself alongside the Kapitän, placing paper and pen on the table and opening a briefcase which, I spotted, contained some more of those Gutschein(5) tickets they had given us once before. So we have a pay parade! Our lad steps forward and, from force of habit, slams his heels together and smartly salutes. “Name?” – meaning plain to all, despite the “Naamuh” pronunciation – “Vorname?” (Tom, Dick or Harry), “Regiment?” (pronounced “Raygiment” with a hard “g”). Then, the UO announced how many marks and pfennigs(6) the prisoner was due and pushed forward some of those coloured tickets. Our boy saluted and picked up the moola, about-turned and marched back to his place.

     I could see this display of correct behaviour impressed his nibs. None of us had so far ever saluted a German officer on, as we thought, good principle. But I later learned that British officer prisoners did observe such courtesies and I regretted that I had not done so on the rare occasions when I had encountered a German commissioned officer. Each man thereafter did his best to comply with this discipline, and we felt something approaching dignity emerge from this new experience.

     Some villagers had congregated at the nearby roadside and, naturally, I tried to identify the lady in black who had slipped the lovely pie through the barbed wire(7). Careful not to appear interested in any one person, I did see her standing behind the others. I tried to catch her eye and she nodded slightly, sufficient to tell me she knew we had seen one another previously. Without comment to anyone, I did not attempt any further communication, but told Wally about my friend and suggested that something might come of it. Bringing in George, it was agreed that I should try to effect a trade of, first, half the Red Cross wool for something to eat, no stipulation being made as to what the rate of exchange should be.

     Perhaps our exemplary behaviour at “pay parade” had done us some good in the Jerries’ eyes, for thereafter we paraded each morning, whether or not they had work to send us to. The villagers who happened to be around at that time of morning would stop and look and a few soon approached just a little closer. The Germans may have felt flattered by this show of interest at first for, after all, these people in Lorraine had lived under German rule for 48 years(8) and must by now have become loyal to the chosen race…

     My first transaction was carried out right under the noses of the guards, though in a straightforward manner. As I stood near the fence and displayed the hank of wool behind my back to a young lady who had come fairly close to our line of prisoners, my eyes directed hers to my offer and she smiled and nodded when I said “Essen” and then “mange”(9). She moved off, but soon returned and, behind my back, an exchange was effected so smoothly that I swear the man next to me knew nothing about it.

     At the safe moment, I slipped her package into my under-tunic sack and later we unwrapped the parcel. Though necessarily small, it contained a hambone with some nice meat still on it, a piece of rye bread, and, to us smokers who hadn’t had a drag for weeks – for me, not since the trip to the showers in Mühlhausen(10) – the boon of a large screw of home-cured tobacco leaf.

     I had, some time back, acquired a French prayer book I’d found in a damaged and discarded German tunic – former property, I gathered, of a soldier who had died, I knew not how (at the same time, I’d taken the opportunity to dump my heavy clogs(11) and put on his badly worn jackboots – in such poor condition were they that no guard questioned my possession of them). Now the prayer book, which the Jerry must have pinched off a Frenchman, supplied us with fine cigarette papers.

     So I was already returning something for George’s contributions from his parcel. I proudly disposed of the remainder of the goods to the satisfaction of my partners, without being spotted by our captors, and they elected me official dealer and Dolmetscher(12) to the organisation — an unpaid appointment, which I endeavoured to discharge effectively until events separated us.’

(2) Soldaten: soldiers.

(3) Unteroffizier: Sergeant or, I gather, sometimes more generally other non-commissioned officers.

(4) “Komm!”: come!

(5) Pfennig: in pre-Euro German currency one cent, a hundredth of a Mark.

(6) Gutschein: vouchers given to the POWs instead of money – just the twice in the case of Sam’s itinerant group. See blogs August 12 and 19 for the previous occasion.

(7) See blog September 30.

(8) Since the Franco-Prussian War, 1870-1.

(9) “Essen”: to eat. in German. “Mange”: eat, in French.

(10) and (11) See the same blogs shown in (5) – Sam’s British Army boots were nicked while he was in the shower and a German guard came up with some clogs for him to wear.

(12) Dolmetscher: interpreter.

All the best– FSS

Next week: Sam observes the guards pretending that nothing’s happening, act normal and maybe crushing defeat will never come… And his new Brummie bunkmates, recent conscript POWs, just don’t believe Sam, a veteran at 20, could have fought on the Somme and so on: “I felt old and lonely…”

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

Sam, reckoning the war’s final throes are coming up, hopes he can “stand a few more weeks of near-starvation”. Then a Red Cross parcel arrives for George – who temporarily forgets the food-sharing partnership with Sam and Wally…

Sam’s Memoir – 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 Sam’s full Memoir(1) in paperback or e-book & excerpted Gallipoli & Somme & Arras 1918/POW etc mini-e-books & reader reviews see right-hand column

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Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… It was one-way traffic on all fronts as the Allies moved towards the inevitable (though I don’t know whether it felt quite that certain at the time). And yet “easy” victories still had their costs – for example, the British/Canadian success at the Second Battle Of Cambrai (October 8-10), which concluded the main action of the Battle Of The Hindenburg Line (September 18-October 17), is commonly described as resulting in “light casualties”, while the actual numbers listed are Allies 12,000, German 10,000.

