Sam and the 2/1st are not best pleased with a new Colonel who comes between them and the Major who’d stood beside them through Gallipoli’s bullets and blizzards…

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Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… after a winter of lesser (though deadly) skirmishing on the Western Front, to the surprise of the French high command, a massive German artillery bombardment began the Battle Of Verdun (February 21 – official ending December 18). In the first few days, the German Army advanced quite steadily, at one point taking the fort at Douamont when driven on by the misplaced “friendly fire” of their own artillery and finding the expected garrison all but non-existent (Douamont village now has a population of six and an ossuary containing the bones of 100,000 unknown soldiers). But, by the end of the week, General Pétain had been summoned to the scene, decided to concentrate on defence and halted German progress – assisted by a thaw rendering hard ground swampy. First week casualties: French 24,000, German 25,000.

    Elsewhere, the significant action proceeded much further east and south. The Austrian Army occupied Alabania’s then capital, Durazzo (February 27); the long Russian Caucasus campaign approached Trebizond on the Turkish Black Sea coast, while their West Persian inroads continued as they took control of a couple of mountain passes and the towns of Kashan, Ispir (both 26) and Kermanshah (27); Ottoman forces captured two Saharan oases, Farafra and Dakhla, in south-western Egypt (27); and the Action At Agagia, near Egypt’s north-western coast, saw a British/Sikh/Australian/South African force defeat Senussi tribesmen in one of the last cavalry fights anywhere (26; the Senussi were allies of the Ottomans and Germans; they suffered about 500 casualties to the British-led army’s 184).

    Meanwhile, the 200-odd 2/1st City Of London Battalion Royal Fusiliers comrades who’d survived Gallipoli without serious wound or illness, had constructed a tented town, shared with other British and Australian Battalions, adjacent to a village called Beni Salama, 30 miles north-west of Cairo. My father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London (still under-age at 17), his older brother Ted (19), and their mates rather enjoyed life on the banks of the Nile and the edge of the Sahara… until a new arrival came to taint their fragile contentment…

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week, Sam and pals completed their enormous masterpiece al fresco desert latrine, open to observation by the sun, assorted passing camels, and passengers on the adjacent Nileside railway.

    Further, on the family front, his beloved older brother Ted rejoined the Battalion with his Transport section – actually pro tem wranglers/grooms to the officers’ horses – and Sam found himself embarrassed by the authority of his Lance Corporal’s stripe compared to his bro’s freebooting style.

    This week, he turns to a more general reflection on Army hierarchy and discipline, provoked by the unwelcome arrival and imposition of a new commanding officer on the battered band of comrades the 2/1st had become:

‘We began to see a tall, burly officer around our camp, a Lieutenant Colonel*, very stern as to facial appearance, and a complete stranger to all of us, officers and rankers. We didn’t wish to know him, but secretly feared that, at some not very distant moment, he would force us to acknowledge his existence. Because, since coming to this place on the edge of a desert, we had done practically no formal training or drill. Months of living in holes or trenches on a poor diet and with insufficient water – until the flood and freeze came** – had reduced the vitality of even the strongest men.’

My father then elaborates in more depth than anywhere else in his Memoir on the brotherhood which had developed among these Suvla Bay sufferers/survivors:

‘A previously unsuspected tide of comradely feeling had recently manifested itself among all ranks; a sort of reaction to recent experiences, a feeling that we had all endured many risks and hardships together, that we had been true to the volunteer spirit and stuck it out when so many others had managed to get away from it all.

     All men differ in the degree of sincerity with which they express themselves. The human animal is, perforce, selfish because the instinct to survive, under test, masters all beliefs, hopes and emotions. So this feeling that we had become a band of brothers*** – that we 250**** comprised the valuable essence squeezed by harsh experiences out of the former one thousand – while warming and heartening, was subscribed to tacitly en masse and never individually declared.

     A hub around which, or whom, the consequent accumulation of loyalty could revolve had to be agreed upon; without discussion, dissent – or, indeed, any actual voting – we elected the Major, pride of all ranks. And Major Booth*, a junior officer a year ago, was indeed now officially in charge of us, since all of more senior rank had vanished, in most cases for reasons unknown to me and probably to all of us.

     In the early days back home and on Malta, his ability to learn, to practice what he’d learnt, and to lead men stood out above that of all others and quick promotion to Captain’s rank followed. Whereat, being now in charge of a Company, he imposed on its members a discipline sterner than that applied in any other – and for this, men worshipped him, because he tempered power with justice.

     An average officer would not investigate a charge brought by an NCO against a Private, but would listen to the charge, then listen to and, usually, disregard the accused sinner’s reasons or excuses, find the case proven, and pass sentence. In our hero’s case, though, clear enquiry would be made. The NCO would have to prove his case, or not. But if the charged man were then found guilty, he’d get it right in the neck. In the nick as well.

     The good officer’s fame spread throughout all Companies and most men wished they belonged to his superior cohort. His men’s buttons and the brass on their equipment shone more brightly than theirs, their deportment on parade, even the horse the Major rode on long marches, made the rest of us look rather lacking and down-at-heel.

