For details of how to buy Sam’s full Memoir in paperback or e-book & excerpted Gallipoli episode mini-e-book & reader reviews see right-hand column
All proceeds to British Red Cross
Dear all
A hundred years ago this week… nothing
that’s much remembered occurred and yet WW1 filled seven days with fighting in
barely numerable locations… on the Western Front it hammered back and forth
around Ypres (February 14, 18, 20), and the French regained ground at Tahure,
Champagne (15).
In
the East, the Russians continued their successes against the German Army in
Dvinsk (14/15; Latvia) and in Bukovina (20; current Romania/Ukraine) and, a
long way south concluded their push to take Erzerum from the Turks (16,
campaign began January 10; the Caucasus), while pressing on towards Trebizond
on the Turkish Black Sea coast (Feb 5-April 15) and, more or less en route,
taking Mush and Aklat (18; Armenia, following the Turkish genocide of 1915).
The
Mediterranean saw a deal of confusing action with Austria bombing Italian
cities Milan, Treviglio, Bergamo and Monza (14) and occupying Berat (17;
Albania), while Montenegrin troops fleeing their Army followed the defeated
Serbs in landing on Corfu (16) and British forces occupied neutral Greece’s Chios
(17; Aegean island lately taken from Turkey) and the Bulgarian Army entered the
northern Greek mainland, occupying Xanthi (20).
A
clear win for British and French Allies in Cameroons, though, as the last
German fort there, at Mora, surrendered (18/19; the country had been part of
the German Empire since 1884).
Meanwhile,
the 200-odd 2/1st City Of London Battalion Royal Fusiliers comrades
who’d survived four months in Gallipoli without serious wound or illness, were
kept busy in their new Egyptian location 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 mates, and other British and Australian Battalions
who followed them got stuck into building their own tented town on the banks of
the Nile and the edge of the Sahara…
FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
Last week, unpaid for months (like his
comrades) and hankering for some tasty treat, Sam, with the “help” of his older
brother Ted, approached a group of local peasants with a view to flogging the
heavy wool Army underpants which seemed surplus to requirements in Egypt… that
was “help” in inverted commas because Ted’s main contribution to this al fresco
transaction was to lose patience with the Arab hagglers and lash out with his
fists.
Sam,
who later made his living as a market trader/barrow boy back home in Edmonton,
discovered the glimmering of that talent by nonetheless taking a couple of the
startled and bruised fellaheen aside
to do the deal for at least enough piastres to buy a tin of pears.
Now he
describes another substantial advance in the direction of achieving sanitary
living conditions in this remote spot:
‘… we had been busy during most of our waking hours,
erecting tents to create this huge camp. I considered our masterpiece a latrine
which in shape and size resembled a large bandstand, but without a roof.
First, we’d dug
out a large hole, say 15 foot deep. Into it we threw layers of quicklime,
shingle, straw and coarse sand. This arrangement, said the Royal Engineers
officer who designed the contraption, would assist in speedy dispersal of the
deposits which, he anticipated, large numbers of visitors would be eager to
contribute. The seating – good, stout wood with plank back-rests – ran around
the perimeter of this vast hole, facing outward.
Each morning all
seats were occupied, while a circle of waiting clients kept keen watch for
imminent vacancies. All this took place in full view of our camp and must have
excited some interest among passengers on the nearby railway.’
Of course, some might have thought this very
public toilet contrary to British habits of privacy, but settling into this
bare yet exotic location seemed easy to Sam and his pals the moment they
thought back a few weeks to their hungry, thirsty, roasting, freezing and terrifying
existence in Gallipoli. He writes:
‘Still no money and a very limited diet – though now
including dates, from which we often had to scrape annoying grains of sand. We
remembered, however, the trying conditions recently endured, and there were few
grumbles.
To sleep, I used
to make a hollow in the sand into which a hip could sink, then fold one blanket
double and, clad in just a vest, lie down with the other blanket wrapped around
me. Using my pack for a pillow, I slept in real comfort most nights. So
different, almost luxurious, compared with the Peninsula… I would recall one
trench in the reserve area where one could never stand upright during hours of
darkness because a number of Turkish fixed rifles targeted that position and
bullets thudded into the back of the trench at regular intervals… So a tent on
the edge of a desert was much to be preferred.
However, one night
a double tooth* gave me hell and I walked around the camp in awful agony. At
dawn, I dressed, told my mates what ailed me, and made my way to a distant tent
over which flew a Red Cross flag. There I found a Medical Corporal who, without
comment, sat me on a box. He got a grip on the bad tooth with his extractor
pliers and, with a knee in my back and a firm grip on my head, he pulled. Without
benefit of anaesthetic, the brief agony while he heaved proved memorable, but
the relief when he’d finished made it worthwhile.’
Here he turns to an unfamiliar awkwardness
creeping into his relationship with Ted, his brother and hero, whom Sam had followed
to the recruitment office in September, 1914, when they were both under age at
16 and 18:
‘My brother and his Transport mates finally rejoined us –
tough types mostly, who had never taken kindly to drill and only tentatively to
military discipline. They cared well for the animals entrusted to them: at that
time, a few wagon horses and ten or 12 officers’ mounts. Ted had sole charge of
a fine, black stallion, which – out of respect for a former lawless horseman,
or perhaps in sheer ignorance, and anyway quite bizarrely – had been dubbed
Black Bess. He groomed and rode this handsome animal with a skill he’d acquired
during those months working in the Qantara** horse lines.
Under the surface,
Ted and I remained as close as ever brothers could be, but now my one measly
stripe marked me as a conformer, I felt, where he and his merry mates were
freebooters. In other circumstances, perhaps, they would not have got away with
it, but they managed to prove that parades and such were not for the likes of
them. On the other hand, if heavy lifting or transporting jobs required doing,
they had the know-how and strength when others didn’t.
If an officer had
the authority – which probably depended on the cash – to acquire a mount, then
one of them would readily find time to act as the groom.’
* “Double tooth” means it has a double crown.
** Now officially Al
Qantarah El Sharqiyya, 160 kilometres northeast of Cairo in Ismailia; the
Battalion sent Ted there in September, 1915, after he’d been hauled off the
boat to Gallipoli for dental treatment because his front teeth had been punched
out in a fight.
All
the best –
FSS
Next week: A new Colonel
comes between the Battalion and the Major who’d stood with them through the
bullets and blizzards of Gallipoli – Sam and the lads don’t give him the best
of their love…
