Gallipoli Rewind 4: The great Gallipoli snowstorm; Sam risks snipers to beg HQ for food. But then an interlude of plenty… and the best gift of all, the evacuation of Suvla Bay for Christmas!

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Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… the British launched their third substantial attack of the Ypres campaign, now deploying new strategies conceived by General Herbert Plumer – he concentrated on achieving limited objectives with a first wave of attackers, and moving on to the next one with a second wave after that, which seems to have become colloquially known as “leapfrogging”, though it sounds like common sense too.

    He applied this to The Battle Of The Menin Road Bridge (September 20-25), taking the Gheluvelt Plateau by stages and largely succeeding though most of the gains occurred on the first day: Inverness Copse, Glencorse Wood, Veldhoek and part of Polygon Wood.

    While Russia still held a line east of Riga in Latvia, the German Army did attack much further east, potentially outflanking the Russians at Lemburg (September 19), and Jacobstadt (21-22; held by the Russians for 18 months previously).

    But the Allies progressed steadily in southern Europe with the Italians successfully attacking the Austro-Hungarians at Carzano, near Trentino (September 18), the German attack in the Susitza Valley, Moldavia repulsed by the Romanian Army (20), and combined French and Albanian forces pushing the Austrian invaders back in the Skumbi Valley (20).

[Memoir background: 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)… until officialdom 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 took up the offer, 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… An interesting year ensued – four months of blizzards, a meningitis scare, special training in various northern locations, and then, just after his 19th birthday on July 6, a few summer weeks stomping around Yorkshire on a route march… which in due course leads him to hospital again, to recover from some lurking effects of trench warfare and prepare him for more. However, now I have to break off from the this-week-100-years-ago excerpts from his Memoir because my father didn’t write enough about his year “out” to provide 52 blog excerpts. So, for the next 10 weeks until November, before he returns to France and the Front from December onwards, I’m revisiting his previous accounts of historic battles as seen by an ordinary front-line Tommy – the Somme and, first, Sam’s Gallipoli, his initiation into the realities of war. He was a 17-year-old Lance Corporal Signaller by the time his Battalion approached Suvla Bay, Gallipoli, on the night of September 25, 1915.]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

In the first three weeks of these episodes from Gallipoli, my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe went through all the novice soldier’s fundamental “firsts” – coming under fire, losing comrades to shot and shell, poor food, frustration at lack of any apparent purpose, anger at Generals lurking well away from danger (out at sea in this case). But he also encountered some Suvla1915 specials like crapping under fire, an excess of apricot jam and dearth of every other nourishing comestible, near-death from a centipede bite and, to more people’s astonishment than his own, having bombs dropped on him from a plane! None of them had ever heard of such a thing…

    But we left him in the hilltop hole where, as a Signaller, he spent much of his “tour”, on 24/7 rotation with an assistant/hole-mate, their neighbours in adjacent trenches being a group of older, resourceful and very comradely machine gunners, members of the Essex Regiment (to which, coincidentally, Sam was transferred a year later).

    Two months in, his current and least favourite companion was “a sad little man called Harry Green”. But Harry’s tenure was about to be concluded by the meteorological freak which assailed both sides as winter approached…

‘Late in November, a sudden change of weather made our Army’s already depressing situation almost unbearable. The heat, and consequent plague of filthy flies carrying germs of disease, began to abate, and then came freezing winds with sleet and ice-cold rain.

     After several days, some trenches were deep in water. Still heavier rain fell non-stop throughout one day and night, snow followed on, then the whole wretched lot froze solid**. Our Essex Regiment friends had no food to spare for us and, having no protection from the terrible cold, Green and I looked like dying quite soon*** – even though, fortunately, our trench on the hilltop remained dry. I decided to attempt the journey down to Battalion Headquarters to beg for food and tea – no shortage of water now, surrounded as we were by ice and snow. Do you remember the woollen tube with sewn-up ends, described as a “cap comforter” in Army equipment lists? If you stuffed one half of it into the other half, you had a sort of pixie hat. Being unable to face the blast unprotected, I made small openings for eyes and mouth and pulled the thing down over my face, so heaven only knows what I looked like to the few men who saw me.

     Descending the hill, I had to risk being sniped and proceed on top, for most of the trench system lay deep in ice and snow. I assumed the enemy would be similarly afflicted and uninterested in slaughtering infidels, but at one point a couple of bullets came very close and I dropped into a trench and tried slithering on the ice, but soon had to climb out again.

