September, 1918: POW Sam runs into more surprising kindness – this time from a German soldier and his girlfriend. Over hard work and shared spuds he finds a good pal in a lad called Wally…

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Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… The Battles Of The Hindenburg Line (September 12-October 12) began with the British, supported by New Zealanders, coming down off high ground to attack and take Havrincourt (September 12-16; Aisne department, southeast of Cambrai) and the Americans leading the Battle Of St Mihiel (12-13; Meuse department, 22 miles south of Verdun) under General Pershing, supported by French tanks and 1,500 Allied aircraft – catching German troops already on the retreat they took 15,000 prisoners in two days before pulling up short of their initial objective, Metz, as Pershing needed to put his force at the disposal of a French attack further north.

    The French had already won the Battle Of Savy-Dallon (September 10; Aisne department), approaching the Hindenburg Line near St Quentin as they took Hinacourt, Travecy and Savy, and then advanced again via the Battle Of Vauxaillon (14).

    No surprise then that, backstage, Austria-Hungary wrote to President Wilson (September 15) seeking an “unofficial” peace conference – whatever that might have been, the President rejected it the following day – and the German Government made a peace offer to Belgium (15) just as the Belgian Army was advancing strongly around Ypres.

    Action continued on the periphery of the European conflict. Way up north in the Murman region of Russia around the Barents Sea, Allied forces began an advance after American troops arrived in Archangel (September 11). Down in Azerbaijan, the confusing battle for Baku saw a British evacuation when an attempted collaboration with the Armenian defenders against the Turks failed. And in Serbia – territory now in Macedonia – combined Serbian, French and Greek regiments initiated the Battle Of Dobro Pole (September 15-18) against the occupying Bulgars.

[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 where they settled into a slightly less uncomfortable/filthy camp for the summer, mainly working on sick and wounded German war horses.]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

August/September, 1918: my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe, now 20 years old and five months a slowly starving POW, is on a run of (relative) good fortune – all food-connected stories, naturally. First it was the tubby Posten (guard) buying him a Gasthaus lunch, then a few days’ hard work in a vineyard rewarded by stew and cream cheese and even wine, and now this week a further encounter with the kindness of the enemy… 

    (By the way, if my father’s food obsession seems trivial in the light of the historic events noted in the “hundred years ago this week” section of the blog, please consider that a) he hadn’t a clue what was going on at the Front and b) hunger concentrates the mind wonderfully.)

‘However, after only three days, we were all sent off on different jobs. Grievously disappointed, I found some compensation because, in a group of 10 or so, I was taken into the nearby town of Müllheim-in-Baden(2), and thence to a big farm on the outskirts. Our job was to store away a recently cut crop of hay on the second floor of a large barn. In good dry condition, the hay proved easy to handle. Like all well-planned barns – I remembered from boyhood camping days(3) – it had an open area in the middle with two spacious floors at each end and we forked the hay from ground to first floor, then up again to the top floor.

    I had no experience with a pitchfork, but had the good luck to be paired with my friend Wally. A country boy, height about 66 inches, broad of shoulder and strong of limb with admirable stamina from his former open-air life and good feeding, he had withstood the privations of these months better than most of us. And he soon showed me the knack of driving the fork in with a twist, which secured a good load, then using the handle as a lever to lift the weight in one deft movement, making easy work of it even to a weakling like me.

    Awaiting another load from the fields, we had a break. We’d been working on the top deck of the barn, and when I explored I found a small door at the back. Carefully opening it, I saw down below a narrow lane. I thought what you have just thought – about possible escape. But where to? Food? And so on… Meanwhile, I scrambled out anyway, finding grips in gaps in the woodwork and finally landing in grass and weeds…

    And there I was, alone in the lane. But only for a moment. Coming towards me were a girl and a young soldier – and that, it appeared, would be the end of my brief freedom.

    They came close, both smiled. No screams or cries of alarm. So, nothing unusual about finding a British prisoner unguarded and alone, it seemed. “Ich arbeit darein,”(4) I said and pointed hopefully at the barn. They talked a while and he said, “Bleiben sie da”. All smiles, so I trusted them completely and waited, perhaps for 20 minutes. My mate Wally’s head appeared above and I gave him a reassuring nod and grin; I felt sure he would alert me if necessary. When my young friends reappeared the soldier carried a pail which he offered to me – nearly full of hot potatoes boiled in their jackets.

