September ’18: Sam forms “a sort of family” with POWs Wally and George. They agree to share everything – and he scores more spuds for the partnership with the help of Soldaten, friendly to their fellow front-liners, even though they’re enemy prisoners…

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

All proceeds to the British Red Cross

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

Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… The Americans called a halt on their advance after winning the Battle Of St Mihiel (September 16; casualties US 7,000, German 7,500 plus 15,000 taken prisoner) in order to ready themselves for the Meuse-Argonne Offensive then being readied by Supreme Allied Commander Marshal Foch.

    But the Allies’ terminal campaign picked up again with the Battle Of The Hindenburg Line (September 18-October 17). The first move, the Battle Of Epéhy, saw British, French and Australian troops attack on a 16-mile front and take the village that gave it a name (18; 14 miles northwest of St Quentin) – successes now being measured in POW numbers, they chalked up 11,700. Over the following days, the French did well around Moeuvres (18-20; 17 miles southeast of Arras), holding off a German counterattack, then pushing on to recapture Benay (21) and Vendeul (22); further south they took Vailly, Mont des Singes, and made progress east of Essigny le Grand (20; 65 miles south of Arras).

    In Russia, the extraordinarily widespread post-German victory/Bolshevik Revolution mayhem continued with Japanese (Allied) troops occupying Blagovyeschensk on the Pacific side of Siberia (September 18), while in northern Russia Karelian Finns defeated a German-led Finnish force at Ukhtinskaya (18), and the Czecho-Slovak legions who had scored such a strange skein of conquests along the Trans-Siberian railway at last lost out to Bolshevik and German troops at Volsk, Simbirsk and Kazan (20; from 500 to 580 miles east of Moscow).

    Elsewhere, the Allies’ emulated their dominance on the Western Front as the Serbian/Greek/French/British collaboration in the Balkans prospered; the Vardar Offensive (September 15-29) drove the Bulgarian Army to retreat on a 100-mile front from Monastir to Lake Doiran in Serbia, which they had occupied since 1915. Meanwhile, in Palestine a wonderfully diverse Allied coalition – the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, itself British, Indian, Anzac, French, Egyptian and Gurkha, augmented by South Africans and Ruwalla and Howeitat tribesmen – initiated the Battles Of Meggido (19-25) and took the Ottoman defenders apart as they crossed the Plain Of Sharon to the Esdralon Plain. 

[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 the chance to train 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, he returned to France, unattached to any specific Battalion pro tem, and dogsbodied for Brigade HQ in Arras and at the 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 opening artillery bombardment of the German Spring Offensive and a last stand by the Battalion on March 28 which 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. Then, 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, mainly working on sick and wounded German war horses.]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

September, 1918: my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe – now 20 years old and six months a slowly starving POW often brutalised by the guards – nonetheless feels his spirits lifted a little because he keeps on running into moments of kindness from his captor-enemies – as well as his new pal, Essex country boy Wally. 

    Last week, working in a hay barn outside the nearby town of Müllheim-in-Baden (two miles south of Hügelheim), Sam sort of escaped out the back and encountered a young German soldier, on leave from the Front, walking with his sister. They had a broken English-German conversation and then the two fetched him a bucket of boiled potatoes! He and Wally ate “fit to bust”. Now the story continues and gets a little complicated regarding friendship, comradeship, even partnership… and food!

‘I now had a pal to think of, a generous soul; the months of near-starvation, of frequently being robbed of bits of food he had procured with difficulty(2), these souring experiences had not removed the grin from Wally’s face nor the kindness of his nature. You can therefore appreciate the pleasure I had from being able to give something to him by way of a change.

    I still had a few potatoes hidden under my tunic when we got back to our hut, and Wally asked if I would agree to give a couple of them to George, a friend of longer standing than I was. I can’t say I felt keen on going shares with this stranger, as he was to me; but you couldn’t look into Wal’s open mug and big, blue eyes and refuse even such a costly request. Where the next bit of extra food would come from I had no notion, but old George got his spuds.

