Sam, near-starving, reflects on the coincidence between religiosity and the well-nourished look of POWs working in the camp cookhouse… Then German infantry rushing eastwards yell “Zu Österreich!” and war’s end really does seem nigh…

Sam’s Memoir– paperback and e-book – and the e-excerpts from it are now available in their third and final editions with added Endnotes and, in the Memoir, added documentation.

For details of how to buy Sam’s full Memoir(1) in paperback or e-book & excerpted Gallipoli & Somme& Arras 1918/POW etc mini-e-books & reader reviews see right-hand column

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Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… Armistice was the word on the politicians’ lips even if plenty of soldiers had yet to feel the benefit.

    First, just about, Turkey and the Allies signed up for a ceasefire at Mudros on the Greek island of Lemnos (October 30). Then the Austria-Hungary Empire struck two Armistice deals on the same day (November 3), with Italy and with the Allies. At more or less the same time, the Allies agreed to Germany’s proposal that there would be an Amnesty based on the terms advocated by US President Woodrow Wilson – but no next-day peace occurred in that case. Well, it was often more complicated than that.

    And on the Western Front, the French-American Meuse Argonne Offensive (September 26-November 11) proceeded with heavy fighting around Verly on the Oise and Grand Pre, northwest of Verdun (28); then after the French crossed the Aisne they won the one-day Battle Of Chesne (November 1; 45 miles northwest of Verdun), while the Americans took Buzancy (2; 37 miles west of Reims). Due north near the Belgian border, British and Canadian troops recovered Valenciennes.

    Germany was further undermined by a sequence of naval mutinies beginning at Wilhelmshaven (October 28) and spreading rapidly to Kiel and to unionised merchant seamen.

    Down in Italy, the Battle Of Vittorio Veneto (October 24-November 4), saw the Italian Army, with Allied support, complete driving the Austrian occupiers north from the Piave and east from Monte Grappa – their cavalry (and cyclists!) entered Vittorio Veneto itself (October 29) and an amphibious force took back Trieste (November 3) on their Armistice Day… before pressing on regardless into the Tyrol. The battle’s casualties totalled 40,378 Allied troops, 80,000 Austrian plus 448,000 taken POW.

    The pattern continued in almost every theatre: the Italians pushed on in Albania; the Croats took Fiume from Hungary via surrender (October 30); the Serbs recovered Belgrade (November 1; lost to Austria on October 9, 1915); British troops won the Battle Of Sharqat, Mesopotamia, forcing the surrender of the Turkish Army on the Tigris (October 28-30).

     An oddity occurred in Africa where the itinerant German force on the run from German East Africa entered Zimbabwe and attacked Fife (November 1).

    Further, amid all the political manouvering in Europe, Poland and Ukraine found reason to declare war on one another.

[Memoir background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London, 16-year-old underage volunteer in September, 1914, fought at Gallipoli with the 2/1st Royal Fusiliers (Blogs September 20, 2015, to January 3, 2016), then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons (Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)… until officialdom spotted his real age – 18, legally too young for the battlefield. So they told him he could take a break from the fighting until he turned 19. He accepted, though with an enduring sense of guilt. December, 1916, saw him posted to Harrogate, Yorkshire, and re-allocated to the Essex Regiment 2/7th Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). During this interlude he suffered various illnesses while recovering from trench warfare’s privations (he spent his 19th birthday, July 6, 1917, in a Sheffield hospital). That summer, his Company Officer offered him training for a commission, but Sam detested ordering men around so he refused; he may have requested his subsequent “reversion” to Private, or perhaps it was a “punishment”, I don’t know. In December, probably, solo, he returned to France and dogsbodied for Brigade HQ in Arras and at the nearby Front until, in mid-March, he ran into his own Essex Battalion; they moved into the trenches near Fampoux, about six miles east of Arras… just in time for the German Spring Offensive. A last stand by the Battalion on March 28 left 80 alive and “fit” out of the 520 who started the day – the 440 in between being dead, wounded or, like Sam, “missing” and, in his case, a POW. For three to four months he wandered occupied France in randomly-assembled half-starved POW groups, until a train took his latest band down to a rural area between the Rhine and the Black Forest near a village called Hügelheim. There they settled into a slightly less filthy camp for the summer, tending sick German war horses, before moving on yet again, westwards to a village in Lorraine… ]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Late October/early November, 1918, occupied Lorraine: my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe, now seven months a slowly starving POW, of late in an improvised “camp” which is actually a village hall, is observing some odd goings-on in the apparent closing weeks of the war – German guards easing off and being quite nice; a return to formal morning parades which both POWs and their captors seem to appreciate in terms of dignity restoration; encounters with newish English prisoners, conscripts from Birmingham, who ask Sam about “his war” then won’t believe him when he says he was at Gallipoli and the Somme…

     Now he observes a new religiosity running through some of his fellow prisoners and ponders its significance:

‘I only had to cope with the Brummies at night-time, but one of them stands out in memory because of his habit of kneeling on the floor by his bunk and praying for half a minute or so before turning in. He had managed to get himself employed in the cookhouse, stewing up the horse and veg and coffee substitute. Naturally, the Germans took any meat in the boiler and dished out the dregs to us, but judged by this devout son of Jesus’s well-fed appearance, he also had a dip into the fleshpots before we got our meatless portions.