    On October 8 alone, the Allies – the full mix of British, French, American and Australian – advanced three miles along a 20-mile line south from Cambrai to St Quentin and the British and Belgians declared the Battle Of The Flanders Peaks over and won on October 10.

    Meanwhile, the French and Americans (1.2 million troops in France by then) pressed on with their Meuse Argonne Offensive (September 26-November 11) taking the towns/villages of Berry-au-Bac (October 7), Cornay and Consenvoye (8), Craonne (12; lost on May 27 during the Spring Offensive), Laon and La Fère (13).

    A possibly forgotten feature of these triumphal advances in Europe is that they all took place on invaded ground, not by driving back into the various enemies’ territories. This was true in Italy, where the Italians gradually advanced against the Austrians on the Asiago Plateau (October 11), in Albania, where Italian troops took Elbasan from the Bulgarians (7; the Albanians had lost the town on February 2, 1916), and Serbia, where combinations of the revived national Army, French and British occupied Leskovats (9), Pristina (10; now capital of Kosovo), Prizren, Mitrovitsa and Nish (11).

    It was a different story in Syria where the multi-national Egyptian Expeditionary Force, abetted by the Sharif of Mecca’s Arab Army, conducted the Pursuit To Haritan (September 29-October 26), mainly a mopping-up operation as Ottoman forces retreated through Syria north of Damascus (then including modern Lebanon). The Allies took Beirut (October 7), Ba’albeck (9) and Tripoli (13).

    The week’s exception to all these Allied successes was the sinking of the Royal Mail Ship Leinster off Dublin Bay by a U-boat, with more than 500 people dying out of the 771 on board (October 10).

[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)… untilofficialdom spotted his real age – 18, legally too young for the battlefield. So 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). He passed many weeks in various hospitals because of a meningitis scare, German Measles, and recovery from the effects of trench warfare’s privations (he spent his 19th birthday, July 6, 1917, in a Sheffield hospital). During that summer, his Company Officer offered him training for a commission, but Sam detested ordering men around so he refused; he may have requested his subsequent “reversion” to Private, or perhaps it was a “punishment”, I don’t know. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France and dogsbodied for Brigade HQ in Arras and at the nearby Front until, 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 opening bombardment of the German Spring Offensive. A last stand by the Battalion on March 28 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. For three or four months he wandered occupied France in randomly-assembled half-starved POW groups, until a train took his latest band down to a rural area between the Rhine and the Black Forest near a village called Hügelheim. There they settled into a slightly less uncomfortable/filthy camp for the summer, tending sick German war horses, before moving on yet again to a village in Lorraine (annexed by Germany in 1871)… ]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

October, 1918, occupied Lorraine: my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe, now 20 years old and six months a slowly starving POW often brutalised by the guards, is still clinging on – hopes uplifted recently by a passing sailor yacking to the guards about a German Navy mutiny… implying the end and Allied victory might be in sight.

    Meanwhile, mere survival is their priority. The food triumvirate partnership of Sam, Wally and George was last week tested by Sam falling to the temptation of a fruit pie passed through the wire by a brave local woman – he took a bite before he repented and shared it. Now another trial of conscience… for George this time:

‘Still no work for several days, so I had lots of time to think and assess my general condition; the inventory did not fill me with any sort of pleasure. Given my hope, almost belief, that the enemy was approaching his last gasp, I felt if I could stand a few more weeks of near-starvation, somehow I might at last be able to rejoin the British Forces. Physically, though, I remained in poor shape. The prisoner’s bent knees and staring eyes, and now, I noticed, my once-blue war prisoner uniform had turned greyish; a sort of nap had originally given it an appearance of fair quality, but now it looked what it was – ersatz, woven from a rubbishy yarn made of paper waste(2). Worse, my trousers had worn through at the knees revealing my grubby, long underpants, unwashed for months, and the peak of my cap was deserting the crown – I have a big bonce, 7 and 3/8ths, a size seldom obtainable in British stores and never in German paperwear outfits.

     Altogether I must have looked decrepit and far older than my 20 years(3). Diet right back down to the minimum now, every day nothing more than that, now I had no horses to rob of their few spuds. Survival seemed a dicey business and the fate which had befallen one of our older comrades might soon be mine – one day at the prison camp we’d found him sitting, resting against a wall, dead. Exhausted, starved. I resolved to avoid that by any conceivable ploy…

     No communication from home had reached any man I knew, but we had twice been given addresses – Stammlager(4) Parchim and Stammlager Friedrichsfeld, I recall – through which, they said, we could exchange letters with our families. But we didn’t know whether our people were getting our letters and nothing reached us from them.