    Let me describe George as best I can: aged about 40, although he looked rather older, black-with-some-grey hair; a face which had never been full, I’d say, but, at the moment, merely skin stretched over bone; eyes brown and bloodshot; body thin and bent forward from the waist, legs bent, feet flat – the last not a result of war’s ravages, but due to long hours spent on his feet as a warehouse salesman in a well-known St Paul’s Churchyard firm of merchants. One of the few chaps who had managed to retain his issued cutthroat razor, he shaved when water was available and still cultivated a thin black moustache. A manly man, as I always considered those with enough courage to maintain facial adornments – men who, in contact with their fellows, feared no criticism of their efforts to augment Nature’s handiwork.

    At that point, we three made a pact that all extras would be split three ways, and Wally and I, at any rate, honoured that pledge. If, as I noticed, old George slipped from strict observance once or twice, no mention was made of the matter.

But something here to be surprised about: having established a sort of family, I didn’t feel so much the loner with every man’s hand against me. Though not entirely sure the triple partnership would work to my benefit, I found that its existence added purpose to each day’s beginning. To the issued piece of black bread(3) I must try to add something for all to share, no matter how small.

    On one occasion, a guard put me to work with a small gang just outside our camp’s barbed-wire fence, filling holes in the dirt track – you couldn’t call it a road. We tipped in a mixture of stones and earth and punned them down with a lump of concrete on the end of a long handle; it was so heavy it took two of us to lift the implement and let it fall. But, ever on the lookout for opportunities to secure something for our threesome, I noticed two Soldaten(4) some hundred yards away off to one side of the road. They were digging and, when they noticed me watching them, they waved.

    I decided I was being invited to join them – I felt sure it would be safe to obey soldiers in uniform. And they had a small pile of potatoes beside them… One handed me a garden fork and indicated that I should dig. Setting to with high hopes, I found the soil dry and light and, although they had clearly gone through it quite thoroughly, I still came up with some small, but acceptable, spuds.

    On leave from the Front, I discovered, those lads, who must have risked a reprimand, at least, for aiding an enemy prisoner. Once again, they demonstrated the respect many of the fighting men on both sides felt for each other in that war.

    At that late stage, most of the front-line fighters were young men. On the German side, the bitter, still-filled-with-hatred, old Kaiser-lovers had moved on to duties far behind the battlefield – such as guarding us. I encountered an occasional exception, such as the tubby Posten who succumbed to the aroma of frying bacon at Hügelheim(5)… And now I recall I later saw him standing at the door of his hut, looking quite ill, with many sores around his face – I wondered if his undoing perhaps resulted from those very days of visiting the good lady and eating rich farm produce when he should really have been making sure we didn’t escape… “Sores all over my body,” he told me, with his hands more than words, and I felt sorry for him because he was rare and fair.’

(2) Robbed by fellow POWs is what my father means, judging by previous blogs – that’s what hunger can do.

(3) One small piece per day per POW.

(4) Soldaten: soldiers.

(5) The Posten/guard had treated Sam kindly at the Hügelheim POW camp/war-horse hospital – he’d found said “good lady” by following his nose to the smell of her frying bacon.

All the best– FSS

Next week: Sam witnesses a Biblical display of flailing wheat by hand – and then becomes the protagonist in another primitive agricultural practice which leads to his collapse, a guard punching him… and a strange, maybe redemptive drama playing out! 

(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 and starving POW pals wonder what’s going on: new uniforms! money! his first shower since March! new boots! Well, clogs… But still he’s so emaciated “I would not have been recognised by my own father…”

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

All proceeds to the British Red Cross

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

Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… The Allies’ ultimately decisive Amiens Offensive (August 8-September 3), which began last week with the Battle Of Amiens (8-11) resulting in a 10-mile advance and 30,000 German prisoners taken, developed further through the continuing Battle Of Montdidier (8-15; about 24 miles southeast of Amiens, Somme department).

