A young Lieutenant nearly gets Sam’s Signallers killed on a Saharan artillery range and gets a “rocket” from a Major-General…

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Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… at bloody Verdun the German Army made costly progress, entering Malancourt village (March 29) after being repulsed there the day before, and eventually forcing the French Army to evacuate (31). The French recovered Avocourt Redoubt (29), but lost part of Vaux village (April 1). To and back…

    A more active week of airship raids on Britain saw 48 killed in and around London (31) ­– but Zeppelin L15 brought down by gunfire near the Thames estuary – 22 killed in the North-East (April 1), and 13 killed on Scotland’s East Coast (2).

    The Russian Army continued its encouraging spring with Eastern Front successes against the Germans north of Bojan, Galicia (March 28), near Pinsk (30) and in the Liakhovichi region (April 2), both Belarus. And further south, their Trebizond Campaign (February 5-April 15) to take Armenia from the Ottomans proceeded with the crossing of the Baltachi Darassi river (27), victory in a battle at Kara Malachkan (31) and crossing the Upper Chorok river to take Ottoman fortifications (2).

    Meanwhile, in Egypt, the grand development was the 1st Anzac Corps’ departure for France, while the newly formed 2nd Anzac Corps acquired its first commander, General Alexander Godley.

    Big stuff, but unknown to the 200-odd 2/1st City Of London Battalion Royal Fusiliers comrades who’d come through Gallipoli and, along with maybe 50 reinforcements, encamped for a couple of months on the banks of the Nile and the edge of the Sahara at 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, lately converted from foot-slogging to horse wrangling), and their mates took more or less anything that didn’t involve getting shot at as a blessing. Speaking of which…

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week, my father enjoyed a package from home – his Ma’s fruitcake and a sprauncy new shirt – plus an entertaining train journey to Cairo on a day’s leave. Now he recalls a fine – and dangerous – mess nice, young Lieutenant Wickinson gets them into:

‘Lieutenant Wickinson liked to have a programme of work ready for each day and, presumably because our Sergeant was able to avoid working with us*, he occasionally asked me to go to his tent of an evening. We would sit and discuss progress and make plans. I enjoyed this unusual procedure, smoked his very nice cigarettes, and got to know this shy, young officer fairly well. I needed no telling that this relaxed relationship began as I entered his tent and ended when I left it. I can’t recall ever having discussed it with my mates and was probably more punctilious than they in behaving correctly when on parade.

     My heart almost bled for the young Lieutenant on one occasion when we had set up a chain of signal stations at half-mile intervals.

     Suddenly, gunfire broke the silence and shells shrieked overhead. Fear did things to my stomach. I had by now achieved freedom from the day-and-night tension one endured in Gallipoli, and this sudden artillery outburst shocked me and temporarily I thought war had spread to this part of Egypt.

     Then, as the explosions and shell-shrieks ceased, I saw a party of mounted officers heading towards us. Closer view of them revealed that several of them wore red bands round their caps and bits of red on epaulettes and tunic collars. A grey-moustached, red-faced senior officer yelled “Who’s in charge here?” and, as our Lieutenant stepped forward, the old boy yelled at him, “You bloody young fool, you’ve placed your men in line across an artillery range. You are endangering their lives and interfering with our Brigade training. I am Major General [So-And-So] and I’ll have you disciplined for this. Now clear off and take all your men with you.”

     Still, for the most part, our training went rather better than that. Our energetic Colonel quite rightly said we must be terribly out of touch with shooting. I think I can say that we all thoroughly approved of arrangements made for our firing practice.

     The desert was anything but flat, and the range comprised a fairly extensive hillside dotted with clearly numbered, empty, petrol cans. The instructors allotted each man a can. We followed load and fire orders which varied from taking careful, single shots to ten rounds rapid fire. Using then-new Mark VII ammo and the short rifle, I didn’t suffer so much from the kick as I had done with the old, long rifle**. At conclusion, we each handed in our empty cartridge cases, plus the remaining live ammunition and the total had to be equal to the number of bullets first issued.

