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Dear
all
A hundred
years ago this week… Apart from Marta Hari being shot at dawn (October 15), the
story on the Western Front was of Allied success in the Third Battle Of Ypres
(July 31-November 10) fizzling in the mud. Triple-average rainfall meant that
the Battle Of Poelcapelle attack (October 9) turned into a “defensive success”
for the German Army largely because a lot of Allied artillery got bogged down
and couldn’t get within range of the German lines (casualties Anzacs 7,000,
British 4,500, German unclear). Then Field Marshal Haigh and General Plumer
both optimistically believed misinformation that the attack had almost reached
its objective, Passchendaele Ridge, and proceeded with the First Battle Of
Passchendaele (12) – an attack on a six-mile front abandoned after one day
“until the weather improved” (casualties British, French and Anzac 13,000,
German unclear).
Further south, constant action between the
French and Germans around Craonne (Aisne), Beaumont (both October 8; near
Reims), Chaume Wood (9; Verdun), and the Champagne front (12) saw a slight
advantage to the German Army emerge – again contrary to events of the summer
and early autumn.
In the Baltic, the German Navy extended the
relentless advance on Russia – still proceeding on land through Latvia – by
taking various Baltic Islands belonging to their neighbour Ukraine (October
12-16; Ösel, Taga, Runo, and Abro).
And down in German East Africa, the
territorially vast, scattered campaign saw further defeats for the German Army
at the hands of British (October 9), Belgian (9) and Portuguese (10) forces.
[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, around
his 19th birthday on July 6, 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 and prepare him for more. However, I’ve had
to break off from the this-week-100-years-ago excerpts from his Memoir because
my father didn’t write enough about his year “out” to provide 52 blog excerpts.
So, through to late October, before he returns to France and the Front from
December onwards, I’m revisiting his previous accounts of historic battles as
seen by an ordinary front-line Tommy. The Gallipoli excerpts concluded two
weeks ago. Now this is the second of five edited episodes from the Somme,
April-late September, 1916, when Sam was 17-18… ]
FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
Last week, my father, Lance Corporal Signaller
Sam Sutcliffe and his 250 comrades, the post-Gallipoli remnants of the 2/1st
Royal Fusiliers who made it to the Western Front via a break in Egypt, were
disbanded.
Deeply
bonded, at base camp in Rouen they’d trained like lunatics in hopes of
persuading the Army they should form the veteran core of a refurbished outfit.
Instead, bitter and disillusioned – even more so because they’d still had no
home leave since February, 1915 – they found themselves scattered among dozens
of other units along the Front.
Peremptorily
dispatched, around May 14 Sam joined the Kensingtons at a village called
Souastre, 7.5 kilometres west of Hébuterne where the Battalion did its front-line stints (opposite
German-held Gommecourt on the northern end of the Somme Front). With time to
talk to his new comrades he realised they were decent sorts, of course. They
chewed over events at home (civilian wages shooting up, the new phenomenon of
conscientious objection). He also quickly came to appreciate Army provisions
unknown at Gallipoli such as solid, regular meals, steel helmets and gas masks.
His
Signaller’s skills surplus to the Kensingtons’ requirements, when their break
away from the trenches was over, he readily switched roles to plain Company A infantry
Lance Jack – while as ever regretting that he still has any rank at all (he
didn’t like ordering people around and, in part because of his age lie back in
September, 1915, he craved anonymity along the mass of men).
We
left the Battalion – probably on the evening of May 21 – marching towards the
Front, initially led by their drum-and-fife band, then in silence as they
reached the “ghost village” of Sailly-au-Bois, 3.4 kilometres west of Hébuterne. Here’s my father’s brilliantly vivid
account of a Tommy entering a Western Front trench system for the first time:
‘Each Company remained cohesive, but the general idea, with
enemy onlookers in mind, was to get lost visually.
Far away, we could
see active “sausage” balloons, with baskets housing observers(1) suspended beneath them.