    The latter saw British, Canadian, French and Australian troops widen the initial Allied attack and push forward 11 miles by August 13. Meanwhile, the French advanced around Lassigny (13-15; about 38 miles southeast of Amiens) and under general Allied pressure the German Army retreated from the rivers Ancre and Oise (14-15), before holding their ground again for the more extended Second Battle Of Noyon (17-29; about 44 miles southeast of Amiens).

    In other notable Western Front moments, the British began their long-term drive in Flanders (18) and the German long-range gun targetting Paris fired its last shell (15).

    In turmoiled and confused Russia, the Bolsheviks, who had been doing rather badly in the further-flung outposts, took a town called Merv in Transcaspia (now Turkmenistan) from the regional, temporarily independent government (August 15). Otherwise, the redoubtable Czecho-Slovak Legion, spread as it was more or less the length of the Trans-Siberian railway, fought off Bolshevik counterattacks at Irkutsk (16; Siberia) and on the Ussuri river (16; Khabarovsk, far eastern Russia).

    And down in Italy, a long but small part of the campaign to get the Austria-Hungary Army out of Italy began when a surprise attack instigated the Battle Of San Matteo (August 13-September 3; Ortler Alps, northwest Italy) – the highest-altitude battle ever fought at the time – immediately ousting the garrison but then having to defend the gain.

[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 the chance to train 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. Come November/December, 1917, during his final home leave, he assured his parents that he would survive (irrationally, he knew). In December, probably, he returned to France, unattached to any specific Battalion pro tem, and dogsbodied for Brigade HQ in Arras – including excursions to the 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 opening artillery bombardment of the German Spring Offensive and a last stand by the Battalion on March 28 which 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. Then, 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 where they settled into a slightly less uncomfortable/filthy camp for the summer, mainly working on sick and wounded German war horses.]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Of course, my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe, four months a POW now and his starving band apparently settled for a while in southern Germany, knew nothing of new developments in the war.

    Last week, he had guard Captain Kayser kick him in the crutch for scrumping and ate raw liver nicked from pigswill by his pal Wally.

    But even amid that demeaning desperation for food, the summer’s sense of things looking up – just a little and relatively – continued when Sam and pals sneaked haircuts with the horse-hospital shears and Kayser decided that was a good idea and brought in regular (rough) barbering for all. Further accommodations followed (alongside continuing starvation and brutality):

‘After that, one Sunday morning, the guards told us to take off our very soiled khaki uniforms. They handed us tunics, trousers and caps, all made of loosely woven, dark-blue material with a wide, orange stripe down each trouser-leg and round the cap. So there we were – socks and underwear unwashed for months, but brand-new uniforms. If only we could somehow have a bath…

     Everything appeared to be going our way, however. Soon, they lined up half our lot in front of an officer and gave each of us several tickets, on which were printed some German words, now only partially remembered – “Kriegsgefangenen Lager Nr. ??”, then cards of different colours printed with “Gutschein für 5 Pfennig(2)” (or 10 or 20). We needed no instruction on what these cards were all about, they were money substitutes. So where could we spend them?

     Next, they marched us off to a railway station where we entered Fourth-Class compartments with hard, wooden seats – just like the hop-pickers’ train in Kent when we were digging the outer London defences back in 1914(3). Britain and Deutschland had that much in common, I thought; the harder you worked, the harder you travelled. But I can well recall the inner pleasure I felt at this seeming return to a more normal sort of life. A clean uniform, some sort of money in my pocket, and a trip on a train to… well, I must wait and see.