     Later, in action, his fearless way of walking upright while surveying and inspecting the front line in full view of the enemy was very impressive – some said foolhardy, but in the men’s eyes it was great and it did wonderful things to our morale. And then the Major had brought us safely out of two evacuations***** and had supervised the setting up of our new camp home.

     But, rightly or wrongly, the rank-and-file chaps felt that the officers in the upper bracket generally, and perhaps class-consciously, despised this man now in command of our small Battalion (as we still liked to call it). He was a Jew and a year or more in the hotter climate had darkened his complexion so that, had he donned the robes popular in Egypt, his appearance would have matched that of any other Semite******.

     He had, and deserved, the loyalty of all of us. Now though, on to this scene strode the tall, burly Colonel, from whence or for why none of us knew, but most of us fearfully guessed. He marched everywhere, he looked healthy, fit and sternly purposeful, with his stout, leather leggings around his hefty calves. The unfairness of what we saw developing became the subject of discussion during most of our waking hours.’

* A couple of pars further on you’ll see reference to Major “Booth”. This is my father’s alias for Major Harry Nathan, who had shown at every stage since the Battalion’s formation in September, 1914, that he cared for his men and stood with them, quite literally when it came to the battlefield. Long after, having served in civilian life as a Liberal, then Labour MP and Minister in the Attlee Government post-WW2, he became the subject of a biography by H. Montgomery Hyde called Strong For Service. This book makes it clear that the new CO, whom my father consigned to anonymity, must have been Lieutenant Colonel A.C.H. Kennard; in a quotation which Hyde doesn’t date or source, Nathan complains that Kennard was parachuted in to take over his command simply because he had the ear of someone powerful in London; Nathan expresses further outrage on learning from Kennard that he would be installing his own second-in-command. (I just report this, I know no more of the ins and outs.)

** My father refers to the notorious blizzard which hit Gallipoli at the end of November.

*** Sam wrote this in the 1970s, long before the excellent WW2 Steven Spielberg TV series had the unfortunate side effect of devaluing the phrase to cliché.

**** I gather he refers to 250 men here, rather than the 200 he mentioned several times a little earlier in these chapters, because some wounded and/or ill men had returned to the Battalion during their, to date, six weeks in Egypt.

***** Suvla Bay in December, 1915, and V Beach, Cape Helles in January, 1916.

****** Semite: while “anti-semitic” has come to mean “prejudiced against Jews”, my father used the root word accurately because it means “a member of the group of people who speak a Semitic language, including the Jews and Arabs as well as the ancient Babylonians, Assyrians and Phoenicians” – source Collins Concise Dictionary Plus.

All the best – FSS

Next week: Sam and the 2/1st get paid at last! And, for the first time in Egypt, fresh meat to eat! But the pain-in-the-rear new Colonel just carries on giving them gyp…

Sam watches the great Fusiliers Malta food mutiny – well, almost, until a young officer takes command… and feeds them at his own expense!

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… through the week, semi-globally battles raged: the British captured Ngaundere, Cameroons from the Germans (June 28); the Italian Army battered ineffectively at the Austro-Hungarians across the Isonzo river, which runs from Slovenia to the Gulf of Trieste (June 29-July 7, Italian casualties 14,947, Austro-Hungarian 9,950); Germany and Austria pressed the Russians back in Galicia (June 29) and the Austrian Army began its successful attempt to retake Krasnik, Poland (July 1-19); the Turkish Army wrested Lahej in Saudi Arabia from its long-time British protectorate status (July 4); and the Serbs occupied Durazzo, Albania (July 4), only to withdraw a couple  of weeks later because it breached a three-way deal they’d previously struck with local Albanian independence leader Essad Pasha...

    And in Gallipoli the British Empire and then French forces launched a substantial attack at Gully Ravine, Cape Helles (June 28-July 5), bloody and fruitless, although small gains saw it dubbed an Allied victory (British and Empire casualties 3,800, Ottoman 6,000) – in the midst of it, Ottoman outrage was aroused by the British refusing a courtesy accorded earlier in the campaign: a truce to allow for burial of the dead.

    Meanwhile... a few miles north of Valletta, Malta, in a rather barren Foreign Legion-ish stretch of land, the thousand men of the 2/1st City Of London Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, including my father, Private Sam Sutcliffe, his older brother Ted (both underage volunteers, still 16 and 18 respectively in early summer 1915), and their pals from Edmonton, north London, continued their preparation for… whatever might turn up. By now, they’d all completed rifle training, while Sam and a handful of comrades proceeded with their study and practice of the Signaller’s multifarious skills.

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week, when St George’s Barracks was commandeered to house a hospital, mainly for men wounded at Gallipoli, the Battalion had to move out of their familiar lodgings to a tented campsite near St Julian’s Bay (San Gilijan) and beside Pembroke Military Cemetery. There, once or twice a day, they observed or, anyway, heard the funerals of men who had not survived their injuries. But music-loving young Sam diverted himself from the morbid speculations this might have provoked by concentrating on the marching band which accompanied each procession and finding a hero in the big bass drummer, whether measuring the solemn tread of The Dead March In Saul on the way in or thumping out Alexander’s Ragtime Band as they departed en route back to their base.