    Again, a kindly girl had risked possible arrest to help an enemy prisoner. The lad had taken an even greater risk, being in the Army. I packed the spuds into my under-tunic sack and became fuller of figure and even fuller of gratitude to these lovely, young people.

    War… to hell with it — this lad who seemed so much younger than me, would probably be in the slaughter shambles on the Western Front any day now, and what might happen to his dear sister? (I had understood one word among the several he said to me, “Schwester”.)

    Sincere thanks were all I could offer. As they disappeared round a bend in the lane, I wished to heaven I could have gone with them.

    A soft whistle from me brought Wally to the door above. To help me back up, he lowered his pitchfork and lay down on the deck up there, holding it, while I hauled myself up part of the way, then I completed the rest of the climb unaided.

    We two then ate spuds until, as they say, fit to bust.’

(2) Müllheim: in Baden-Württemberg, 2.3 miles (3.7 kilometres) south of Hügelheim (and their POW camp/horse hospital), between the Black Forest and the Rhine.

(3) With the Edmonton Boy Scouts in Epping Forest or some other tract of (then) nearby countryside.

(4) “Ich arbeit darein”: “I work in there”. Then“Bleiben sie da”: “Stay there”.

All the best– FSS

Next week: Sam establishes “a sort of family” with POWs Wally and George as they agree to share everything – and he scores more spuds for the partnership with the help of friendly Soldaten, full of empathy for their fellow front-liners, even as enemy prisoners…

(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.

Sherlock Holmes’s creator Conan Doyle lectures Somme veteran Sam about… the Somme… Just part of the Army’s richly varied programme of entertainments before sending him back to the Western Front!

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… Georges Clemenceau replaced Paul Painlevé as French Prime Minister (November 13) and perhaps got lucky to a degree as the week produced no decisive actions on the Western Front, despite the always deadly to and fro around recent major battlefields including Ypres (12-13), Passchendaele (13-16), St Quentin and Champagne (17) where British and French forces defeated German attempts to win back lost ground.

    Russia’s withdrawal from the war appeared to move closer as the former leader of the provisional Government Alexander Kerenski, lately ousted by Lenin’s Bolsheviks, staged a last military stand with “loyal troops” at Pulkovo near Petrograd. He went into hiding then fled for France.

    Down in Italy, the battle which began life as the 12th Isonzo and changed its name to The First Battle Of The Piave (or Of Monte Grappa – river or mountain, November 11-December 23) as the Italians retreated south. But with their new chief-of staff installed (Cadorna replaced by Diaz) and Allied reinforcements arriving, during this week they began to hold the line from about 20 miles north of Venice to said Monte Grappa, about 60 miles northeast, near Veneto in the “pre-alps”.

    Finally, in Palestine, the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (British, Anzac and Indian) concluded the success of the 3rd Battle Of Gaza by pursuing Ottoman forces and breaking down their attempts to establish a defensive position. The cavalry-led Action Of El Mughar’s success (November 13) enabled them to chase the Ottoman Army northwards for an average of 50 miles from their starting point, with Jaffa the furthest point captured (November 16).

[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, along with a bunch of other under-age Tommies until such time as they severally became eligible for the trenches again… 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 some lurking effects of trench warfare’s privations – and prepare him for more (he was 19 on July 6 while in hospital). In recent weeks, because material from Sam’s “year out” at home didn’t stretch to weekly blogs, I rewound excerpts from his experiences of Gallipoli and the Somme. But now the story’s returned to the this-week-100-years-ago narrative.]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week, the Army finally noticed my father had attained the age – 19 – at which he was legally entitled to resume his Gallipoli and Somme role as a unit of cannonfodder. To prepare him for his return to the Front in France they sent him on a signalling refresher course at Crowborough, Sussex (“refresher” because after he’d learned these skills in Malta during 1915 and practised them in the front line at Suvla Bay, on the Somme his expertise proved surplus to requirements and he fought as a plain foot soldier).