     In the excitement, I almost forgot my ever-present hunger. Once more, we crossed the Rhine and this time we detrained at Mühlhausen, which we had passed through on our journey south. As we marched through its main street, I observed the townspeople taking a real interest in the spectacle of these shuffling, bent-kneed, sunken-cheeked beings. Meanwhile, I saw two civilian-dressed men moving among them, apparently answering enquiries about us. “English soldiers – look at the condition to which those people are reduced,” I heard one say. I felt sure we were the first British prisoners of war seen in those parts.

     A busy, prosperous town, Mühlhausen impressed me most with its cleanliness. Not that English towns of those days were dirty(4), but Mühlhausen had a special look in 1918, so well cared for. The housewives must have thought so too, for they, in many cases, hung feather mattresses and quilts over window sills to give them the benefit of the clean, soft air, not deterred therefrom by what the neighbours might think, as would usually be the case in England.

     We entered what appeared to be a large, public building and – more by signs than by word of mouth – were told to remove all our clothing. Ahead sat a man in a white coat to whom, in turn, we each had to present ourselves. He dipped a fairly large brush into a can and painted our scrotums and armpits with blue paste. We moved on to another white coat who shaved off the blue-painted hair.

     Finally, we entered a shower cubicle where the water, though cold, enabled us to make ourselves cleaner than we had been for many a day. Soap was not available, but long-handled brushes vigorously applied did the job. The Treaty of Geneva(5) was working at last, for which I was truly thankful.

     We had no towels so we had to dry our bodies with our trousers or tunics, but I had no complaint, feeling so refreshed by this unexpected cleansing. Unfortunately, I then had to dress myself once more in the rank vest, shirt, pants and socks. But dismay and horror hit me when I realised that my boots had vanished. A quick search of our men’s sacks and bundles failed to restore them to me, so I had to appeal to the Postens who were in charge of us. They said they knew nothing about the theft.

     However, I suspect even they couldn’t face the prospect of walking through the town in full public view with one of their prisoners bare-footed. Perhaps for that reason, they reported my loss to a senior officer at the cleansing station and one of his men handed me a pair of wooden clogs the like of which I had previously seen only in pictures of Dutch working people… at school we’d been told they wore clogs and smoked cigars, even when very young; I had no cigars, but gladly shoved my feet into these hand-carved-from-a-piece-of-wood shoes; I didn’t find them too uncomfortable, except that they cut into my insteps.

     Now I must have really looked the genuine POW in my bright, orange stripes, socks a dirty grey with trousers tucked into them, and those heavy clogs with their pointed toes. Add sunken cheeks, staring eyes and bent knees to the picture – I would not have been recognised by my own father.’

(2) Gutschein für 5 Pfennigs: voucher for 5 “pennies”.

(3) See Blog 23 December 12, 2014. Sam described the carriages conveying his first Battalion, the 2/1st Royal Fusiliers, from billets in Tonbridge to dig a trench system south of London as “Cattle trucks, pigsties, travelling chicken sheds” normally reserved for “Hop-pickers— seasonal migrants, mostly from the city, who worked hard during the few weeks of the harvest. Because they were poor people the railway company had gone to the trouble of constructing this shabby transport for them.”

(4) My father footnoted: “So many of them are in 1976, as I write” – something the older generation of every generation remarks on, no doubt.

(5) Wikipedia says a series of Geneva treaties began with Swiss businessman/social activist Henri Dunant’s reaction to the battle of Solferino, in the kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, 1859, between French/Sardinian and Austrian Armies; first the Red Cross was formed in Geneva, then in 1864 came the first Geneva Convention, aka “the Red Cross Treaty”; adopted initially by 12 nations, it codified the treatment of sick and wounded soldiers on the battlefield during declared wars, and the neutrality of medical personnel, but said of prisoners only that they should be returned to their country; the list of original signatories varies from source to source, but Wikipedia has, from International Law: A Treatise by Ronald Roxburgh, 1920: Baden, Belgium, Denmark, France, Hesse, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Prussia, Spain, Switzerland and Wurttemberg; another web page now no longer available didn’t show the German then-independent states and added Norway (with the many later ratifiers including Britain and Turkey 1865, Russia 1867, USA 1882); a Convention covering war at sea was added in 1906, then further revisions came long after World War I, in 1929, 1949 (it removed the “declared war” limitation), 1977 and 2005; protection of POWs in World War I depended more on the Hague Regulations of 1899 and 1907 which the war proved deficient, leading in part to the 1929 Geneva Convention revision covering particularly “the prohibition of reprisals and collective penalties”, says http://ow.ly/cLQz30kUrfr.