     A dreadful sight confronted me when I reached low-lying Essex Ravine. Rising water had forced our men to quit their trenches and, already very chilled and wet, stand exposed to the biting cold wind and sleet with nowhere to rest. Their resourceful officer told them to form circles and bend forwards with arms around each other’s shoulders. He and others then covered each circular group with their rubberised groundsheets tucked in here and there to prevent them being blown away. Thus they stood all night, pressed close for warmth, and most of them were still in that situation when I arrived.

     I eventually met a Sergeant who had assumed responsibility for acting as Quartermaster to our much diminished Battalion – not many more than 200 of us remained on active duty by then, the rest sick, wounded or dead from illness or enemy action. I told him of our predicament, our lack of food. At first he disowned us, saying the machine gunners whose communications we maintained ought to feed us. But, relenting, he gave me a handful of tea and two hard square biscuits, this to feed two men for an indefinite period.’

** The Gallipoli blizzard began on November 27, 1915; H Montgomery Hyde’s Strong For Service, the biography of Major Harry Nathan, by then 2/1st CO, notes 12,000 cases of frostbite and exposure arising on the British and Commonwealth side in Gallipoli – in a letter home, Nathan wrote of “15 degrees of frost” (meaning a temperature of 17° Fahrenheit); he also reports 280 men “drowned” in the mud produced by thawing snow and/or rain.

*** This suggests that, in reality, the arrangement, mentioned last week, that the two Signallers on the hill should come under the Essex Regiment Quartermaster didn’t work, although my father doesn’t specifically mention any such problem.

Sam struggled back towards his hill, hauling his feet out of the ice holes that constantly grabbed at him, seriously worried that this climb could finish him. But then he had a lucky, somewhat mysterious encounter when he peered into a short, covered side trench and followed his nose:

‘This was on higher ground, so not flooded. I went in, I was greeted by a tall man, who treated me with Christian kindness; he let me warm myself by some sort of stove, and gave me a large mug of hot cocoa and a chunk of buttered bread. I suppose I was too overcome by this luxurious fare and lovely treatment to ask questions, but thanked him sincerely. I could see he was a chaplain, but to whom I did not know.

     One chap I questioned later reckoned my benefactor was the Bishop Of Croydon, but I’d never heard of such a Bishop****. I guess I never will know, but the memory of the good man who revived my strength and enabled me to continue remains always.’

**** The Bishop of Croydon did exist and his name at that time was Henry Pereira, but he would have been aged 70 in late 1915, so my father probably presumed correctly that his benefactor was some other cleric.

Finally he got back to his glum assistant, Harry, only to find he’d done something really daft:

‘[He was] in no condition to be interested in the biscuit I offered him for, in my absence, the thoughtless man had removed his boots because his feet were so painful. Now, swollen considerably, they could not be forced back into the boots, so he was in a right mess. Cold, wet, without footwear, and exposed to weather which, I suspect, was coming to us direct from Siberia.

     To make tea, I had to find clean ice, put it in my mess tin, and melt it over the small methylated spirit heater. This Harry could drink and, meanwhile, I phoned Brigade HQ for a man to replace him. Throughout that night he moaned and groaned and sobbed, being in awful pain. I wore the headphones continuously, cat-napping at intervals.

     Next day, I spotted a disused trench more than half-full of ice and snow on the hillside facing the Turks. So I risked becoming a sniper’s target, got out into the open, dashed across, filled my can and hurried back. Using tea repeatedly and carefully, I was able to supply Green and myself with warm fluid.

     Moving around, I maintained some bodily warmth too. Harry was now delirious and, I hoped, past feeling much pain, but one more day passed before men from HQ were able to reach us, lay Harry in a blanket, and carry him, groaning and shouting, away to the beach.’

Over the next few days the weather eased. Stories passed around about men drowning in flooded trenches or freezing to death. Sam felt cheerier when an old friend from the Battalion’s early days, Peter Nieter, arrived in his hilltop hole to serve as his assistant. However, he was about to become the unwitting cause of a tragedy he regretted to the marrow:

‘Attached once more to the regular Essex boys for rations, we fared well. And I had my disused trench for water – it remained several feet deep for some time. However, fetching it became risky because a sniper had spotted my movements as I darted hither and thither to fox his aim.