    Now he returns to a favourite theme, the horrors of Army food, and an extraordinary sequence of events at Pembroke camp – a near-mutiny and the emergence of a fine, new leader among the Battalion’s junior officers. Sam writes:

‘At the camp, the food issued to us got progressively worse*. At meal times, the orderly officer and a Sergeant visited the messes and the Sergeant called “Any complaints?” to which, normally, no one responded. It was assumed that a complainant would be marked as a grumbler and might suffer for his temerity.

     But, finally, one day several did complain – all greeted with a stony silence and a hostile look from the Sergeant. No improvement followed and, soon after that, around midday, from my raised situation in my Signals tent, I witnessed a couple of hundred men marching round and round the footpaths bordering the camp, led by a man carrying a leafy branch torn from one of the few trees in the area. They shouted slogans such as “Poor food, no work!”

     Roused and, understandably, incensed by hunger, more men joined the protest. Little as I knew of military law, I felt certain the ringleaders risked court martial and severe punishment, whereas complaints forcefully but properly made would have brought improvement; the difficulty was finding someone bold enough to stand alone and state the case. As it was, the leader, a chap with wild, staring eyes, pursued his rabble-rouser role with infinite zeal and no apparent idea as to what the next move should be.

     A young officer made the decision for him. He appeared suddenly in front of them and gave a clear, sharp order, “Halt!” Without quibble, all the marchers obeyed. “Follow me!” he said, and turned and started marching – making himself the head of the column. And follow him they did, on to the road and out of my sight.

     Later, I heard he had taken them all to a nearby large marquee in which a famous firm of brewers and caterers, official concessionaires, retailed food and drink. That place was the nearest thing to a canteen we had at the time. By cheque, the officer – Lieutenant Booth** – bought a large quantity of canned sausages, bread and biscuits and organised their fair distribution to those present. He also undertook to put the mess complaints to the Colonel and told the men to disperse quietly.

     Thus, a situation, which could have resulted in imprisonment and punishment for decent, but desperate soldiers, was settled quietly by a good man who had some regard for human feelings and failings and not so much regard for the book of rules.

     Some good did come of the mutiny-that-wasn’t. Lieutenant Booth, who had a flair for organisation, accepted a job which would often intrude on his off-duty periods; he was given authority to inspect food stores, to check cooked meals before they were issued to the men and generally to look after the men’s interests regarding quantity and quality of foods. Perfection was not achieved, but sufficient improvement elicited praise from some former complainers.

     The young officer was of that type which bases opinions and judgements on a conception of honesty, which is all too rare in the world. “Scrounging” or “winning”, he described as cover-up words used by thieves to convince themselves they really were decent men. The few who persisted in making frivolous complaints got short shrift from him, as did careless Quartermasters and cooks. Lieutenant Booth, admired by most, scorned by cynics, remained incorruptible and steadfast in his pursuit and practice of honesty and fairness to all. A rare bird indeed.’

* Regular readers may recall the “hard biscuits… the strongest teeth could make no impression on them… All attempts to eat them had to be abandoned, although an enterprising chap with a hammer and small chisel did chip carefully away at some of them to make what he sold as frames for photographs” (FSS blog 34 8-3-15) and Sam’s wondering “what strange sort of caterer would so bungle his ordering that men’s breakfasts in a hot climate would consist of strong cheese and onions boiled together? This occurred on two or three days of each week for a period…” (FSS Blog 37 22-3-15).

** “Booth” is my father’s alias for Harry Nathan (1889-1963), who – according to H. Montgomery Hyde’s biography (Strong For Service: The Life Of Lord Nathan Of Churt, published by W.H. Allen, 1968) – gained promotion to Captain quite early in the Battalion’s Malta sojourn; one year into a career as a London solicitor when war was declared, pre-war he’d also served as a voluntary organiser of Brady Street Club For Working Lads in Whitechapel; Hyde quotes an August, 1914, letter from Nathan to his mother wherein he’s already noting the importance of giving the troops “green vegetables, but they are not provided by the government”; Hyde also quotes Nathan blaming the poor provision for the troops in Malta (including the wounded shipped in from Gallipoli) on Field Marshall Lord Methuen (1845-1932), the Governor and Commander of all Forces on the island (February, 1915-May, 1919); Nathan wrote that he protested about all this officially and often and sometimes hoped “my remonstrances had a momentary effect”; but biographer Hyde makes no mention of the near-mutiny my father watched – it may be that Nathan (who went on to show leadership and courage on the battlefield) didn’t write home about it, being aware that his letters, like every other soldier’s, would be read by censors.

All the best – FSS

Next week: The Battalion’s on the move again – Sam learns the rigours of marching miles in 80°F under routine PBI load plus Signalling gear. Total: 91 pounds!