     It reminded me that, in Malta(2), I had walked behind one of the Roman Catholic priests and been struck by the fatness of his neck and the immensity of his behind – whereas his skinny, scantily clothed parishioners often went barefoot. No doubt, like the priest, our mate needed extra nourishment to maintain his ability to kneel in the presence of so many sinners. Nay, I now remember he gave us even better value, for he read aloud from the Good Book before getting down to the silent prayer. I do not ridicule religious beliefs or observances(3), but feel they should be accompanied by Christ-like living. Too often the zealot has an undue regard for Number One.

     One Sunday afternoon, as I loitered optimistically by the barbed wire(4), I heard singing coming from the hall and sought the source of this unusual sound. Inside I found another producer of our superb stews(5) – his face and figure full, his voice strong, his manner confident – standing on a chair and holding forth about the virtues of the good life and humility and accepting hard times cheerfully.

     The preacher chose a repertoire of popular hymns which even the least religious would have learned at school, and one had to admit the singsong served as a tonic to the men. Actually, just raising their voices in song after all the quiet and subdued, hungry and well-nigh hopeless weeks or months since their capture could count as a creditable achievement by the cookhouse evangelist; his chapel friends would do him due honour when he rejoined them after hostilities ceased. Meanwhile, he had eased himself into the best available position to survive present, difficult conditions.

At one of the now regular morning line-ups, prisoners and guards alike were startled by the clatter of galloping horses, the rattle of metal, the clash of wheels on bumpy road, and the roar of lorry engines – a medley of all types of artillery and ancillary units on the move. Finally, some cars carrying German officers appeared, the whole caboodle heading away from the direction in which, we knew, lay the battlefield.

     “Zu Österreich!”(6) and other shouts came from the rankers as they rushed past; and such was the speed of their going that the considerable column passed out of sight before our bosses could gather the full significance of the swift departure.

     Our guesses came thick and fast until all of us shared the certainty that the enemy was cracking up. Only a matter of time, we knew. The officer in charge of us clinched our belief that the worst war ever was nearing its end by dismissing us without allotting any toil for the day.

     Assembling in the village hall(7) to discuss matters, we shared our elation and developing joy. Our feelings found some outlet in singing the marching songs we’d not dared to indulge till then, because bayonet point or boot would have silenced us. Only one Posten(8) tried to stop us – one of the old-time Prussians who regarded a prisoner as inferior and to be kept that way by all means available – but we disregarded his efforts and he gave up the attempt.

     This martinet, who wore a look of undying anger, cultivated a Kaiser Wilhelm moustache, the ends pointed upwards at an angle of 90 degrees to the transverse portions. Always strictly on duty, he never allowed a smile to sully his face. On every occasion when it had been my misfortune to be accompanied by his nibs on marches to places of work, he had managed to create an atmosphere of oppressive misery, pushing a Gefangene(9) here, prodding another with his rifle butt there, unfailingly turning a sunny day into one overhung with gloom. More of this haybag(10) later.’

(2) Sam trained in Malta with his first Battalion, the 2/1 Royal Fusiliers, February-August, 1915, until they sailed for Egypt, then Suvla Bay, Gallipoli.

(3) My father remained a strong non-denominational believer until his death in 1987, aged 88.

(4)“Optimistically”? He hoped the still very French villagers (despite German occupation since the Franco-Prussian War concluded in 1871) might proffer a word of news or even some morsel of food.

(5) Sarcasm, in case you wondered.

(6)  “Zu Österreich!”: “To Austria!”

(7) The village hall, surrounded by barbed wire, had become their billet/POW camp.

(8) Posten: means “functionary”, but “guard” here.

(9) Gefangene: prisoner.

(10) Hay bag: one word or two, do people still use this as a general insult? It was quite common even through to my childhood in the 1950s. I can’t find the origin anywhere i.e. why it should have seen service as non-specific abuse on a par with, say, pillock or bugger.

All the best– FSS

Next week: Sam contemplates “freedom” – with “armed guards still lounging around outside the wire”! But, while wondering what next, the POWs sing their way through the night… and, thinking practically once more, Sam escapes temporarily to forage for food to share with Wally and George… 

(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote Nobody Of Any Importance, a Memoirof his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.

September, 1918: POW Sam runs into more surprising kindness – this time from a German soldier and his girlfriend. Over hard work and shared spuds he finds a good pal in a lad called Wally…

For details of how to buy Sam’s full Memoir(1) in paperback or e-book & excerpted Gallipoli & Somme episode & Arras 1918/POW etc mini-e-books & reader reviews see right-hand column

All proceeds to the British Red Cross

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

Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… The Battles Of The Hindenburg Line (September 12-October 12) began with the British, supported by New Zealanders, coming down off high ground to attack and take Havrincourt (September 12-16; Aisne department, southeast of Cambrai) and the Americans leading the Battle Of St Mihiel (12-13; Meuse department, 22 miles south of Verdun) under General Pershing, supported by French tanks and 1,500 Allied aircraft – catching German troops already on the retreat they took 15,000 prisoners in two days before pulling up short of their initial objective, Metz, as Pershing needed to put his force at the disposal of a French attack further north.

    The French had already won the Battle Of Savy-Dallon (September 10; Aisne department), approaching the Hindenburg Line near St Quentin as they took Hinacourt, Travecy and Savy, and then advanced again via the Battle Of Vauxaillon (14).

    No surprise then that, backstage, Austria-Hungary wrote to President Wilson (September 15) seeking an “unofficial” peace conference – whatever that might have been, the President rejected it the following day – and the German Government made a peace offer to Belgium (15) just as the Belgian Army was advancing strongly around Ypres.