     It was good sport, for who wouldn’t enjoy taking pot shots at a petrol can, even with stones, let alone a powerful rifle. We ended with a walk out to our cans to count the holes in them. Results were pretty good.’

* Because he spent most of his days at work on his oil paintings - don’t ask… but see Blog 88 March 13, 2016.

** Lee-Enfield supplied the main British Army rifle 1895-1926; bolt-action, ten .303 rounds in the magazine, loaded either a round at a time or in 5-round “chargers”; the First World War model was the SMLE MK III, price £3 15/-, introduced in 1907 along with the Pattern 1907 sword bayonet; however, training in Malta February-August, 1915, my father’s Battalion had been issued with the older, “long” version (30.2-inch barrel compared to 21.2-inch); redesigns simplified the Mk III during the war, for ease of manufacture more than usage, apparently; Lee-Enfield took its name from the designer of the bolt-action system, James Paris Lee, and the Royal Small Arms Factory in Enfield – adjacent to the district where my father grew up, Edmonton, North London.

All the best – FSS

Next week: Sam’s Fusiliers suffer torture by Welsh male voice choir, train like hell to persuade the powers-that-be to let the Gallipoli-bonded band stay together as a Battalion – and enjoy a desert day at the races...

Sam and mates discover the gentle art of “going missing” to escape the RSM’s tyranny – and realise the new CO’s regime has its good points. Such as getting paid…

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 British Red Cross

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

Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… the Battle Of Verdun, which of course nobody yet knew would come to be seen as the greatest and longest in all history, “progressed” via a week of German attacks at Bethincourt (March 14), Vaux (16) and Poivre Hill (19) – all repulsed, except that the first saw the capture of Côte (Hill) 265. In the standard historic timelines nothing else on the Western Front rates a mention bar a French advance at Saint-Souplet in Champagne (15) and an Allied bombing raid on Zeebrugge, Belgium (18). But deadly attrition continued…

    The Verdun effect had begun to spread to other areas though. On the Eastern Front, following a steady run of winter successes, the Russian Army launched the Lake Narach Offensive, in modern-day Belarus (March 18-30), hoping to distract German attention from Verdun – a typical WW1 battle of artillery and machine-guns saw the Russians gain 10 kilometres then lose them (conflicting casualty figures show up to 110,000 Russian, 40,000 German).

    Down on the Italy/Austro-Hungarian border, again urged on by the French, the Italian Army instigated the Fifth Battle Of The Isonzo (out of 12!) near Gorizia (March 9-15). It petered out because of bad weather with almost 2,000 casualties on each side.

    Much further south, and unrelated to Verdun, in East Africa, now Kenya, South African and British forces defeated the Germans at the Battle Of Kahe and pushed them west beyond Mount Kilimanjaro (March 18; 686 German casualties, 21 British/South African).

    Meanwhile, the 200-odd 2/1st City Of London Battalion Royal Fusiliers comrades who’d come through Gallipoli – plus maybe 50 reinforcements – proceeded with a rather strange period of R&R in a tented town at Beni Salama, on the banks of the Nile and the edge of the Sahara 30 miles north-west of Cairo. After that terrible campaign, it wasn’t such a bad life for my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London (still under-age at 17), his older brother Ted (19, lately converted from foot-slogging to horse wrangling), and their mates. Except that the Army dumped a new CO on them, replacing the Major they loved, and then…

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week, the Signallers got their comeuppance for the detested straight-from-London new CO calling them the “cream” of the Battalion. The puffed-up RSM who’d made a fool of himself in Gallipoli* got his revenge on them, and Sam in particular, by making them his dogsbodies, lumbered with every petty task he could think of. And Sam tried to do all the jobs himself to avoid the embarrassment and ill-will caused by passing them on to others:

‘Not even by detailing myself to telephone duty in [the RSM’s] Headquarters tent could I get him off my back. He would hand me the order or, if I’d written down the message myself from a verbal instruction over the phone, he would still have me supply the required men from my small group of Signallers. Well, if available…

     Something had to be done to end this victimisation, so when a gap appeared in the brailing** of our tent at the back, we enlarged it. The fabric was old and tender and the hole we’d improved on sometimes let in a draught, but we deemed occasional discomfort preferable to satisfying the unending demands of the unjust RSM.

