Sam discovers, after weeks of training, the new super-rifle doesn’t work! Still, he enjoys some high-life highbrow socialising with his Cambridge student comrades…

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 the British Red Cross

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Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… German destroyers raided Dunkirk (April 25) and Ramsgate (26), but they seemed like oddly risky nuisance operations compared to the real action unfolding as ever on the Western Front.

    The Allied offensive response to the completed German retreat to the Hindenburg Line continued with the second phase of The Battle Of Arras (April 9-May 4). The British Army instigated The Second Battle Of The Scarpe (April 23-4) which gained ground on a nine-mile front from Croiselles to Gavrelle and held it against strong German counterattacks. And they launched The Battle Of Arieux (28-9) as a supporting action, north of Monchy-le-Preux, to help the French to the south – but it was Canadian troops who took Arieux itself.

    However, the French Army’s grand attack, The Second Battle Of The Aisne (April 16-May 9), masterminded by Général Robert Nivelle, had already gone very wrong and the only successes noted for this week 100 years ago amounted to beating off German counterattacks at Hurtebise Farm on the notorious Chemin Des Dames (April 25-6). In fact, the calamitous effect of the failure on morale began to emerge with the first of several French Army mutinies on April 29, the same day as Verdun hero Général Philippe Pétain’s promotion to Chief Of French General Staff (not replacing Nivelle quite yet).

    Elsewhere, a British onslaught on the Bulgarian Army still occupying part of Macedonia began west of Lake Doiran (April 22-May 8) – the initial infantry attack, following a huge artillery bombardment (April 24-5), was quickly pushed back and fighting continued with the two sides in their original positions. And down in Mesopotamia, the British Samarrah Offensive (March 13-April 23) finally reached its titular objective 60 miles north of Baghdad, but at terrible cost: British and Allied casualties 18,000 (plus 37,000 ill!), Ottoman 15,000).

[Memoir background: my father, under-age 2/1st Royal Fusiliers volunteer and Gallipoli veteran (FootSoldierSam’s Blogs dated September 20, 2015, to January 3, 2016) Lance Corporal Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London, had fought on the Somme Front with his second outfit the Kensingtons (Blogs dated May 15 to September 25, 2016)… until officialdom spotted his age – 18 on July 6, 1916, legally too young for the battlefield – and told him he could take a break from the fighting until his 19th birthday. 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 training/marking time until they severally became eligible for the trenches once more…]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week, Sam, his pal Mac and their three highly educated upper-bracket mates, all chosen to become instructors in the Army’s new super-rifle, concluded the training they’d begun in (probably, my father never named it) Cramlington, Northumberland, with a further move to Clipstone Ranges, near Mansfield, where they passed as first-class shots.

    Now they rejoin the Essex Regiment in Harrogate – and find all their earnest endeavours reduced to farce and futility as it emerges that what they’ve been doing is part of a colossal cock-up by… well, who would ever know?

‘And so back to the Battalion in Harrogate, the five of us, McIntyre, Metriam, Naylor, Rutven and me, ready and willing to shake its foundations with our recently acquired expertise on the master-weapon which should hasten the end of the war — or rather, as it turned out, on the most rejectable weapon ever devised. Sad to say, the rifle was never generally issued.

     The reason given for all the waste of time and money? Its magazine had a fault which caused it to jam if loaded with ten rounds of ammunition. That was why, at Clipstone, we had not been put through the 15-rounds-a-minute test** — the damn thing couldn’t do it.

     So now they told us… and, after all that intensive effort, we never made use of our special training. We five had one long discussion about the matter, expressed our opinions of the brass-hatted barstewards above, then forgot all about it.’

Still, their return to no more than routine activities has its compensations for Sam, who grew up poor – often hungry – and left school at 14, but approached people and life in general with boundless curiosity. He jumped at the chance to socialise with his bright, posh fellow sufferers in the super-rifle fiasco:

‘The three Cambridge wallahs opened my eyes to a style of Army living superior to my crude style in all respects. They had a room in an empty house taken over by the military, whereas Mac and I pigged it on mattresses on the floor of a school hall. On rising, we folded our blankets and rolled up the straw-filled bags — that is, our mattresses. Had we added anything to this simple, if dirty, sleeping apparatus we would have been carpeted for breaking regulations. Not so our three pals, men obviously destined for greater work than the hoi polloi.

     Nonetheless, during the short period they remained with our mob I enjoyed several lush evenings with them, sprawling on their easy chairs or reclining on their camp beds, drinking their whiskey, brandy, or common wallop, and eating such luxurious titbits as they so kindly shared with me. In return, I suppose, I talked about my experiences on two Fronts, though only when they encouraged me to do so. Generally, they chatted about small everyday matters, but often, in quiet periods, they studied books or pamphlets while I read a newspaper or magazine. I had appreciated from the start that they had their roots and main interests in a world of which I knew little. But they were good fellows, generous without patronising me.

     I hoped I was of some use to them with my descriptions of life under active-service conditions – chats about the types of men encountered, their reactions to the varied situations all face in front-line warfare and good leadership’s importance to the maintenance of controlled behaviour. A shaky officer in charge was more demoralising than a heavy bombardment… The boss must remain firm and confident outwardly, no matter how windy he felt… Talking on these lines appeared to help these new members of the Poor Bloody Infantry, who were obviously “officer material” – horrible expression…’

** My father trained in rapid fire – 15 shots a minute, each one properly aimed not just blazed away – back in Malta, spring 1915, before Gallipoli, and wrote his account of the extraordinary deft work it required on the old Lee Enfield: ‘Normally you loaded five bullets in the magazine, but for rapid fire you inserted 10… and fired them, then dealt with five more, all in the space of 60 seconds’ (see Blog 49, June 14, 2015).