I learnt that both sides now commonly used aeroplanes for observation purposes
too, so we had to take great care to avoid being spotted, because artillery
might open up and polish us off before we even reached the front line.
We spread out in
small groups among the village’s remaining walls, or parts of same, all
remaining within hailing distance of our officers. Our Company cooks
demonstrated their efficiency as usual, for within half an hour we were
enjoying a rich, tasty stew, a generous helping for each man. Obviously, they
had prepared our meal on the road as we marched. Then, when we had our meal,
they quietly cleaned the boilers, filled them with water and brewed tea, for
they soon gave us a welcome drink of that morale-improver. In addition, most of
us had little extras we’d bought earlier – chocolate, biscuits and the like.
The rumble, roar,
and occasional extra-loud crump of a shell exploding nearby, offered constant
reminders that some of us would have to pay for this present indulgence in
blood and pain ere long. With the sun sinking, we were warned to pump ship,
attend to all nature’s wants, and rest, in preparation for some trying hours of
movement in darkness across open country, and then in strange trenches.’
(1) Observation balloons: their use peaked in World War I because
artillery had been developed to fire at a range beyond sight of ground-level
spotters; the observers – attached to balloons full of inflammable hydrogen –
became the first aviators to use parachutes.
Soon they set off “across the plain”, as their
Sergeant puts it – to Sam’s bafflement, being a new boy. But “the plain” was
Tommy parlance for the stretch of land between Sailly and Hébuterne – as quoted
in Alan MacDonald’s wonderfully detailed account of this part of the Somme
battle, Pro Patria Mori: The 56th (1st
London) Division At Gommecourt (Iona Books)…
‘Our Company, walking in twos, must have formed a
considerable crocodile as we weaved around shell-holes and various vaguely
visible humps which mystified me until ear-splitting explosions and
skyward-leaping flame flashes, changing to brief red streaks and short-lived
shrieks issued from one of them – British gun batteries, of course. Someone
could have tipped me off – we were stumbling through such a concentration of
guns as I had never imagined.
And I had no idea
about the extent of this “plain”, but if these batteries were lodged to left
and right of us, not to mention fore and aft, for distances which one could
guess at as more and more guns opened up, then this was war on a scale to which
I was a complete stranger. Sometimes we had to walk in front of and quite close
to these artillery clusters and a fear assailed me that they might let fly at one
of these moments. If they were sighted on distant targets we would be at little
risk because the guns would point upwards, but if they were aiming to hit enemy
positions only a mile or so distant the barrels would be lowered and the shells
pass through us before exploding among the Germans…’
As they get closer, all the feelings of his
Gallipoli experience rise up in him again:
‘“Into single file now.” This order passed quietly from man
to man as we moved down a slight incline… and there I was once more in the
confinement of a trench. I could perhaps move to left or right if
self-preservation seemed to require it, but not far. After several months of
freedom from this wretched situation, the whole, hateful, trapped feeling
returned. Bursts of machine-gun fire, the crashes of bursting shells, sometimes
singly, often in numbers, the whining of bits and pieces – fragments of metal.
This was to be my life, night and day, for several weeks to come, or for longer
if anything in the nature of attack and counter-attack developed…
As we approached
the front, a stream of men passed us, going back the way we had come – happy,
because we were relieving their burden of tense preparedness with no let-up,
night or day. Always some part of the trench system was being damaged or
destroyed, some danger threatened. Mates maimed, blown apart. So, as they
threaded their way through our advancing line, they made quiet, little jests,
wished us good luck, gave useful hints occasionally about special features of
the terrain. Nice chaps going for a well-earned rest, bless‘em.’