    Action continued on the periphery of the European conflict. Way up north in the Murman region of Russia around the Barents Sea, Allied forces began an advance after American troops arrived in Archangel (September 11). Down in Azerbaijan, the confusing battle for Baku saw a British evacuation when an attempted collaboration with the Armenian defenders against the Turks failed. And in Serbia – territory now in Macedonia – combined Serbian, French and Greek regiments initiated the Battle Of Dobro Pole (September 15-18) against the occupying Bulgars.

[Memoir background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London,16-year-old underage volunteer in September, 1914, fought at Gallipoli with the 2/1st Royal Fusiliers (Blogs September 20, 2015, to January 3, 2016), then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons (Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)… untilofficialdom spotted his real age – 18, legally too young for the battlefield. So they told him he could take a break from the fighting until he turned 19. He accepted, though with an enduring sense of guilt. December, 1916, saw him posted to Harrogate, Yorkshire, and re-allocated to the Essex Regiment 2/7th Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). He passed many weeks in various hospitals because of a meningitis scare, German Measles, and recovery from the effects of trench warfare’s privations (he spent his 19th birthday, July 6, 1917, in a Sheffield hospital). During that summer, his Company Officer offered him the chance to train for a commission, but Sam detested ordering men around so he refused; he may have requested his subsequent “reversion” to Private, or perhaps it was a “punishment”, I don’t know. In December, probably, he returned to France, unattached to any specific Battalion pro tem, and dogsbodied for Brigade HQ in Arras and at the Front. In mid-March he ran into his own Essex Battalion; they moved into the trenches near Fampoux, about six miles east of Arras… just in time for the opening artillery bombardment of the German Spring Offensive and a last stand by the Battalion on March 28 which left 80 alive and “fit” out of the 520 who started the day – the 440 in between being dead, wounded or, like Sam, “missing” and, in his case, a POW. Then, for three or four months he wandered occupied France in randomly-assembled half-starved POW groups, until a train took his latest band down to a rural area between the Rhine and the Black Forest near a village called Hügelheim where they settled into a slightly less uncomfortable/filthy camp for the summer, mainly working on sick and wounded German war horses.]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

August/September, 1918: my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe, now 20 years old and five months a slowly starving POW, is on a run of (relative) good fortune – all food-connected stories, naturally. First it was the tubby Posten (guard) buying him a Gasthaus lunch, then a few days’ hard work in a vineyard rewarded by stew and cream cheese and even wine, and now this week a further encounter with the kindness of the enemy… 

    (By the way, if my father’s food obsession seems trivial in the light of the historic events noted in the “hundred years ago this week” section of the blog, please consider that a) he hadn’t a clue what was going on at the Front and b) hunger concentrates the mind wonderfully.)

‘However, after only three days, we were all sent off on different jobs. Grievously disappointed, I found some compensation because, in a group of 10 or so, I was taken into the nearby town of Müllheim-in-Baden(2), and thence to a big farm on the outskirts. Our job was to store away a recently cut crop of hay on the second floor of a large barn. In good dry condition, the hay proved easy to handle. Like all well-planned barns – I remembered from boyhood camping days(3) – it had an open area in the middle with two spacious floors at each end and we forked the hay from ground to first floor, then up again to the top floor.

    I had no experience with a pitchfork, but had the good luck to be paired with my friend Wally. A country boy, height about 66 inches, broad of shoulder and strong of limb with admirable stamina from his former open-air life and good feeding, he had withstood the privations of these months better than most of us. And he soon showed me the knack of driving the fork in with a twist, which secured a good load, then using the handle as a lever to lift the weight in one deft movement, making easy work of it even to a weakling like me.

    Awaiting another load from the fields, we had a break. We’d been working on the top deck of the barn, and when I explored I found a small door at the back. Carefully opening it, I saw down below a narrow lane. I thought what you have just thought – about possible escape. But where to? Food? And so on… Meanwhile, I scrambled out anyway, finding grips in gaps in the woodwork and finally landing in grass and weeds…

    And there I was, alone in the lane. But only for a moment. Coming towards me were a girl and a young soldier – and that, it appeared, would be the end of my brief freedom.

    They came close, both smiled. No screams or cries of alarm. So, nothing unusual about finding a British prisoner unguarded and alone, it seemed. “Ich arbeit darein,”(4) I said and pointed hopefully at the barn. They talked a while and he said, “Bleiben sie da”. All smiles, so I trusted them completely and waited, perhaps for 20 minutes. My mate Wally’s head appeared above and I gave him a reassuring nod and grin; I felt sure he would alert me if necessary. When my young friends reappeared the soldier carried a pail which he offered to me – nearly full of hot potatoes boiled in their jackets.

    Again, a kindly girl had risked possible arrest to help an enemy prisoner. The lad had taken an even greater risk, being in the Army. I packed the spuds into my under-tunic sack and became fuller of figure and even fuller of gratitude to these lovely, young people.

    War… to hell with it — this lad who seemed so much younger than me, would probably be in the slaughter shambles on the Western Front any day now, and what might happen to his dear sister? (I had understood one word among the several he said to me, “Schwester”.)

    Sincere thanks were all I could offer. As they disappeared round a bend in the lane, I wished to heaven I could have gone with them.

    A soft whistle from me brought Wally to the door above. To help me back up, he lowered his pitchfork and lay down on the deck up there, holding it, while I hauled myself up part of the way, then I completed the rest of the climb unaided.

    We two then ate spuds until, as they say, fit to bust.’

(2) Müllheim: in Baden-Württemberg, 2.3 miles (3.7 kilometres) south of Hügelheim (and their POW camp/horse hospital), between the Black Forest and the Rhine.

