Sam in Egypt negotiates an international trade agreement – he sells his old underpants to a villager (despite hot-blooded brother Ted cutting up rough)...

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Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… lethal to and fro proceeded on the Western Front; for instance, the French gained ground at Frise (February 9, Somme department) and lost it again four days later, while the German Army attacked with some success at Soissons (12, Aisne department) only to be repulsed by the French 24 hours on.

    The Russians maintained their role as the most multi-front proactive participants during the (European) winter, fighting aggressively in modern-day Latvia (February 7, Riga; 11, Dvinsk; 13, Garbonovka), Ukraine (8, crossing the Dniester; 9, Volhynia and Galicia), in the Caucasus (12, launching the final attack of their five-week campaign to take Erzerum from the Ottomans; 8, continuing their new Trebizond Campaign with a naval bombardment of Turkey’s Black Sea coast), and moving on steadily in western Persia (13, occupying Dalautabad).

    The combined Austrian/Bulgarian invasion of Albania proceeded, but the Allies emphasised their defence of still notionally independent Greece by supporting the establishment of a Serbian Government in exile on Corfu and moving French reinforcements into Salonika on the border with conquered Serbia.

    Way down south, a combined South African/Indian/British/Rhodesian force made a first attack on German East Africa (current Rwanda, Burundi, and mainland Tanzania) and failed utterly at the Battle Of Salaita Hill (actually in present-day Kenya). Messing up their advance intelligence (they expected 300 German defenders, when really it was 2,300), their 6,000 men were beaten by machine-gun power and an outflanking manouver. Then when they retreated towards Serengeti they fell into disarray with the Indians instructing the South Africans they were not to be referred to as “coollies”.

    Meanwhile, the 200-odd 2/1st City Of London Battalion Royal Fusiliers comrades who remained after four months in Gallipoli, found their brief R&R (and de-lousing) respite in Alexandria swiftly concluded. For my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London (still under-age at 17), and his mates there followed a spell in a rural location on the banks of the Nile and the edge of the Sahara…

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week, the remnants of the 2/1st Battalion (200 out of the thousand who signed up together in September, 1914) started to build a tented town on the sand near an Egyptian village called Beni Salama, 30 miles north-west of Cairo. Others joined them, about a Battalion a day, including some Australians – and then Sam’s older brother Ted (then 19), with a Lawrence of Arabia air about him, emerged from the desert riding a camel.

    Meeting each other for the first time since their chance encounter on Lemnos before Christmas, 1915 – where the 2/1st rested between Gallipoli stints at Suvla Bay and V Beach – they caught up on the news. Ted explained that after he got separated from the Battalion on the docks at Alexandria before they sailed for Gallipoli the previous September – he’d lost his front teeth in a fight, rendering him unfit for the battlefield(!) – he’d been transferred into the Transport Section. He understood he would soon rejoin the 2/1st.

    After that they commiserated about how none of them had been paid for months and Sam mentioned that he longed for something nice to eat following months of malnutrition intermittently eased by a tin of corned beef (in serving which, imaginative Army cooks deployed two different recipes: corned beef hot and corned beef cold). Between them, they decided that what they might be able to sell to the local fellaheen (peasant farmers) was… Sam’s long woolly underpants. Herewith, the eventful story of their debut in international commerce:

‘… a few evenings later, in brilliant moonlight we went strolling, both of us enjoying the opportunity to chat without interruption about our affairs past and present. Three Arabs interrupted our pleasant interlude when they approached and asked if we had anything to sell.

     We had wandered some distance from camp and I might have been a wee bit anxious about our safety, unarmed as we were, if Ted had not assured me with complete confidence that he understood these people and could handle anything they might start.

     Well, when I mentioned my pants – and exposed the tops of them because these men spoke no English – much interest was shown. So I stepped aside, removed them, replaced my trousers, and asked, “How much you give?” Their English could cope with that, or the obvious implication, and up went two fingers. Two pieces of five piastres I signalled, but they wilfully misunderstood and proffered two pieces each of one piastre.

