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Dear all
A hundred years ago this week… In
the days before Passchendaele began, heavy artillery battles raged in Flanders
(July 24 and 29), and the French had a successful time regaining lost ground
north of the Aisne (24) and then repelling German counterattacks (25-7) and a
further attack at Mont Haut, Champagne (26-7). In one of the war’s many
necessary organisational steps to recognise new weaponry, the British Army
founded the Tank Corps (28).
But
the most decisive action of the week saw the revived Romanian Army, supported
by Russian Divisions, follow up an artillery bombardment along a 36-kilometre
front at Marasti with an infantry onslaught which steadily drove the previously
omnipotent German/Austro-Hungarian invaders back 20 kilometres, the most rapid
rate of advance achieved in any 1917 battle (July 22-August 1; Romanian/Russian
casualties 4,879, German/Austro-Hungarians 9,600).
However,
on the Eastern Front, the Battle Of Galicia (July 19-29) continued to run
briskly against the Russian Army as Austrian and German forces retook Stanislau
and Tarnopol (24; now in Ukraine), advanced in the Carpathians (25), crossed
the Rover Sereth to take Kolomea (26), and reached the Russian frontier (28).
[Memoir background: my father, Lance Corporal 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 – and told him he could take a break from the fighting until he
was 19. He did so, 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… It was an interesting year all right – four months of
blizzards, a meningitis scare, special training in various northern locations –
but my father didn’t write enough about his eventual 13 months “off” to cover
1917 in weekly chunks (I can hardly blame him; writing his Memoir in the 1970s he wasn’t really thinking
about his son and editor’s self-publishing blog requirements come 2017). So, the blog broke away from
current narrative and, May 14-July 9, looked back
at his childhood and early teens – his formative years – under the title The Making Of
FootSoldierSam. Now, though, we’ve returned
to my father’s (approx.) 100 years-ago-this-week stories from summer 1917…]
FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
Last week, my father recalled the start of the Battalion’s (probably) July
route march and a terrible thunderstorm that broke over them when they camped
outside Tadcaster – his young/old-hand experience ensuring his tentmates
remained dry simply because he’d bought a ball of string and cunningly deployed
it to raise the edges of the canvas a crucial couple of inches.
Now he
continues the story of their wanderings with an extended stint to a location of
almost hotel-like comfort:
‘In fact, after my months of exposure to all sorts of
weather, particularly in the Middle East, I quite enjoyed this soldiering in
the homeland. I was aware that, during service on two Fronts, spells of
over-exertion on poor diets had done me no good. My skinny body and limbs
proved that. These months in England must build me up to better physical
condition**, so that when the time came, as it would, when I must once more
endure the front line, I should be the better able to cope.
Some days of
marching and nights of bivouacking terminated when we passed through the
entrance to a huge ducal estate***. There, according to a careful plan, we
erected the many Army bell tents which awaited us.
Each day,
supervised by trained officers, we had many jobs to do, all concerned with
building a camp complete with efficient arrangements for cooking, feeding,
ablutions, drainage and sanitation. Nothing must be wasted, we were told. We
even installed filters to recover fat from waste water. It was required for
explosives manufacture, along with all large bones – glycerine extracted became
an important part of a compound which would cause havoc among our enemies
(whereas I had thought of it as a sweet, sticky fluid which relieved sore
throats). Whatever the nature of the work to be done, its purpose was
explained.
Eventually, we’d
made the large camp as nearly perfect as possible. Then, the study and practice
of warlike skills filled many of our waking hours – though our activities bore
little resemblance to the training for trench warfare I had done at the base
camp near Rouen when we arrived there from Egypt. In France, the officers and
NCOs who operated the Battle Training Schools had all served at the Front, so
they confined their methods to showing the troops how best to tackle the enemy,
their slogan being “Kill! Kill! Kill!” But the so far home-based Division****
with whom I now served set great store by well-polished equipment and boots,
correct drilling and marching, and similar harmless pastimes.
They had, of
course, heard that a great war had been raging for three years, but many of
them must have hoped that it would not disturb the quiet, orderly existence
secured for them by good luck and a little influence. One Company Captain had
notices displayed summoning musicians to assemble in a marquee when the day’s
work was done, bringing their instruments. Soon after that we had a musical
Sunday afternoon, provided by a competent orchestra and several accomplished
singers, al fresco, on an improvised stage.