(3) With the Edmonton Boy Scouts in Epping Forest or some other tract of (then) nearby countryside.

(4) “Ich arbeit darein”: “I work in there”. Then“Bleiben sie da”: “Stay there”.

All the best– FSS

Next week: Sam establishes “a sort of family” with POWs Wally and George as they agree to share everything – and he scores more spuds for the partnership with the help of friendly Soldaten, full of empathy for their fellow front-liners, even as enemy prisoners…

(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote Nobody Of Any Importance, a Memoirof his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.

September, 1918: Sam and starving POW pals find blessed relief through working in a vineyard… where the boss seems to be American and the main customer for the products of their (forced) labour is British!?

For details of how to buy Sam’s full Memoir(1) in paperback or e-book & excerpted Gallipoli & Somme episode & Arras 1918/POW etc mini-e-books & reader reviews see right-hand column

All proceeds to the British Red Cross

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

Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… A cluster of battles in the Amiens Offensive (August 21-September 3) phase of the Allies’ conclusive summer push reached their official conclusions (although fighting continued between set pieces, of course). 

    The Allies shared their successes all around. The New Zealanders earned most of the credit for the Second Battle Of Bapaume (August 21-September 3), concluded when they saw German troops out of positions overlooking Haplincourt (September 2), then regrouped. Australians won the Battle Of San Quentin, taking Sailly-Sallisel, St Pierre-Vaast Wood and Péronne (1-2; 3,000 casualties), in what one British General described as “the greatest military achievement of the war”. The British led the Second Battles Of Arras, occupying Lens as the German Army retreated (3). Finally, the Canadians fronted the Battle Of Drocourt-Quéant (2-3), seizing the western end of the Hindenburg Line to which the Germans had initially retreated (the launch pad for the Spring Offensive six months earlier), before Ludendorff decided to make the Canal du Nord their new defensive line (it runs from Pont-l’Éveque, Oise department, to Arleux, Nord department).

    Meanwhile, the French, with American support, pushed forward north of Soisson (September 2-7; 50 miles south of St Quentin), crossing the Somme Canal to take Ham, Pithon and Dury (6-7; Somme and Aisne departments).

    Around Russia, the Battle Of Baku (August 26-September 14; Azerbaijan) stalled as Ottoman forces gathered to attack the forces of the Centrocaspian Dictatorship, abetted by the 1000-man British “Dunsterforce”. Over in Murmansk, Italian troops joined the Anglo-French Allied Expeditionary Force (2; 1200 miles north of Moscow) and at Bobzerskaya (4) the Allied troops who’d entered Archangel (765 miles north of Moscow) in early August defeated a German-led Russian force. A little more remotely, Japanese soldiers, who’d lately joined the British and Czechs in Pacific Siberia, occupied Khabarovsk (5; 5210 miles east of Moscow).

[Memoir background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London,16-year-old underage volunteer in September, 1914, fought at Gallipoli with the 2/1st Royal Fusiliers (Blogs September 20, 2015, to January 3, 2016), then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons (Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)… untilofficialdom spotted his real age – 18, legally too young for the battlefield. So they told him he could take a break from the fighting until he turned 19. He accepted, though with an enduring sense of guilt. December, 1916, saw him posted to Harrogate, Yorkshire, and re-allocated to the Essex Regiment 2/7th Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). He passed many weeks in various hospitals because of a meningitis scare, German Measles, and recovery from the effects of trench warfare’s privations (he spent his 19th birthday, July 6, 1917, in a Sheffield hospital). During that summer, his Company Officer offered him the chance to train for a commission, but Sam detested ordering men around so he refused; he may have requested his subsequent “reversion” to Private, or perhaps it was a “punishment”, I don’t know. In December, probably, he returned to France, unattached to any specific Battalion pro tem, and dogsbodied for Brigade HQ in Arras and at the Front. In mid-March he ran into his own Essex Battalion; they moved into the trenches near Fampoux, about six miles east of Arras… just in time for the opening artillery bombardment of the German Spring Offensive and a last stand by the Battalion on March 28 which left 80 alive and “fit” out of the 520 who started the day – the 440 in between being dead, wounded or, like Sam, “missing” and, in his case, a POW. Then, for three or four months he wandered occupied France in randomly-assembled half-starved POW groups, until a train took his latest band down to a rural area between the Rhine and the Black Forest near a village called Hügelheim where they settled into a slightly less uncomfortable/filthy camp for the summer, mainly working on sick and wounded German war horses.]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

My father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe, now 20 years old and five months a slowly starving POW, has lately had a bit of luck with less grinding work and the guards going easy on the brutality – last week a friendly Posten actually bought him a pub lunch. The unexpected trend continues now as he moves on to another new workplace:

‘I didn’t know it, but that [see last week’s blog re a day taking horses from one village to another via that Gasthaus] was to be my last day of work in Hügelheim. Next came a three-day stint of hoeing in a vineyard. How I wished it could have been much longer…

    They marched about a dozen of us up into the hills until we came to the entrance to a farm. We were handed hoes and led across fields to a vast area of rows of vines. Then our guards handed us over to a man who, although wearing military uniform, left most of his tunic buttons undone, wore his cap sort of sideways, and addressed us in fluent American. Apparently the foreman, he showed one man how he wished the work to be done while the rest of us watched and learned. When his demonstrator had done about three yards, our boss set the next man on to the row to his right, and then the next, and the next, and so on, until we were all at it, forming a diagonal line across the vineyard.