     The pantomime dragged on and I didn’t like the way they crowded us and made grabs at the pants. Their final offer appeared to be three piastres and, at that, Ted’s patience ran out and he yelled, “Empshi, empshi allah”. When they still lingered, he swung at one of them, hit him on the side of the jaw, and he sank down. He caught number two the same way, took another swing at the last one and just connected, but by then all three were up and running away.

     It all happened quickly, I found it hardly believable. I didn’t like it for, scurrying away in their gowns, they looked like whipped children. The short, wiry Ted assured me it was the only way to act in these circumstances; soon they would have thought they had scared us and that might have turned out badly. It demonstrated the power a quick decision and quick action gives, rightly or wrongly, to the man who reacts swiftly. (I didn’t say that to Ted, I just thought of it while recalling this episode.)

     As we walked back to the camp, looking behind us I glimpsed one of the Arabs still hovering dimly some way off and, after I said goodnight to dear old Ted at the horse-lines, I walked in the direction of my tent and waved to the fellow to join me. He must have been expecting this for he came at the trot. I dickered with him briefly and eventually got about four piastres, worth tenpence*, for my pants. Next day, I bought a large can of pears at the Nile Storage Co. depot, which had opened near the railway stop.

In due course, we completed our Pioneer task of founding a large camp, which fresh Battalions from other Regiments moved into as fast as we erected new rows of tents. Any additional structures they required, they created themselves.

     Now the Royal Engineers arrived, obviously regular Army men, trained for construction work in hot countries. Their main stock-in-trade, apart from a lot of tools, was a huge quantity of sectional piping and standard-sized rectangles of the framed matting we’d often seen used to build reed or cane huts. In no time, they put up showers, ablutions and cooking shelters of uniform size in endless lines between camp and river. I never saw their pumping and purifying plant way over by the river, but blessed them for their good works. Now we could have a cool shower quite often, a boon in that sweltering heat.’

* That’s old pennies, of course: 12 to the shilling, 240 to the £ sterling. One online historic currency converter suggests that 1916 10d would be worth £4.29 today, but these estimates vary hugely according to what inflationary factors are considered.

All the best – FSS

Next week: The Battalion builds its masterpiece – an enormous communal al fresco latrine that looks like a bandstand – and Sam learns to make a luxurious bed out of the Sahara sand. Also a bit of rough desert dentistry, and fraternal friction…

Sam & pals encamp on the edge of the Sahara – it’s all a bit Lawrence Of Arabia, but the food’s no better than in Gallipoli… and they’re issued with lime juice “to cool the blood and subdue men’s natural lusts”…

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

All proceeds to British Red Cross

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

Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… on the Western Front the deadly, desultory stage of grinding continued with the German Army shelling Loos, northeastern France  (February 3), the Allies responding in kind by bombarding nearby German-held Lille (February 6). Also an alarming Zeppelin raid on East Anglia and the Midlands killed 70 and injured 113 (January 31).

    Russia continued to be the most aggressive of the Allies, attacking Riga, Latvia (February 1), and in the Bukovina region of modern Romania/Ukraine (3), on the Eastern Front. Further south, in the Caucasus (between the Black and Caspian Seas) they pressed the Ottomans back towards the conclusion of their Erzerum Campaign, begun on January 10, while launching a follow-up action in the two-month Trebizond Campaign (February 5) pressing into territory where, in 1915, the Ottomans had massacred or deported 30,000 Armenians.

    Down in the Balkans, though, the Austrian and Bulgarian Armies emphasised an Allied failure; having conquered Serbia, they pressed on through Albania and even launched a Zeppelin raid on Salonika, where – following their Gallipoli defeat – French and British forces had installed themselves to prevent any attempt at invading Greece.

    However, down in Africa the Battle For Lake Tanganyika apparently reached a somewhat African Queen-style conclusion when two cutely named, though armed, British motor boats, the Mimi and the Toutou, captured the German gunboat Kingani.