All the best – FSS

Next week: Sam wanders into another new Harrogate social scene – including the Tsarina of Russia’s goddaughter!

* 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’s Signallers, Lee-Enfield learners, struggle with Old Contemptible-style quick fire, get a rocket for effing and blinding – and chortle their way through some daft bayonet drill…

For details of how to buy Sam’s full Memoir in paperback or e-book & new excerpted Gallipoli episode mini-e-book & 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… on the Western Front the Second Battle Of Artois, raging since May 9, ceased on June 18 (a Friday in 1915) with the Allies gaining around three kilometres while yielding a “German defensive victory”, apparently, as the infamous Vimy Ridge changes hands to and fro. Casualties: French 102,000 (under Joffre), British 27,800 (under Haig), German 73,000 (under Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria).

    On the Eastern Front, the back and forth saw Austria in the ascendant against Russia, recapturing Lemberg (June 22; now Lvov, Poland), a city they’d yielded the previous September. Elsewhere, Italy took the left bank of the Isonzo from Austria-Hungary (17; now part of Slovenia), Turkish forces attacked the British coaling-station island of Perim in the Red Sea (14), and the South African Army began an advance on Otavifontein in German South West Africa (19). And at Gallipoli, with the initial Allied onslaught burnt out, attrition continued, with no major action in the course of the week.

    Meanwhile... at St George’s Barracks, Malta, the thousand men of the 2/1st City Of London Battalion, Royal Fusiliers – Gallipoli-bound in due course, though entirely unaware of the fact – continued their first spell of firearms training (eight months into their Army lives). They included my father, Private Sam Sutcliffe – by then in the process of converting to Signaller – his older brother Ted (both underage volunteers, still 16 and 18 respectively in early summer 1915), and their pals from Edmonton, north London.

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week, at the Malta butts down by the sea – finally allowed live ammunition rather than wooden practice bullets – Sam got a grip on the rudiments of firing the old long Lee-Enfield at ranges up to 900 yards, including snapshooting at 200 yards. In the course of his Signallers group’s first few sessions he also learned to cope with the recoil so that he no longer spent the rest of the day doubled up in pain. But in subsequent weeks came more intricate demands from their instructors – based on the noted skills of the British Expeditionary Force. Sam wrote:

‘The trickiest lesson of all demanded that we try to emulate the renowned 15 rounds a minute fired by the soldiers of our standing Army – already proven no match for German machine guns on the frontline in Belgium and France. Each shot must still be carefully aimed, our instructors insisted. Normally you loaded five bullets in the magazine, but for rapid fire you inserted 10 – wooden ones at first as we tried to master the mechanics of just getting the shots off so quickly – and fired them, then dealt with five more, all in the space of 60 seconds. I failed time after time, as did many others, even using dummies. How the heck would we cope with live ammunition, its explosions, recoils, smoke and fumes?

    One day, as we Signallers struggled with rapid fire, what with the sun blazing down on our frustrations and the general strain on nerves, we began to express our feelings of discomfort freely, till the officer in charge, Captain Bicknell, yelled, “You are the most foul-mouthed gang of louts it has ever been my misfortune to command!”

    While regarded as a good sort, something of a showman and a dandy, sporting a Charlie Chaplin moustache, the Captain did not know that the Signals chaps rather prided themselves on being decently behaved and had only recently begun to emulate and perhaps even improve on the swearing abilities of some real “old soldiers” they swapped drinks with in the canteen. Thus, they felt they were becoming old-timers themselves, but the officer’s rebuke stung, and shame brought on milder forms of self-expression, the bs and fs fewer, damns and blasts more frequent.

    And, eventually, they did complete their rifle-range programme – the 15 rounds a minute all blazed away… On my card, with the final five bullets fired at 900 yards, hitting anywhere on the target seemed tolerable, I thought. But, surprisingly, when the instructor totted up the figures, they showed I was a “first-class” shot, only a few points below the top level of marksmen qualified to work as snipers when on active service.’

But if Sam could permit his chest to puff up and his head to swell a little at this achievement – not bad for a (secret) boy of 16, eh? – neither he nor any of his comrades took pride in executing the other rifle skill they had to learn; one which Sam and many others ended up vowing they would never make use of on the battlefield…

‘… between those weeks when we got our turn on the range, the Signallers endured training in another combat function of their rifles. An effective infantryman, it was then believed, must be able to shoot accurately when at a distance from the enemy and then, with bayonet fixed, fight fiercely hand to hand.

     But the style of bayonet fighting then taught caused much merriment among the troops when off parade. It all started from a comical semi-crouching position, an unheroic stance suggesting, some averred, a man who’d soiled his pants. To simulate combat, little hopping forward movements were followed by similar retreats. Thrusts and parries alike had to be executed from that preposterous semi-crouch.

     We did our best with it, and put up the pretence required to satisfy the instructors’ test of proficiency in this murderous occupation. The performance might have been more convincing had we been allowed to leave the scabbards on our bayonets. But, ordered to wield these short, sharp steel daggers unsheathed, we knew that an over-enthusiastic movement could cause a comrade injury or even death so we kept to our stilted, hopping about, more concerned with preserving life than taking it. Anyway, given my lively imagination, I decided there and then that I could never face goring a man and that I would always keep a round in the chamber when face-to-face fighting threatened.’

All the best – FSS

Next week: Sam’s Fusiliers leave their comfortable Barracks for a tented camp handily placed beside a cemetery (rather busy in Gallipoli times) – and the funeral band’s big, bass drummer becomes Sam’s hero…