     I carried a can to which I had tied a length of string to lower it into the trench. I would climb out of our trench and dash several yards, freeze there for a moment while I pictured John Turk taking aim at me, then make another short dash while the bullet smacked somewhere behind me. One more pause, then run to the trench, lower and raise the can, and return via another pause or two before a final, fearful charge back to and into our trench, having retained as much water in the can as possible. The bullets always seemed to arrive at the spot near where I had last paused. But I was careful to operate in poor light, morning and evening, because I had rightly assumed that the sniper was a good shot…

     So you can imagine my sorrow when two Essex men laid a boy on a firing step just opposite my hole, pointed to a wound in his chest, and told me the lad had attempted to copy my water-getting dash in broad daylight. Probably he didn’t bother about foxing the sniper either. He belonged to the Hampshire Regiment, but an Essex man had watched his progress, seen him wounded, and with a pal had risked death to drag him in.

     I phoned Brigade HQ for stretcher-bearers, but doubted if the lad would live – the bullet had pierced a lung. We fixed his field dressing over the entry wound, but I dared not move him to search for the exit, which may well have been a gaping hole. As I tried to keep him warm and give him support such as I could in response to those frightened eyes, I felt quite old in spite of my mere 17 years. He – the first wounded man I’d had to deal with – was even younger than I.

     The stretcher-bearers were gentle with him; I knew only too well they would have to climb out of trenches in several places where a stretcher could not be accommodated; in full view of the Turk, they would have to rely on his clemency.

     Thereafter, I stayed away from the watery trench and made do with such water as the machine gunners could spare for me.’

As ever, he knuckled down to the gruelling work of getting through the next day and the next… until a surprise move offered him a taste of Brigade HQ luxury – luxury Gallipoli-style anyway; it still involved getting shot at quite a lot.

‘I had been feeling that the small number of people of my Battalion who still remained after the blizzard must have forgotten my existence, but a week or so after Nieter’s arrival I had pleasant proof that this was not so. A replacement for me suddenly appeared at our hole on the hilltop and I received instructions to join the Signals Section at 88th Brigade Headquarters until further orders.

     Sorry to leave Nieter, but flattered and excited, I made my way to the ravine which sheltered HQ. There, they had built small but comfortable offices for administration and communication. Low, wooden buildings with earth-covered roofs on which the local weeds and grasses grew. Hopes that I would live in one of them quickly died the death when I was conducted to a nearby hole covered by a groundsheet roof, and told I could set up house there.

     Thankfully, it was dry, but it was sited beside the junction of two footpaths, and I quickly discovered that the position had been honoured by an enemy sniper. He had one of those tripod-rifles****** fixed on the point where the paths met; at intervals, a bullet smacked into the ground about a foot from one end of my hole. As the new boy, the privilege of avoiding sudden death by a sniper’s bullet automatically became mine. But the pleasure of working in a warm, covered structure, properly seated, with cooked food and big helpings of hot tea, more than compensated for the sniper targeting my sleeping quarters.

     Some days we had steak and onions for dinner; it seemed incredible after the hard tack and occasional bully beef which had usually been my lot. Bacon for breakfast was not unknown, cheese and bread in the evening common. If the pecking order worked that way, the lucky devils at Divisional HQ probably got breakfast, a meat lunch, afternoon tea, and dinner in the evening. It all passed through too many hands before the ranker’s turn came, God help him.

     Meanwhile, I felt the benefit of this luxury, my spirits rose again, I smiled, even laughed occasionally. Fully occupied on duty, when not working I hung about in one or other of the small HQ buildings as long as possible. Then, in my hole, I could sometimes remove my tunic, shirt and vest and destroy all the body lice I could find, replace these garments then take off my trousers. With candle ends scrounged from the office, I could burn off the filthy things infesting the inside seams of my trousers, crush the devils in my long pants and have a couple of days free of the continual biting.’

****** See blog September 3, Gallipoli Rewind 2 – Turkish snipers would set up a series of rifles on tripods in different locations, aim fixed at one spot, and fire them in sequence.

While at HQ, he got a further perspective on the suffering of comrades in his Battalion and others:

‘A sight I’d missed in my rather isolated position on the machine-gun hill was large numbers of men in various stages of illness, many with layers of socks and rags over their frostbitten feet, heading hopefully for the beach. How could such a suffering multitude be dealt with properly?

     The beach people must also have been rained on, then snowed on, then frozen and tortured by that Siberian blast if they dared to venture into the open. Then the sorry throng, with their frostbitten feet and hands, some already gangrenous, all of them short of food, descended on them and they just had to cope. What a commandeering of lighters and small steamboats there must have been. I, with my two biscuits and a handful of tea, had seen almost nothing of these larger events.’