The “nice chaps” they relieved – with Company A
on the right of the Gommecourt front line – were members of the 1/8th Middlesex
Regiment (details from the Kensingtons’ War Diary). As a novice in this
terrain, Sam soon found a mentor – but not a good one:
‘We now halted and took over a small stretch of the
front-line trench lately vacated. Nobody told me anything about procedure, no
doubt because they had all done this routine on other occasions. I asked no questions,
but chatted to an older man who sat on the firing step beside me. He had the
unusual name of Smith, worked in a coal mine, he said, though his speech didn’t
smack of Yorkshire or Wales or any northern area. On my other side sat a
youngster who said little.
Soon a man whom I
couldn’t see in the darkness detailed us off in pairs for lookout duty. This
meant that the first pair would get up on the firing step and keep watch on the
area between us and the German trenches for two hours and would rouse the next two
when it was time to change over. Meanwhile, the rest of us could sit and doze
if we wished. But, the enemy artillery being lively – salvos of shells roared
over and burst nearby – we knew some of them might land among us at any moment.
Sleep didn’t come easy.
The Germans also
sprayed the area with machine-gun bullets from time to time, frequently making
our lookout men duck down.
Smith said, “Come
with me if that stuff starts to get too close,” and this I did when necessary,
but with increasing misgivings; I perceived that if I repeatedly moved along to
the traverse – a deep trench section to our right – we would get no rest at all
and be quite unfit for duty when daylight came. In that traverse, when a shell
came near us Smith would say “Down!” and we crouched as low as possible. We
bobbed up and down constantly…
I thought about
the wretched life I’d often endured on that Turkish peninsula. But I was coming
to understand that warfare here could, at any moment, be more intense and
dangerous than at Gallipoli. However, I felt certain that this bobbing up and
down business would, in itself, soon be the death of me.so I avoided Smithy as
far as possible, did my stint of lookout duty, and dozed at every available
opportunity – I wanted to be of some use at “Stand-to” dawn alert, when with
fixed bayonets and loaded rifles we had to be keenly ready to repel any enemy
move. That uncertain light of early morning gave advantage to an attacker
provided he moved cautiously. Every man must remain intently watchful, speech
forbidden, save if an order must be given. When full daylight arrived, came the
order to “Stand down” and fags could be lit and the rum ration issued to “warm
the cockles” after a chilly night.
It was then I
heard for the first time the regular morning performance of a short, swarthy
Sergeant who had come, someone told me, from South America, just to win this
war for us. He would yell his “Stand down, men!”, then call out a greeting to
“You German bastards – I’ll be over after you in a minute and I’ll knock seven
different kinds of shit out of you!” This he repeated as he strolled along the
line, getting many a hollow laugh from men who’d heard it all before, but still
hoped he meant it.’
A curious lad by nature, with his observational
powers cranked up to 11 by constant mortal danger, Sam studied and learned Somme
variants on the sniper evasion methods he’d perfected and rather enjoyed at
Gallipoli:
‘The men standing on each firing step in the bays had to be
extremely careful; snipers looked out for such targets. But, armed with the
knowledge that, after spotting you, a sniper still had to take aim, you could
quickly raise your eye level to just above your earth parapet, then – if you
had not attracted a bullet already – keep still and rely on movement of your
eyes to complete your observations, then duck, stay ducked, and never bob up in
the same place twice. Of course, an unlucky machine-gun bullet might get you,
but the odds were against that.’
“Settling in” – if that could ever be the right
phrase in this context – Sam gets to know, at least by their work, some of the
people who keep the Battalion on an even keel despite it all:
‘As days and nights passed(2), I gradually got to know some of my fellows and to like
several of them. A young Sergeant I thought particularly admirable. Like his
name, Heather, he had something of the outdoors about his looks and manner. He
performed his duties with fairness and honesty and, since none could fault him,
all the best people liked him. When things got noisy and threatening, a sight
of his purposeful face could still a quivering tummy.