All the best– FSS

Next week: Sam spends his Gutschein on soap and fags, then sneaks off to buy a pie on the qv from the Hügelheim Gasthaus – and even fantasise about a sweet young girl.

(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.

March 28, the front line outside Arras: at midnight Signaller Sam takes “the one-word message we dreaded” from Battalion HQ… so it’s fight to the last… and their CO panics…

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

All proceeds to the British Red Cross

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

Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… On the Western Front, with the Spring Offensive still a rumour and a fearsome expectation in the heart of every Tommy and Jerry, the Allied and German Armies exchanged relatively inconsequential (still deadly) raids in early March – mostly instigated by the Germans who were beaten back by the Belgians at Ramscapelle and Stuyvenskerke (March 6), by the British near Ypres (8) and the French on their northern stretch of the Front (10). American troops suffered a traumatic introduction to artillery bombardment at Rouge Bouquet, near the southern German border (7).

    To the east, the action was mainly around the negotiating tables as the previous week’s Central Powers/Russian treaty was followed by peace agreements between Romania and the Central Powers plus Bulgaria and Turkey (March 5; at Buftea, Romania), Germany and Finland (7; Berlin), and Romania and Bolshevik Russia (9; although Romania and Tsarist Russia had been allies in the fight against Germany). An interesting disruption to the jaw-jaw occurred with the Battle Of Bakhmach (8-13) wherein Czechoslovak legions in Russia took on German forces occupying Ukraine – by the end of this-week-100-years-ago the Czechoslovaks had captured their major objectives, the railway junction and the bridge at Bakhmach (10).

    Otherwise, the only significant action was the British-led Egyptian Expeditionary Force’s move to the western edge of the Jordan Valley, an advance of five miles on a 12-mile front via the Battle Of Tell ’Asur (March 8-12).

    However, a global medical crisis began barely noticed on March 4 at Camp Funston, Kansas, where Private Albert Gitchell is said to have become the first diagnosed case of Spanish Flu – his 50,000 comrades therefore seen by some as having conveyed the virus to many other nations through their wartime deployments. The name “Spanish Flu” arose from 8 million Spaniards catching it by May, 1918.

[Memoir background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London, under-age 2/1st Royal Fusiliers volunteer and Gallipoli veteran (Blogs September 20, 2015, to January 3, 2016), had fought on the Somme Front with his second outfit the Kensingtons (Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)… until officialdom spotted his real age – 18 on July 6, 1916, legally too young for the battlefield. So they told him he could take a break from the fighting until he turned 19. He took up the offer, though with an enduring sense of guilt. By December, 1916, he ended up posted to Harrogate, Yorkshire, and re-allocated again, this time to the Essex Regiment 2/7th Battalion. An interesting year ensued – four months of blizzards, a meningitis scare, special training in various northern locations, and then a few summer weeks stomping around Yorkshire on a route march… which in due course led him to hospital again, to recover from lurking effects of trench warfare’s privations and prepare for more of the same (he was 19 while in hospital). During that period, his Company Officer told him he’d been offered the chance to train for a commission, but Sam detested ordering men around – especially when death might be the outcome – so he refused; one immediate-post-war pension form suggests this defiance may have brought about his “reversion” to Private, but perhaps he actually requested it, given his feelings on the subject of rank. Come November/December, he enjoyed what turned out to be the final home leave of his military career – at the end of which he assured his family of his firm conviction that he would survive. In December/January 1917/8, he returned to France, unattached to any specific Battalion pro tem, and knocking about Brigade HQ i Arras, dogsbodying where he could – though he was soon out at the front line, just a few miles away. But by mid-March he found his own Essex Battalion; they moved into the trenches on March 19.]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week – the blog having moved ahead of itself because my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe, wrote so much about late March – with the Germans’ Spring Offensive already well under way, Sam’s 2/7th Essex Battalion moved into the front line at Fampoux outside Arras (March 23). With the artillery bombardment continuing day after day, he and the Signallers were more than glad to find themselves well sheltered in a substantial dugout ­albeit that meant unwonted proximity to the Company’s ill-tempered and windy stand-in CO. The only disadvantage was the need to go out when a trench took a direct hit and repair phone lines, sometimes in full view of the enemy, sometimes groping about in the dark.