    Meanwhile, the 200-odd 2/1st City Of London Battalion Royal Fusiliers comrades who remained after four months fighting at Suvla Bay and V Beach, Gallipoli, found their brief R&R (and de-lousing) respite in Alexandria swiftly concluded – the Army still having neglected both to pay them since they shipped into Gallipoli and to replace their tattered clothes. For my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London (still under-age at 17), and his mates there followed a spell in a rural location on the banks of the Nile and the edge of the Sahara doing… well, as usual, nobody told them what the plan was…

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week, my father’s vestigial Battalion travelled in the usual PBI “cattle-truck” discomfort to a place called Beni Salama, 30 miles north-west of Cairo. Given that a bare patch of ground, rather than any pre-arranged accommodations awaited them, they had to sort themselves out pdq. Sam recalls:

‘We hauled the tent bags some distance away from the railway; officers measured out spaces and minions laid out ropes to mark the lines where the tents were to stand. We had earlier learnt the drill for erecting tents without wasting a single move and a camp sprang up quickly. The marquees proved tricky, but we managed and, before nightfall, we had settled into our own allotted canvas homes. With two blankets apiece, being really tired, we soon slept – all except the poor devils who had to mount guard and scare off intruders if any, or, more likely, the jackals which scrounged around desert habitations.

     We spent the next couple of weeks toiling for long periods each day on a diet of hard biscuits, corned beef and dried, shredded veg, with a little jam and a small amount of cheese once or twice a week. The corned beef, basis of the main meal, would be served cold one day and warm the next, as a hash with the shredded vegetables. An unusual addition to this diet was a daily measure of lime juice, compulsory drinking. The official reason for this latter treat never reached my ears – men who professed to know said it was to cool the blood and subdue men’s natural lusts (though they used less churchy words). Like a clever little ex-Boy Scout, I preferred the anti-scurvy theory.

     Each day a train brought in a fresh load of tents. These we loaded on to some splendid horse-drawn wagons manned by really fine Australians, big, powerful fellows. They had brought in their own equipment and set up a camp where, looking on from the outskirts, I could see that everything worked on a better and more generous scale than ours ever had. I believe they were the Australian Light Horse*, probably some of the first volunteers from Down Under.

     The camp grew, each day’s work providing accommodation for one more Battalion**.’

So there they were, settled in a tented encampment between the Sahara and the Nile… when a romantic-looking figure came into view, riding a camel. Was it a Sheikh, was it a Pasha, was it Lawrence Of Arabia? No, it was Ted Sutcliffe from Edmonton:

‘My brother Ted reappeared one day***, to my joy and my amazement, for he was riding high on a camel led by an Arab. An arrangement of rope netting slung over the beast’s back provided, on each flank, a container, one filled with loaves, the other with large clumps of dates. A sort of cavalcade followed Ted, some animals carrying similar loads, others with tins of bully beef or special provisions for the officers. “We’re what’s left of the old Transport Section and eventually we shall be with the Battalion permanently,” he told me. Good news indeed.

     Once we got talking, I told brother Ted – himself, unpaid for weeks – how I longed for something luxurious to eat after the long period of small, poor rations which had been my lot. I knew complete replacement of all apparel and equipment lost in the recent campaign would soon occur, and we decided that my heavy, wool, long pants might yield a harvest of a few piastres if offered to the local fellaheen****.

     We didn’t know how to go about it though…’

* The five Australian Light Horse Brigades served at Gallipoli and throughout the war.

** Up to 1,000 men.

*** Sam last saw Ted  in Lemnos on Boxing Day, before the Battalion suddenly got the order to sail back to Gallipoli to help with the evacuation at V Beach (immediately after they had themselves evacuated Suvla Bay). Ted, two years older than Sam, so 19 at this point, was an original 2/1st member, but he  got separated from his comrades in September, 1915, when he had his front teeth knocked out in a fist fight. See Blogs 62 13-09-15 and 77 27-12-15.

**** Arabic word meaning peasant, farmer, agricultural labourer – “effendi”, I read, are the land-owning class.

All the best – FSS

Next week: International trade agreement – despite hot-blooded Ted cutting up rough, natural negotiator Sam sells his old underpants to a villager…