Somewhere in
trenches to the rear of the system, or perhaps in a hollow free from enemy
observation, toiled our Sergeant-Cook and his crew. Their labours were expected
to produce 1) in the first hour or so of daylight, sufficient large containers
of hot tea to give everybody a good helping, usually something over half a pint
2) a hot meal, usually stewed, roughly around the middle of the day – sometimes
with a slab of plum duff to follow 3) another issue of hot tea towards evening.
With morning and
evening tea, they also portered the usual solids, such as bread or biscuits,
jam or cheese. They carried the tea through the trenches in deep, rectangular,
iron containers supported on wood bars resting on the shoulders of two men, one
fore, one aft. Only the bigger outbursts of fighting would disturb these
excellent services, delaying or preventing them according to severity.
And our MO,
efficient and caring, attended to our toilet needs in the front line as
diligently as he did in the less hazardous areas further back. Each latrine up
there was of the seat-and-bucket type and housed in a deep, square hole
approached through a short trench. The Pioneer Section treated them all with
liberal quantities of chloride of lime and quickly repaired or replaced any
damaged by shells. You could always locate one by the disinfectant’s pungent
smell, but normally unaccompanied by the foul odours resulting from careless
sanitation.
This competent man
also took responsibility for the advanced First Aid Station at Battalion HQ in,
I think, the third line of the trench system. His trained stretcher-bearers
worked like beavers to collect wounded comrades and hurry them back to him and
his small staff of Red Cross male medics.
I give these and
other details so that you may know something of the organisation which
maintained a huge Army in the field for years under often terrible conditions
without its members becoming victims of some awful plague. Major battles would
disrupt these systems, allowing water-filled trenches, mud, and dead and
decaying bodies awaiting disposal to spread discomfort and despair, while a
flood of damaged men choked the channels rearwards – but the will to restore
order and decency would eventually, sometimes ever so slowly, always
perseveringly, overcome the worst of difficulties.’
(2) Sam’s (probably) first stint at the Front with the
Kensingtons ended on the night of May 28 when the 1/4th Londons relieved them
and the Companies moved back to billets in Hébuterne, Sailly and Bayencourt
(5.8 kilometres west of the trenches). During each spell in the trenches the
Companies of each Battalion would swap between front, support and reserve
trenches and they might be summoned for night-time work in No Man’s Land from
anywhere nearby, whether in the lines or not.
In the following support trench sojourn Sam
found time for a little recreation. Here he’s attempting to recapture the joy
in music he discovered when he learned how to play the piano via free lessons
from his Vicar-choirmaster-Scoutmaster Mr Frusher when he was about 12 – to mixed
effect…
‘[The support trench] ran through ran through what remained
of an orchard. The occasional tree, the fruit bushes, and wild brambles seemed
to cut us off from the war – just because we couldn’t see much of it…
I found a strand
of steel wire and, with music nostalgically in mind, fastened it to the butt of
my rifle, carried it over my adjustable back-site and tied it off on the
fore-site. Now by raising the back-site I put tension on the wire – and
plucking it produced an almost musical note. Using the wood covering the barrel
as a fretboard I could play a tune of sorts.
Always ambitious,
I pictured myself playing the thing cello-wise. So I procured a supple, thin
branch from a fruit tree growing by the trench-top and, using some cottons from
my “housewife” (the cloth mendings holder), I made a bow. I drew it across the
wire cello-wise, but without result. Then I recollected that one must treat a
violin bow with resin to make it grip on the string and vibrate it. I again
looked to the tree for help and, sure enough, I spotted some gummy exudations
on the trunk. Gathering a couple of pieces, I tried rubbing one against my
cotton bow strands. Some stickiness resulted, but the faint noise emitted by my
rifle-cello could not be called music. I decided I would have to play it banjo-wise
and, using a tooth from a comb as a plectrum, I could just manage a few
recognisable notes.’