    The Yankee took the lane at the head of the operation himself. We all had to keep pace with him, preserving the diagonal line. If anyone slacked, he yelled at him in a voice which put fear into the culprit, so the weakest of us still slaved as if his life depended on it – as maybe it did. You’ve got to work under such a gaffer to know real fear; the rasping voice, the promises of agony by pitchfork, boot, or battery, the scowls convincing one of serious intent behind the threats.

    Of course, put it like that and I realise I’m not portraying a good place to work; but at mid-morning they called us all to the end of the field; we dropped our hoes, followed the Yankee and sat near a hedge, while a girl handed out pieces of black bread bearing dabs of cream cheese along with bottles of white wine – each bottle to be shared by two men. Luxurious feeding, and I could now appreciate that, in return for such generosity, our Yankee German felt entitled to extract the maximum amount of work from us because they were treating us as they would their own men.

    After some months of enforced abstinence, the wine had an exhilarating effect on me. I resumed work light of head and heart, wandering ahead of the gang, I purposely took the position in the row next to the gaffer. I wanted to know more about him and the vinery. Backs bent, he and we set to with a will; I felt no end of a fellow as the alcohol-laden blood got at my brain and I kept up with the boss without pausing, as I’d had to do earlier.

    When he straightened up for a short rest, I did likewise and asked him where he had learned his American. He’d lived in the States for some years, he said, but, when the war started, he had been on a homeland visit and was called to serve in the Army before he could return to the USA. When next he paused, he told me that an English-based firm named Margetts(2) owned the farm and vineyard – jams and preserves their main lines. I remember hoping that, if I survived, I might sample Margetts jam at the family table back home and tell them about the kindness of the company’s German employees.

    We’d started work early, of course, and at Mittag, as the gaffer called midday even when talking to us in English, we were actually taken into the farm kitchen, which served as a small canteen. The Yankee foreman’s family sat us at long tables and gave us large basins of almost black stew – on the surface floated blobs of cream! I concluded that the stew consisted of blood sausage with potatoes and swedes. Bread to mop up completed a fine meal and we returned to our toil in good spirits. The whole experience did me a lot of good.

    Work, when resumed for the afternoon, still had to be done correctly and without pause. Our Yankee watched us over his shoulder and now a bearded civilian constantly scrutinised us too. He moved from row to row between the vines, checking that our hoeing was sufficiently deep and that we laid uprooted weeds on the surface (so the sun would dry and kill them).

    Back-breaking work, especially for weakened men, but I felt – and I was sure that most of the men did too – that, if only we could remain in this job and consume the kind of food we’d had this day, strength would return and our work would better satisfy the good farm folk. It seemed so important, I remember, that their humane treatment of enemy prisoners would be paid for in the only currency we could offer – good work.’

(2) According to http://ow.ly/pzvY30kUrrd Margetts was based in Dalston, London, from 1869, its founder James Margetts of Hackney. I don’t know the ins and outs, financial and otherwise, of a British firm operating in Germany during the war. Margetts is now part of Metrow Foods, Leigh-on-Sea, Essex.

All the best– FSS

Next week: Sam runs into more surprising kindness – from a German soldier and his girlfriend; over hard work and shared spuds he finds a good pal in a lad called Wally…

(1) 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.

Sam and his latest travelling band of British POWs take a walk through the Hindenburg Line… then their hard labour resumes – building a railway. Which leads to the hair-raising story of how a pink mushroom saved Sam’s life…

For details of how to buy Sam’s full Memoir(1) in paperback or e-book & excerpted Gallipoli & Somme episode & Arras 1918/POW etc mini-e-books & reader reviews see right-hand column

All proceeds to the British Red Cross

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

Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… After a hectic period during the previous seven days with the Central Powers aggressive on several Fronts, now the action subsided again, temporarily of course. 

    On the Western Front, while the Americans held the line in the lengthy Battle Of Belleau Wood (June 1-26; near the Marne), German attacks were repulsed by the French and British around Reims from Sillery to Trigny (18) and at Bligny (22), while the British advanced a little southwest of Meteren on the Lys in Nord-Pas-De-Calais department (23).

    Down in Italy, the Second Battle Of The Piave (June 15-24) saw the Italian Army hit back against the initial Austro-Hungarian onslaught on a very long front from north of Venice to the Asiago Plateau by taking Razea Pizzo and the heights of Sasso Asiago, gaining ground in the Grappa region and turning back the invader’s attempts to cross the Piave between Sant’Andrea and Fossalta (17), then occupying Capo Sile (18; just north of Venice). As the Austro-Hungarian push faltered, the French took mounts Betigo and Pennar on the Plateau, and the Italians mount Costalunga (19). The Austro-Hungarians called off their attack on the 20th and over the next few days the Italians regained all the ground they’d conceded (casualties 87,181 Italian with some British and French, 118,000 Austro-Hungarian). General Foch, Allied Commander-in-Chief in France urged the Italians to press on, but their General Diaz refused because his forces were too thinly spread – proven a good decision as, regardless, the Austro-Hungarian Army (and Empire) soon went into a tailspin of decline exacerbated by food riots back in Vienna.

    Aside from that, in the interesting aftermath of the Russian defeat and Brest-Litovsk treaty with the Central Powers, the Ottomans continued their advance in northern Persia and beyond – naturally with an eye on annexing some oil, but also with a degree of caution because their German allies were looking in the same direction. Still, they occupied Dilman in Azerbaijan, defeating the Armenian defenders (18).