    Now they’re approaching the day when the Offensive, begun on March 21 at St Quentin way to the east, becomes a full-blown advance on their trenches – the prime German objective, to take Arras:

‘One night, the general tone of the bombardment changed; shells which whined stopped landing near us, yet colossal explosions continued all around. Curiosity took me up the dugout steps to find out what Jerry was up to, and I soon recognised an old familiar sound from way back on the Somme – woof, woof, whispering woof, woof – Minenwerfers, ruddy great mortars. Back to the Romans!(2)

     HQ experts assessed the situation and circulated the comforting news that Jerry was subjecting our area to “a box-barrage of large mortars”. These often dug holes big enough to drop a house into and were doubtless intended to bring our wonderful shelters down on our heads. They might well have done so but, in our immediate vicinity, the German artillery still hadn’t quite got us targeted. Creating a box-barrage required very careful range co-ordination so that, on landing, the projectiles formed the outline of a square. The director of the operation could move his square forwards, backwards or sideways, the hope being that eventually every construction and every living thing within it would be destroyed.

     Still, we survived and so did our dugout until, eventually, the boxes moved off elsewhere… Unfortunately, an even more concentrated artillery bombardment took their place and now our lovely, deep shelter really did begin to shudder and tremble. One great scare came from a big shell which must have landed on our dugout’s very thick “roof”; everything vibrated alarmingly and earth fell away from ceiling and walls. Two stairway tunnels led down from the trench above and these we quickly checked, but both remained sound and clear. The Engineers had done a good job of construction, bless‘em.

     For us four Signallers, apart from mad dashes to trace line breaks – in the dark, by touch – all was working nicely when I received a message which sealed our Company’s fate. It read: “In a probable emergency the following procedures will be carried out by your Company. Should you receive the code word ‘Sambo’ C Company will retreat to their support line, fighting a rear-guard action. Should you receive code word ‘George’ C Company will stand firm and under no circumstances leave their present position.”

     I sent that message over to our acting Company officer(3) – of whom we had seen little, though we knew he lurked in his screened-off end of our dugout.

     Near finality here indeed… a message which presented us with two possibilities, both horrible. We four Signallers discussed our own potential courses of action and decided that if “George” came through we must smash our transmitter, attach suitable messages to our pair of carrier pigeons and send them flying, then join our comrades on the firing steps.

     As well that we made our own decisions, for no instructions emanated from our leader’s hidey-hole.

Someone at Battalion HQ had a sense of the dramatic for, when I received the one-word message we dreaded – viz “George” — I automatically timed it: 2400 hours. Midnight(4).

     “George”, our stay-put death sentence, was accompanied by no other words, not even “Good luck” or “Goodbye”.

     When we relayed the message to our Company officer, he burst out from behind his curtain yelling maledictions on all Headquarters staffs and wanting to know why we had been sacrificed. We couldn’t enlighten him. In fact, his changed face told us much about his state of mind, and we knew that, as far as leadership was concerned, there would be none from him.’