Then, when the Battalion moved further back to
reserve trench – effectively the edge of Hébuterne village – he decided to give
his instrument another go:
‘After I settled in, having nothing special to do, I
bethought me of my musical rifle. Sitting beside a stairway leading down to the
cellar, I attached my length of wire to butt and fore-sight and plucked it to
produce the best semblance of a tune I could achieve. A scuffle on the steps
was followed by a shout: “What the hell’s going on up there?” An officer
emerged from below and I had to confess that I was torturing my rifle as well
as the ears of my neighbours. Quite truthfully, I assured the officer I had
been unaware the cellar was occupied.
More amused than
irritated, he asked me to demonstrate my method of using the gun as a
one-string guitar. Probably The Last Rose Of Summer(3)
had never sounded quite like that before, but he returned to his colleagues
below without putting me on a charge.’
(3) The Last Rose Of Summer began life in 1813 as a poem by
Thomas Moore (1779-1852), Irish “National Bard” and friend to Byron and
Shelley; it immediately acquired its best-known tune – probably the one
“played” by my father – composed by Moore’s regular collaborator Sir John
Stevenson, 1761-1833, although Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Britten all wrote or
arranged later variants; the lyric begins “’Tis
the last rose of summer/Left blooming alone/All her lovely companions/Are faded
and gone”.
However, as noted earlier, “reserve” trench
didn’t mean “non-combatant” and Sam was soon leading one of those night patrols
into No Man’s Land to dig advanced trenches again:
‘With us now quartered in the comparative luxury of part of
a house with part of a roof, our night work became more difficult and dangerous
– to mark our gratitude for favours received, perhaps.
Wearing light
equipment consisting of belt, shoulder straps, ammunition pouches and haversack
– worn on the back instead of at the side – with rifle carried in the right
hand and a pick or shovel in the left, we moved up the long communication
trench to the front, then straight “over the top” in a long line. Guides,
stationed out there already, led groups of us to positions where a short length
of advanced trench had to be dug as soon as possible.
Soon, all of us
were hard at work – and the noise we made was frightening. Only too well aware
that we must soon be heard and seen by Jerry, we picked and shovelled like
madmen, hoping that German observers sending reports of our activities back to
their HQ, and then senior officers deciding how to dispose of us… would all
take a long time.
Fortunately for
us, enemy reaction did prove slow and when, eventually, their wrath descended,
we squeezed down into the hollows we’d dug and found we did have a few
protective inches of earth above our precious bodies.
Machine-gun
bullets spattered around me and I marvelled that I should lie there, hear and see
them striking, yet remain untouched. But our semi-trenches afforded little
protection when light field guns joined in and their shattering whizz-bangs(4) filled the air with
noise and flying metal. One could only hug Mother Earth and wait for an order
to retire, which didn’t come.
I heard the
occasional muttered request for “Stretcher-bearers!” – brave fellows indeed,
themselves not immunised from injury or death by their labours of mercy.
Brilliant flickering Verey lights fired by the Germans revealed all movements;
when one hovered near you, you froze no matter in what posture. I always looked
down to conceal the whiteness of my face, though more in hope than conviction.
Later, after the
firing had died down, the order “Dig like hell!” was passed along. We complied
until, after a while, we reaped a further rich harvest of bullets and shell
which compelled our officer to order a retreat. We stood not upon the order of
our going, and one still had to find a gap in the barbed wire to reach our
frontline trench. But, having done that, one savoured the rich pleasure of
having survived a risky piece of work.’
(4) British soldiers nicknamed shells fired by the German 7.7cm
field gun “whizz-bangs” because they travelled faster than the speed of sound,
so recipients heard the “whizz” as they sliced through the air before they
heard the “bang” made by the gun firing them; this meant they offered no early
warning of their arrival, unlike larger shells from a more distant howitzer.
All
the best –
FSS
Next week: Somme Rewind 3 of 5: June, 1916 –panic in
No Man’s Land, how a dugout’s dug, Sam finds a lucky crucifix, a singalong
march away from the Front, the joy of
delousing, Nissen huts, proper beds – and rehearsing the Big Attack…
* 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.