[Memoirbackground: 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)… untilofficialdom spotted his real age – 18, legally too young for the battlefield. So they told him he could take a break from the fighting until he turned 19. He accepted, 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.An interesting year ensued – many weeks of it passed in various northern hospitals because of a meningitis scare, German Measles, and recovery from the lurking effects of trench warfare’s privations (he spent his 19th birthday, July 6, 1917, at Wharncliffe War Hospital, Sheffield). During that summer, his Company Officer told him he’d been offered the chance to train for a commission, but Sam detested ordering men around so he refused; either this defiance brought about his subsequent “reversion” to Private, or he actually requested it, given his feelings on the subject of rank. Come November/December, 1917, he enjoyed the final home leave of his military career – and assured his family of his firm conviction that he would survive. In December/January, he returned to France, unattached to any specific Battalion pro tem, and knocked about Brigade HQ in Arras, dogsbodying where he could – including the front line, just a few miles away. In mid-March he found his own Essex Battalion; they moved into the trenches near Fampoux, about six miles east of Arras, on March 19… just in time for the opening artillery bombardment of the German Spring Offensive and a last stand by the Battalion on March 28 which left 80 alive and OK out of the 520 who started the day – the 440 in between being dead, wounded or, like Sam, “missing” and, in his case, a POW.]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week, my father, Sam Sutcliffe, taken prisoner outside Arras at the tail-end of the German Spring Offensive and then part of randomly-assembled bands of POWs – wandering from Denain to Marchiennes to Sancourt, then lately, to Bapaume – had a somewhat encouraging time as he and his comrades helped fellow front-line soldiers, the wounded patients at a German field hospital. 

    Incoming “friendly” shells and bombers suggested they were quite close to advancing Allied forces, which perked them up. Then, a German newspaper brought Sam down to earth again as he read about the enemy’s successes in the battlefield and the peculiarly alarming fact that a long-range gun was bombarding Paris – “it became difficult to maintain faith in eventual victory,” he wrote.

    But soon the POWs resumed their travels – onward to a place where, in a strange incident, Sam’s aching hunger probably saved his life…

‘Soon, another move. The Germans put some of us on a train and, after a while, we alighted at an unidentifiable spot where we were quartered in a couple of huts. So well remembered, this place – especially because the evening stew had occasional chunks of meat among the stewed root vegetables; tough meat, undoubtedly horseflesh, but ranking as a luxury. And it meant the daybreak ersatz coffee with black bread could all be consumed as one meal now because we knew our bellies would be filled again later – until then most of us had tried to save a thin slice of the morning bread to avoid that horrible empty feeling throughout the night.

     The first day there provided another surprise, for the guards did not accompany us when we set off to work. Instead, alongside us walked several Germans armed with revolvers, not rifles, and wearing uniforms of a superior cut and caps with shiny black peaks and red-and-gold bands round the crown. Their chief wandered happily here and there around and among us.

     Presently, we came to an area where massive barbed-wire defences stretched right and left as far as the eye could see. They led us through a wide gap and we marched on, the barbed wire ranged on either side of us. Its great depth amazed me. I’d seen nothing so vast as this before – and the word passed quietly amongst us: “This must be the Hindenburg Line(2)”.

     The chief amused himself by shooting at the wood stakes securing the wire, or at the occasional can lying around. This kept him happy while demonstrating to us his good marksmanship and, possibly, the reason why the Jerries had dispensed with the usual guards.

We worked on railway construction, building a branch line through a wooded area to join a main line nearly a mile distant. We started on low ground, joining together pre-fabricated sections of light, narrow-gauge track and proceeding gradually uphill.

     With competent instructors, we learned quickly, levelling the ground and packing stones under cross-members. We soon completed the uphill part, then laid more track across the higher level for about a quarter of a mile, excavating earth on each side of it and shovelling the spoil into small metal tip-trucks – about 20 of them.

     When all the trucks were full, we’d begin pushing them, two men per truck, towards the downhill section. When the leading three trucks reached the start of the slope, each two-man crew mounted the small platform at the rear of their truck and applied the brakes by turning a wheel. When all appeared ready for the descent, the chief gave a signal, brakes were released, and with a push from the men waiting behind, the small train got under way. Speed increased, controlled by light touches on the brakes, and momentum carried the three trucks along a short length of level track at the bottom of the hill.

     Then we tipped the earth out of the trucks, making a ridge along one side of the track. Next train down tipped on the opposite side. While we were pushing our empty trucks back up the incline and loading at the top, others removed a short section of track, levelled out the ridges of earth we’d dumped, then replaced the track on this new, flat surface. The third train down would stop short of the raised section and start a repeat process.

     Repeating this operation day after day, we were lowering the higher ground and raising the lower, building a small embankment and a cutting. We grew familiar with our tasks so, on the loaded downhill run, we gradually increased speed by making less use of the handbrakes…

     One day, while pushing empty trucks uphill I noticed a pink mushroom growing alongside the track. On the next down run, I asked my mate to look after the brake as I was going to jump off and collect that mushroom. Although, as we approached the spot, I felt the train going much too fast I leapt off regardless, rolled over as I landed, and picked my small mushroom…

     Then I heard an awful noise down below and cries of pain. Several trucks had left the rails. Mine was at the bottom of the embankment, wheels uppermost. My mate had jumped clear as the truck ahead canted over, but several men were hurt and one badly crushed.

     The little, pink mushroom appeared to have saved me from injury or, possibly, death. I didn’t eat it after all, for that might have been tempting providence.’