(2) Not quite back to the Romans, probably — Wikipedia says mortars were first deployed in action by Fatih Sultan Mehmet’s Army in the 1453 siege of Constantinople – which actually marked the end of the Roman Empire after 1,500 years.

(3) My father aliased him as Lieutenant Jewitt. He was left in charge when the Battalion withdrew the Company’s usual, popular CO Captain Bailey (another alias, as per Sam’s habit) as they moved into the front line a few days earlier.

(4) Midnight March 27/8,­ presaging the day the Germans launched the Operation Mars element of the Spring Offensive which had begun around St Quentin on March 21.

All the best – FSS

Next week: Amid the monstrous bombardment, Sam’s line to HQ goes dead, then he and Neston find HQ deserted… back in the front line the Company CO’s in a pitiable state… Sam and Signallers join their Tommy comrades to start that fight to the last bullet… thinking “Stick together no matter what happens”…

(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 meets the Tsarina of Russia’s goddaughter! In Harrogate! What the… ?

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 the British Red Cross

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

Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… The twin campaigns of Arras (led by the British) and the Aisne (led by the French) proceeded towards unsatisfactory conclusions for the Allies.

    The British had to call off their attack at the Third Battle Of The Scarpe (May 3-4) because of heavy casualties although, supporting Australian troops, they did make early headway in the Battle Of Bullecourt (May 3-17), breaking through the Hindenburg Line at Quéant. The French did take Craonne (4) and Chemin Des Dames, Moisy Farm and Laffaux Mill (5), then repulsed German counterattacks (6/7). But the cost of this plan set out by General Robert Nivelle continued to prove so high that the mutinies begun the previous week carried on spreading through their forces.

    Hectic action in other theatres saw: artillery battles on the Trentino and Julian fronts (May 6); an Allied Spring Offensive in Salonika (5-15) including a French/Italian artillery bombardment of Bulgarian and German positions in the Second Battle Of Cerna Bend (5-9; Macedonia), and French/Greek troops taking Bulgarian trenches on the Lyumnitsa river (5); the Turkish Army recapture of Mush from the faltering Russians (April 30; Armenia); a British victory over the Turks at the Gorge of Shatt-el-Adhaim (April 30; north of Baghdad, then Mesopotamia).

    At sea German mines and submarines continued to take their toll of naval and other ships, one major casualty being the SS Transylvania, sunk by two torpedoes in the Gulf of Genoa en route from Marseille to Alexandria with the loss of more than 400 soldiers and crew (my father had a connection with this ship: from April 17-25ish, 1916, she carried the post-Gallipoli remnants of his 2/1st Battalion Royal Fusiliers to Marseille and the Western Front after four months of rest and training in Egypt).

[Memoir background: my father, under-age 2/1st Royal Fusiliers volunteer and Gallipoli veteran [Blogs September 20, 2015, to January 3, 2016) Lance Corporal Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London, had fought on the Somme Front with his second outfit the Kensingtons (Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)… until officialdom spotted his age – 18 on July 6, 1916, legally too young for the battlefield – and told him he could take a break from the fighting until he was 19. He did so, though with an enduring sense of guilt. By December, 1916, he ended up posted to Harrogate, Yorkshire, and re-allocated again, this time to the Essex Regiment 2/7th Battalion, along with a bunch of other under-age Tommies training/marking time – and In Sam’s case dicing with meningitis and other battle-fatigue enhanced ailments – until they severally became eligible for the trenches once more…]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week, Sam had the interesting experience of getting to know his three Cambridge University student comrades a lot better. Although he was only 18 and left school at 14, he found an equilibrium in their relationship because he could tell these highly educated and monied novice officer types a good deal about the battlefield realities he’d learned at Gallipoli and the Somme, especially what the Tommies needed from their leaders in times of extreme stress.