     Thereafter, when we decided we’d done our share of the odd jobs for the day, we simply went missing. Before the man had completed his shouting the lads would be through that hole, racing through the lines of tents and on the far side of a ridge at the back of camp, where they would continue their siestas or meditations in peace and quiet. This would force the RSM to call on another junior Lance Jack for the required labour; although, on parade, the RSM was great at yelling orders, stamping about noisily, and saluting ostentatiously, he appeared to be almost afraid to give orders to older men.’

With this partial solution to the RSM problem in place, my father’s attention could turn again to the more engaging aspects of life by the Nile – eccentric characters, training in archaic Signals skills, and even a recognition that the usurper CO’s organisational ability did bring certain benefits to the men:

‘Our Signals Sergeant at that time lived strangely. What enabled him to arrange his personal comings and goings without reference to us and our work remained a mystery. Believe it or not, he had taken up oil painting, scenic and portraits.

     His pictures looked good to me. I’d never been able to achieve any kind of understanding with him, perhaps because he considered me too young. So I had the pleasure of his company only on rare occasions, moments when he perhaps felt that the war should sometimes be permitted to interfere with his hobby. All this sounds daft, so shall we assume that this quite brainy Sergeant performed duties about which nothing was known by his associates?

     Meanwhile, our new, young officer in charge of Signals, Lieutenant Wickinson, began to organise training schedules which soon occupied most of our waking hours and would eventually bring us up to a level of efficiency justifying, to some extent, the Colonel’s inclusion of the word “cream” in a sentence which also contained reference to ourselves.

     As opportunity offered, I had washed my uniform and underwear piece by piece. In the warm weather everything dried quickly so, although one spare pair of socks was my only item of clothing beyond what I wore, I never had to go about partly undressed for long. Whatever my appearance, at least I was clean.

     And soon, new kit and uniforms did finally arrive, thanks, we understood, to the Colonel’s influence in high places. With weekly pay parades restored – the basic enhanced by the refunding of “credit accumulated” – we now had money, almost wealth it seemed for a moment, and, with Lieutenant Wickinson keeping us fully occupied, our Signallers group no longer loitered at the RSM’s beck and call.

     The further we penetrated into the desert in the course of our exercises, the more hilly it became – ideal for visual signalling practice. Some days we would set up a chain of hilltop stations using heliographs, well-made instruments mounted on tripods. The simple, yet exact process of using them involved flashing Morse messages to a distant station by observing and controlling the positions relative to one another of two mirrors – often while you noted incoming messages at the same time. By means of a graded sight, your sending mirror had to be kept in a position yielding clear signals to the man at the receiving end. This work kept two men quite busy.

     I did find it difficult to assess the heliograph’s place in modern warfare, except perhaps in dealing with dissident tribes in desert areas. Flags might also have a role in those circumstances, and, at night, possibly the electric lamps. But, in the recent campaign, the only communications media we used were field telegraphs and phones – except that, sea to shore during the landings, flags and signal lamps still proved very quick (though even then, ship-to-ship wireless Morse signalling had come into its own).

     These activities once again restored interest to our lives after a period of heavy, manual labour, or equally exhausting efforts to avoid same. The Colonel with the hefty leather-clad calves did effect substantial changes in the lives of all ranks so, although our loyalty and sympathies remained firmly with the Major, we nonetheless found ourselves feeling and looking somewhat the better for the new regime.’

* See last week’s Blog 87, March 6, for a footnote detailing how the RSM’s various misdeeds led to notoriety and widespread scorn among the troops.

** Brailings: rope loops along the bottom of the tent canvas through which pegs were hammered to hold the sides of the tent to the ground.

All the best – FSS

Next week: Sam gets treats from home and makes his getaway from Beni Salama – though only on legitimate leave – accompanied by some lively entertainment from a magician and a pigeon…