(2) Hindenburg Line: or Siegfriedstellung built 1916-17 from Neuville Vitasse near Arras to Cerny En Laonnois near Reims (about 90 miles); its barbed-wire “fields” were up to 90 metres deep; the line remained intact until September, 1918, during the Allies’ Hundred Days Offensive, August 8-November 11

All the best– FSS

Next week: Sam and POW comrades continue their labours as railway navvies, doing the full John Henry, manhandling railway sleepers and steel rails – and feeling oddly strengthened and consoled by proper work, with respect from their guards (and the odd bit of horsemeat in the stew). But then they’re on the move again… to Germany, the Saar and impromptu temporary imprisonment in a corner shop!

(1) 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.

Sam and POW comrades take a train – 4th Class! luxury! – to Bapaume and work at another German field hospital… in line of fire from stray British shells – good news!? Then an Allied air raid gives the starving Tommies a chance to nick some food.

For details of how to buy Sam’s full Memoir(1) in paperback or e-book & excerpted Gallipoli & Somme episode & Arras 1918/POW etc mini-e-books & reader reviews see right-hand column

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Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… The fourth and last phase of the German Army’s Spring Offensive attempt to overwhelm the Allies on the Western Front hit the buffers.

    The Operation Gneisenau attacks (June 9-13) saw  the Germans advance on Compiègne, take the heights of Marqueglise and the French withdrawing from Carlepont Wood and around the Aronde river  (10). But the following day the French Army counterattacked from Rubescourt to St Maur, recaptured Belloy, and caught the Germans by surprise at Compiègne with an infantry-plus-tanks assault not announced by the orthodox preliminary artillery bombardment. At the same time, the Australians advanced at Morlancourt, between the Ancre and the Somme, and the Americans made progress in the Battle Of Belleau Wood.

    Within a couple of days – some sources say on the 12th, others the 13th – the Germans called off Gneisenau (casualties: 35,000 Allied, 30,000 German). Immediately after that, further north the British Army successfully attacked Bethune along the La Bassée Canal (14) and the French regained Coeuvres (15; southeast of Compiègne).

    On the Eastern Front and beyond, post-Russian-Revolution-and-surrender turmoil continued: German troops advanced further into Georgia, taking Tiflis, and newly “independent” Ukraine signed an Armistice with the Russian Bolshevik Republic (both 12); in Omsk, a combination of the Czechoslovak Legions (still heading east) and royalist Russian Army officers founded a Provisional Siberian Government – while 2,500 kilometres east, and still well within Siberian borders, White and Red Russians fought for supremacy in Irkutsk (13).

    This week also saw a sudden escalation in the fighting between Italy and Austria-Hungary where the front line had settled just north of the River Piave and Venice following the previous autumn’s Italian rout at and long retreat from the Battle Of Caporetto. The Austro-Hungarian Armies launched an all-out attack from the mountains east and north of Venice to the Adriatic Coast, the Second Battle Of The Piave (June 15-24). They crossed the river in the Nervesa and Fagare-Musile regions along a 24-kilometre front (15), and gained some ground northwest of Venice at Montello and Capo Sile (16), but then the Italian Army stalled their advance (abetted by British troops on the Asiago Plateau, about 100 kilometres northwest of Venice).

[Memoirbackground: 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)… untilofficialdom 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 accepted, 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.An interesting year ensued – many weeks of it passed in various northern hospitals because of a meningitis scare, German Measles, and recovery from the lurking effects of trench warfare’s privations (he spent his 19th birthday at Wharncliffe War Hospital, Sheffield). During that summer, his Company Officer told him he’d been offered the chance to train for a commission, but Sam detested ordering men around so he refused; either this defiance brought about his subsequent “reversion” to Private, or he actually requested it, given his feelings on the subject of rank. Come November/December, 1917, he enjoyed the final home leave of his military career – and assured his family of his firm conviction that he would survive. In December/January, he returned to France, unattached to any specific Battalion pro tem, and knocked about Brigade HQ in Arras, dogsbodying where he could – though he was soon out at the front line, just a few miles away. In mid-March he found his own Essex Battalion; they moved into the trenches near Fampoux, about six miles east of Arras, on March 19… just in time for the opening artillery bombardment of the German Spring Offensive and a last stand by the Battalion on March 28 which left 80 alive and OK out of the 520 who started the day – the 440 in between being dead, wounded or, like Sam, “missing” and, in his case, a POW.]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week, my father, Sam Sutcliffe, taken prisoner outside Arras at the tail-end of the German Spring Offensive and then part of wandering and randomly-assembled bands of POWs, left his first purpose-built prison camp in a small town called Sancourt about four miles north of Cambrai – after an interesting interlude in a German field hospital recovering from dysentery, helping wounded German soldiers, and faking a food-for-(non-existent)-Tommies’-gold-rings exchange with a dangerous spiv who worked there as an orderly/nurse.

    But, eventually, they boarded a train…

‘We actually travelled in compartments marked “Fourth Class” – “Vierte Klasse” – instead of the usual goods wagons and we arrived after many delays at, of all places, the famous Bapaume(2) now in German hands. On foot, we crossed several railway tracks, passed the ruins of some buildings, then filtered through an area cluttered with wrecked tanks, lorries and guns.

     Clear of all this junk, I saw a German aeroplane which had crashed; I was surprised at its general scruffy appearance, the rough finish of its fuselage. It looked like a really cheap mass-produced monoplane, so different from the gleaming red bi-planes of Richthofen’s squadron which had spent a sunny afternoon photographing and shooting up our sector shortly before the big German attack(3). This grey-green, Spartan, single-wing plane could probably have been turned out in large numbers at low cost – and, doubtless, with little consideration for the safety of the youngsters who would fly them. Its gauntness reminded me of the remains of the horse lying by the roadside near Gavrelle. Desperate shortage of equipment as well as food seemed indicated. The huge German effort must be the last gamble, I concluded. Bad though my condition was, I felt more cheerful and hopeful of survival until fighting ceased.