    Here he gets on with studying some new wrinkles, but mainly recalls the assorted pleasures of training camp entertainments – including a visit from the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle:

‘Encouraged by a competent Signals Sergeant-Instructor, I regained some of my former speed at using the key, sending and receiving messages on newer, more sophisticated instruments, and laying and rigging lines – using trees where roads had to be crossed, a new skill I learned (healthy exercise with opportunities to revise map and compass practice too).

     But my memories of that tall, lean Sergeant centre more around his talk of pre-war days. He loved to describe the little corner shop owned by his parents. He had helped out in spare hours. He described how farthings** on this line and ha’pennies on that all added up to profits which sustained the family in a fair degree of comfort. I’m sure he applied the same zeal to his studies of Army signals techniques as he had to learning how to buy and sell hundreds of household requirements. Through him, I again felt renewed contact with that civilian world in which I had dwelt briefly, such a long time ago, as it seemed.

     Off-duty, in comfortable cafés within the camp – run by the YMCA, Salvation Army and other doers of good works – we could drink tea and eat cakes, play darts, dominoes or draughts, write letters or just talk. We had a soft-drinks canteen, a groceries etc canteen, and a “wet canteen” for the tipplers. A large concert hall too where, once a week, musicians, singers and entertainers came over from Forest Row, 10 miles west of Crowborough, and presented a pretty good show – for free, although they were obviously professionals. One violinist made beautiful music, sometimes playing Kreisler compositions as well as that great man himself (I heard his recordings many years later).

     Most evenings during the week, they used the hall as a cinema, running a silent movie or two accompanied by a pianist who, since he could not improvise, painstakingly plodded through the score of some current musical. This he had spent most of the preceding daylight hours practicing, as I discovered when passing the building. I guessed he had hopes of retaining that job instead of being sent “over there”. I know I admired his persistence and wished him luck.

     Sometimes, those in charge of the camp laid on different, special events too. One night, in our concert hall, a guest lecturer gave a detailed account of the previous year’s Battle Of The Somme. The speaker, fairly tall, broad and altogether imposing, was none other than the great Dr. Conan Doyle, inventor of Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Dr Watson, whose investigations I had read about in Strand**** magazines passed on to me by dear old Mr Frusher, the Scoutmaster. The author lived, I was informed, across the valley, in a wooded estate.

     Our visitor, it turned out, had mastered much information about the object of and preparation for that awful battle, and he made full use of a large map, displayed on an easel. His voice was somewhat gruff, perhaps due to a cold, but he earned the audience’s close attention. Conan Doyle was doing his war work, hoping that a fuller understanding of Britain’s strategy would help soldiers to better endure their part in it. I heard differing opinions about that.*****’

** Farthing: legal tender until 1960 in “old money” (lsd), a quarter of a penny, so one 960th of a pound sterling (which says something about why the UK government eventually decimalised the currency); after 1936, this smallest coin bore the image of the country’s smallest bird, the wren – before that it was Britannia on the reverse of the monarch, as per all other British coins.

*** Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962), Austrian-born violinist and composer who spent World War 1 in the USA where, much later, he gained citizenship. The violinist my father appreciated may well have played one or both of his most popular pieces, Liebesleid (Love’s Sorrow) and Liebesfreud (Love’s Joy), both composed in 1905.

**** A monthly, Strand was published from 1891 50 1950 and Conan Doyle contributed over 200 pieces, from fiction to essays and poems.

***** If I’m catching my father’s implication here, as a veteran of the Somme himself he felt somewhat cynical about having an “expert” explain the battle to him, even such an eminence as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930). But he didn’t know that the author’s personal stake in it went far beyond the academic. His son, Kingsley, was seriously wounded on the Somme (and died of pneumonia, aged 26, while still “convalescent” the year after Sam listened to this talk, 1918). Conan Doyle wrote a military history, The British Campaign In France And Flanders, published in six volumes, 1916-20. He lived in Crowborough at Little Windlesham House with his second wife, Jean, from 1907 until his death in 1930.

All the best – FSS

Next week: Home leave, December, 1917, finds Sam’s parents moving house. So his final preparation for a return to the Western Front consists of laying lino!

* 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.