Our musical fame
thus established, soon all ranks were invited to a Sunday afternoon concert
held in the Duke’s riding school, a spacious and lofty building. Rows of chairs
and forms occupied most of the floor space and faced a small stage. In front of
this sat our orchestra, and to one side of them, almost facing us, the party
from the Duke’s mansion, headed by the Duchess. I recall the pleasure I felt,
sitting there in the front row and able to observe these people from a world
apart from mine. The music was nice enough, most of the singing very good, and
appreciative applause gave confidence to the hastily formed ensemble and their
conductor.
The elite clapped
heartily and beamed their smiles on the performers and on us in the audience as
well, not appearing stiff-necked and haughty as some of our cheap magazine
stories had led us to believe they might be.
Inevitably, the
sweet elegance of the occasion gave me a pang of regret that my brother was not
here to share my enjoyment*****. In such situations, I usually stifled
reflections on how I had taken advantage of recurring opportunities to prolong
this period of safety. I knew it must end ere long. One day I would be
savouring these advantages, pursuing my role – encouraged by my tentmates and
other acquaintances – of dry humourist and general “Pisstaker”******, when
suddenly my name would be called and that would be the end of this peaceful
existence.’
** However, “these months
in England” already numbered eight since he left the Somme and an interim cushy
number at the great British Army camp in Harfleur, near Le Havre – his physical
problems were clearly more deep-seated than could be dealt with by three square
(Army) meals a day, as will emerge in a forthcoming episode.
*** You may be able to put
me right on this, dear reader – I hope so – but I can’t find any “ducal”
estates in Yorkshire. The main stately-home possibilities owned by lesser noble
ranks at the time seem to be Harewood House (11 miles west of Tadcaster, their
march’s first destination), seat of the Lascelles family and a succession of
Earl Harewoods, and Castle Howard (26 miles northeast of Tadcaster), then seat
of the Howard Earls and, more recently, impassive star of the Brideshead
Revisited movie. My guess is the former, although I can find no positive
evidence for it. But the latter is pretty much eliminated by www.yorkpress.co.uk’s
noting that, in 1914, ‘When the Lord Lieutenant wanted to requisition Castle
Howard for his Divisional HQ, she [the
9th Countess] went through the roof. “I don't want them swarming about the
house and park,” Rosalind wrote. “Let them go to the Fevershams or the
Middletons or to Hovingham”’– so WW1 was all very well, but definitely not in
her backyard.
**** See Blog 131, January
8, 2017, for Sam’s strange account of the alleged/rumoured/maligned “Lost
Division” – whose entry into the battlefield seemed to be forever deferred – to
which his Essex Regiment Battalion, or at least some stray, under-age members,
had been attached in Harrogate.
***** Ted, aged 21,
remained somewhere on the Western Front.
****** My father earned this
nickname – hence the cap. P – on the Somme with the Kensingtons in the bitter
aftermath of his original Gallipoli-bonded 2/1st Royal Fusiliers being
disbanded by the Army. As he wrote: “with pleasant fellows in my platoon, on
the whole, and a new mood now upon me – occasioned by living among strangers –
I could behave in a relaxed manner, laugh without restraint at even the corniest
joke, and make a few cheeky comments about people around me (usually taken in
good part). The underlying bitterness remained in me, though, and stoked up the
fire of reckless humour which ruled out thoughts of a serious nature and
ensured that nobody would wish to attempt serious conversation with me – while
roughly the opposite of my style in the old Battalion, this resulted in a sort
of coarse popularity which pleased me. Consequently, I quickly earned for
myself a soubriquet I liked, to wit, The Pisstaker.” (See Blog 98, May 22,
2016, to read this story in context. And I can avouch that, for all his finer
qualities, he remained a sarcy so-and-so to the end!)
All
the best –
FSS
Next week: A Captain Sam detests startles him by
offering direct promotion from Lance Corporal to commissioned rank! What should
he do? Meanwhile, everybody gets a medical to check their readiness for a
return to the Front…
* 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.