    Now he enjoys another of those sweet diversions from the war world which he loved so much, when civilian civility offered him the chance to set aside everything he’d been through – and would certainly return to at some unspecified time after his 19th birthday…

‘There followed a short period during which I spent less of my spare time with McIntyre and more with a bloke called Hackerman. Different in many ways to dear old Mac, this fellow waxed enthusiastic about quite small ventures; completely self-confident it seemed, he walked with a bit of a swagger, his feet somewhat splayed – sort of thrown upwards and smacked down as he energetically advanced. He had a true, egg-shaped head with small chin and mouth, large, bulging eyes, and wide forehead. He attracted my interest when one day he insisted on showing me a note an aunt had enclosed with her regular letter to him. It comprised an introduction to a Miss Frost, one of auntie’s friends, who lived in Harrogate.

     For some reason unknown to me, Hackerman thought that, if I accompanied him when he called with his letter of introduction, the preliminaries would be accomplished more easily. Much would depend, I guessed, on the age and temperament of Miss Frost — one was conditioned by romantic stories for a meeting with a ravishing beauty, owner of an immense fortune…

     Reality produced an old maid with a modest job, but some remarkably convivial friends. Prepared by the aunt for Hackerman’s call, Miss Frost conducted us to a basement room where a group of men and women much younger than she, though certainly no more vivacious, had gathered to bid welcome to this soldier sponsored by a London friend.

     A complete stranger myself, I was invited to join in the drinks and getting-to-know-each-other routine, and found this surprisingly easy among young women bent on giving two young soldiers a good time (in the most innocent sense of the phrase). One young woman, with whom I found myself particularly at ease, told me she was married; her husband was abroad in the Forces and she found these meetings with her friends helpful and enjoyable.

     This basement room, comfortably if plainly furnished, seemed to gain something in degrees of informality merely by being below ground level. A touch of the nightclubs maybe. Looking upwards through its one window, one could see part of a large building on the opposite side of the street. “That,” said my new acquaintance, “belongs to Alexandrina’s family. She’s that lovely girl over there.” She pointed to a gorgeous brunette. The building, it transpired, was a hotel, its clientele very much upper-crust, for the Tsarina of Russia** had stayed there and, at Alexandrina’s christening, had agreed to become one of the child’s godparents.

     This faint link with royalty caused no reserve or restraint and Alexandrina proved to be a happy soul – and generous with the several wines and spirits obviously donated by her dad..’

** Alexandra Feodorovna, 1872-1918, Empress Consort of Nicholas II, the last Emperor Of Russia; the “Tsaritsa”, not “Tsarina” as the British usually called her, it seems, was Queen Victoria’s granddaughter and Kaiser Wilhelm II’s cousin; the hotel my father refers to was the Cathcart House, then owned by the Allen family, and still standing today, but converted into flats. It bears a plaque saying Empress Alexandra stayed there in 1894 – she travelled alias Baroness Startenburg, seeking a cure for her sciatica from Harrogate’s famous spa. She became godmother to the owners’ twin children (because she took their birth during her visit as a lucky omen) — she further asked their parents, Christopher and Emma Allen, that they be named after herself and Nicholas, the then Tsarevich (heir to the Imperial throne), to whom she was engaged. She stayed in touch with the children – the girl seems to have been spelt “Alix”, because the Tsaritsa was still Princess Alix of Hesse at the time – and regularly sent them gifts, right up to their 21st birthdays in 1915. The Tsaritsa was Rasputin’s chief supporter at court. A combination of Army personnel demoralised by military failure on the Eastern Front (and starvation) plus civilian revolutionaries forcedd her husband to abdicate on March 15, 1917. Her cousin King George V refused her permission to flee to Great Britain and, after a period of imprisonment, in July, 1918, she, her husband and her family were murdered, probably on the orders of Lenin.

All the best – FSS

Next week: Sam’s lovely evening continues – a nice girl for company, fish and chips… what more could an 18-year-old Gallipoli/Somme veteran on a break from the Front ask for? But then comes the order to muster and the Battalion hits the road once more.

* 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.