     Another tented field hospital loomed ahead and there we stopped. We were to work there, living in tents.

Soon after arriving, I had a brief return to the old front-line tension when a shell screamed overhead and crashed not far away. However, fear quickly turned to elation when it dawned on us that it must have been a British shell. It meant our Army was only a few miles away… and we quietly discussed hopes, dreams of escaping…

     My first job there, with a group of other prisoners, was distributing food. In each large tent, the orderly or male nurse took charge of it, and then gave us our next task – usually taking covered buckets away to the latrines for emptying and cleansing. We cleared any litter from the earthen floor of each tent and dumped it by the ever-burning incinerator a few hundred yards away. Other prisoners had to carry stores from the railway siding – heavy work for such enfeebled men.

     The wounded German soldiers lay in wooden bunks, many of them, for warmth, still wearing their grey tunics or draping them over their shoulders if they had arm or torso wounds. The German Army, like ours, passed serious cases back to better-equipped hospitals, but returned the lightly-wounded to their units after brief treatment which showed little humane consideration for their needs.

     Our diet remained the same, wickedly poor and sparse. So when the blessing of a British air raid on the area furnished an opportunity, we got busy.

     Anti-aircraft guns made a terrific din and set all the hospital staff running in one direction… Then they vanished. When someone yelled out the explanation – “They’ve gone down into dugouts!” – as one man we rushed to their tents and grabbed anything edible. After that, we headed for the hospital tents and gobbled up every bit of food we found. I saw no wounded man objecting, nor did any of them complain later to the staff about our conduct; perhaps they were glad to see us around, their own (male) nurses having left them to their fate.

     No bombs fell on the hospital, so we awaited the next raid with some eagerness.

     Sometimes, a brief but hellishly loud shriek, different to anything I’d heard before, would precede the arrival of a large shell. An artilleryman fellow prisoner knew what it was: “A high-velocity shell, something new we developed. You can hardly hear the gun fire because the shell arrives and bursts so quickly.”

     I recall an occasion when one of these shells burst and I heard a chunk of metal buzzing my way; when it hit the ground I picked it up – it was hot! – and carried it to a group of Germans crouching in a shelter and dropped it among them… to their surprised consternation, until my grin and the word “souvenir” reassured them.

     On such rare occasions, I felt some self-respect briefly restored.

Their front-line men, as I have stated, seldom showed animosity towards us so, when I saw a small group of lightly-wounded young fellows sharing a newspaper, I joined them, hopeful of hearing some up-to-date information. They greeted me in friendly fashion; me, a stooping scarecrow with sunken cheeks, hardly a soldierly figure, yet they knew I had shared certain experiences common only to men who had spent time on the front line – to which, I took it, they were due to return. Now recovered from wounds or one of the active-service maladies, they would soon be back to that crashing, roaring hell. Small chance of living through it…

     But the German boys helped me to understand the main news items. Thus, I learned that several places, which had been well behind our Army’s front line before the Ludendorff assault, were now established as German Army staff HQs. And a depressing feature with a Berlin dateline claimed that Paris was under bombardment by a huge gun(4), its shells hitting the French capital every half-hour from a position 90 kilometres away.

     The Germans had bombarded London from the air, initially from the sausage-shaped airships named after Count Zeppelin, later from aircraft, but a gun lobbing big shells into the city at intervals throughout every day and every night seemed far worse to me than the brief visitation of an air raid, during which most people could find safe shelter. There could be no warning of approaching shells. Yet people couldn’t spend night and day in hiding; life must go on.

     What alarmed me about that article wasn’t just that enemy forces had advanced close enough to Paris to bombard it; it meant that, if they reached the French coast, they would be able to shell England. Again it became difficult to maintain faith in eventual victory for our Forces. Speculating on what our fate would be if our side were defeated caused me a spasm of deep despair.

     But… to hell with it all, and when the odd group of raiding British planes came over, we cheered them on and laughed to see the Jerries diving below.’

(2) Bapaume: 30 kilometres from Cambrai, 22 kilometres south of Arras; occupied by Germany August 28, 1914; one of the objectives not reached by the British attack during the 1916 Battle Of The Somme; liberated March 17, 1917, by Australian troops; recaptured by Germany during the Spring Offensive, 1918; liberated again by New Zealand soldiers on August 29, 1918, during the Second Battle Of Bapaume, August 2-September 3; after the war, Sheffield “adopted” Bapaume, financing the construction of a dozen houses and, with finance from razor manufacturer George Lawrence, a school.

(3) See Blog 188, February 11, 2018.

(4)“The Paris Gun”, the largest artillery piece by barrel length (21 metres) used by either side during World War I, fired on Paris, March to August, 1918, from Coucy-Le-Chateau-Auffrique, Picardy, actually a range of 120 kilometres; developed from a Navy gun, so manned by sailors, it lacked accuracy and delivered relatively small shells, but it was seen as a “psychological” weapon; Wikipedia says the shells were the first human-made objects to reach the stratosphere, their trajectory reaching its apogee at 25 miles.

All the best– FSS

Next week: Sam gets a change of scene, atmosphere and even food as his latest travelling band of POWs get to walk through the Hindenburg Line before their hard labour resumes – building a railway. Which leads to the hair-raising story of how a pink mushroom saved Sam’s life…

(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote Nobody Of Any Importance, a Memoirof his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.