     After several months of captivity, we should have been interned in one of the larger German prison camps where we could have been registered with the Red Cross office in Switzerland. They would have brought the British War Office files on missing men up to date and they, in turn, would have informed our families. But small bands of captives like us just kept wandering around occupied territories; nobody who cared knew whether we were alive or dead(5).

     Of course, it was common talk amongst us that the thousands of food parcels hopefully forwarded to the German authorities by our families and by the Red Cross(6) filled the enemy’s meagrely fed bellies while we became walking skeletons…

A sudden change then occurred which could only be due to one wonderful cause: that the Jerries now knew the war was lost to them and they must do what they could to convince the Allies that they were nice, kind, little Germans who observed the Geneva Convention and treated war prisoners correctly. So they allowed a few Red Cross parcels to get through to the wandering groups like ours and, hallelujah, George was one of the fortunate few recipients.

     He reacted understandably. He avoided Wally and me, took his prize into a corner, and hid it from our sight. We decided not to approach him. When he finally spoke to Wally, it was to suggest that, as they had been buddies before they became acquainted with me, it would be fair if the two of them shared the parcel’s contents. Wally, with that ever-present aching void where his tummy used to be, could well have agreed to that arrangement, but he found and kept a contents list which he discovered among the wrappings and noted carefully the items absent after George’s first uncontrolled onslaught. Then he told George he was disgusted with his dishonesty and he could stuff his parcel.

     Wally rejoined me and gave me the sad details of their conversation, so we turned the trio into a duo and ignored George forthwith. In turn, George responded by remaining his own man, standing in no need of friendship’s prop, apparently.

     So when, that night, he joined us as we sat on the floor among our paltry possessions – mine the German mess-can and one thin, dirty, grey blanket, and Wally’s equally numerous and valuable – we said nowt, just waited while George tried to describe his feelings and intentions. Weakness accounted for the tears that ran down his poor emaciated face as he told us of his dear wife and daughter whom he missed so terribly and of how important it was that he should last out until the war ended…

     Well, he really was still part of our small family at that moment, so good old Wally did the reassuring bit and our oldest member, who just then looked more like our youngest and naughtiest, spread out on the floor what remained of his parcel’s contents. Few edibles, for the interval during which we had declared the triple partnership in abeyance had enabled George to feel free to put most of the goodies under his belt. The remaining food comprised: two hard, but very attractive, biscuits; two Oxo cubes; a small tin of fish paste; and an item which I would have rejected in better times, but which seemed exquisitely delectable just then, some bully beef (corned beef to you) – George had managed to leave three-quarters of the canful.

     “You have one biscuit apiece, as I’ve had more than my share,” he said. “And we’ll share the bully if you don’t mind.” All thoughts of how he’d diddled us vanished. Wally and I carefully ate our share. At that marvellous moment, corned beef to us must have tasted as caviar to rich people.

     Thereafter, we discussed the other items. How the skein of fawn wool, the two reels of cotton – one black t’other white – a packet of needles, two khaki hankies and the half yard of Army-grey shirting could be disposed of to the best advantage. The two pairs of socks – also grey, Army – should be worn, I insisted, by the two of them, since I had procured some pieces of cotton cloth which I used as “Fusslappen”(7) (copying a German whom I had seen in Müllheim wrapping rags round his tootsies before pulling on his jackboots).

     Now came the question: could we exchange the wool etc for food and, if so, how?’

(2) See Sam’s Blog 214 August 12 for the story of the replacement of their filthy British Army uniforms with these ersatz POW jobs.

(3) Having no idea what day it was, Sam had let his 20th birthday on July 6 pass unremarked, as had his 18th on the Somme in 1916.

(4) Stammlager: prisoner of war camp, often abbreviated to “Stalag”; Parchim is a small town in the German Baltic state Mecklenburg-Vorpommern; Friedrichsfeld now seems to be part of a town called Voerde in North-Rhine-Westphalia state; both are listed among the 168 “principal POW camps in Germany” at http://ow.ly/DFqc30kUzDCand Wiki says a total of 2.4 million Allied prisoners were held in Germany during World War I.

(5) Not quite true in Sam’s case, but that’s a story he reveals later – and at the time he had no idea.

(6) Ian Hook, of the Essex Regiment Museum, who kindly helped by searching the records of my father, said that he found a note of the Essex Regiment Prisoner Of War Fund sending food parcels to C Sutcliffe of Edmonton (the “C” being his first name Charles, but he was always known by his second, Sam). But, clearly, they didn’t make it.

(7) Fusslappen: foot cloth.

All the best– FSS

Next week: Sam and pals suddenly find themselves on “Pay Parade” – albeit the currency is tokens, not real money. And, amid the squalor of POW life, the formality of the occasion brings dignity to both sides. Also Sam sneaks a food swap through the wire and finds a perhaps blasphemous use for a prayer book…

(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.