But then, “well into December”, his replacement on the hilltop got a fever and Sam was the only suitable replacement, so he rejoined Nieter – bringing with him the persistent rumour at least that, finally, evacuation was on the cards. Nothing official though. In fact, Sam and Nieter soon encountered a General on the front line for the first, and probably only time, in their humble military careers:

‘… one day, as I squatted in a trench and chatted with one of the Essex men, a sort of apparition appeared; it was a large man, somewhat florid of countenance, wearing much red braid on collar, epaulettes and around his cap.

     As he approached we stood up – not wishing to be trodden on – and our action unexpectedly put the cat among the pigeons. “Why the devil are these men standing to attention?” he roared. “If this happens again I’ll have everybody put on fatigue duty out on top collecting cans and rubbish in broad daylight!” He squeezed past us, quite a beefy gentleman, followed by a retinue, the first few of whom also carried much red tape on their uniforms. Several ordinary officers followed, looking almost shabby compared with the top brass.

     An Essex Sergeant brought up the rear and, in answer to my questioning look, he said, “General De Lisle******, General Officer Commanding this Army”.

     I considered the incident and the strange logic it suggested. The General bellowed at us for standing to attention – although that was what we were supposed to do when an officer approached – because it might expose our heads to enemy snipers. His loud voice was calculated to scare all within earshot, including, I guessed, his escorting officers. Yet he must have known that his own head, with its red-braided cap, would regularly bob up above the lip of the trench as he proceeded with his inspection. And apparently that didn’t matter. A fine bravado perhaps. Except that he was the General Officer Commanding wilfully risking death…

     Thereafter, I assumed that General Ian Hamilton had at last packed it in*******. When I told witty Nieter of my assumption, he pointed out that this change at the top would not necessarily mean rapid promotion for me.’

****** General Sir Henry Beauvoir De Lisle (1864-1955), commissioned 1883, fought in the Second Boer War, then on the Western Front in 1914, until his transfer to Gallipoli; returned to the Western Front, including the Somme, 1916-18; www.firstworldwar.com/bio/delisle.htm suggests De Lisle wasn’t popular among the troops – and did not seek to be so – and that his commander in Gallipoli, Sir William Birdwood, referred to him as “a brute“; but he did at least go ashore, in the noisily eccentric manner my father encountered, to see “every corner of Suvla” for himself.

******* General Sir Ian Hamilton had actually departed some while earlier, on October 16 (replaced by Lieutenant General Sir Charles Monro); but, clearly, nobody told the Poor Bloody Infantry who commanded them at any given moment.

In due course, frightfully hush-hush preparations for evacuation became apparent:

‘Christmas Day coming up… All we were missing was the Christmas tree, the holly, the oranges, Christmas puddings, iced cakes and booze. We did have ample bully beef, hard biscuits, tea, tinned milk, sugar and, because of our Army’s reduced numbers, two or three pints of water each day…

     No one talked about the fuses and detonators so carefully installed by the engineers all along the front trench, but we hoped they would bang off at regular intervals and kid the Turks that our positions were still manned for a long while after the last soldier had put to sea on a lighter. That was one of our really fervent hopes – another, that perhaps the Turks knew we were lighting out and would be up on their hill laughing fit to bust.

     At the same time, we did know that, when the time came for us to slip away and leave John Turk once again in possession of his strip of territory, halfway through the operation hordes of screaming enemy soldiery might suddenly descend from the high hills which formed a sort of semi-circle around the area held by the British, Australian and New Zealand armies…

     Impatient and excited, under a partial moon, I waited one night for a code word over the headphones. When it came I passed the word “Now” along the line and machine guns were dismantled, our signal lines disconnected, container satchels hung over our shoulders, and rifles and all equipment taken with us, as we all very quietly moved beachwards in a single line. By then, all troops in forward positions had already departed********.

     I took whispered farewells of our kindly Essex pals, left the file, and joined the remnant of our own Battalion assembled there, awaiting the order to move beachwards.

     This was when we heard about an unfortunate young man who had just been killed, a member of H Company from when we first enlisted…  Most unexpectedly on this quiet night, a bullet had struck him in the upper arm. The man with him applied the first field dressing, which every soldier carried in a special pocket. But, in the dark, nobody saw the blood welling from a severed artery, or perhaps something better could have been done to control the bleeding. By the time they were able to get him into skilled hands he had bled to death…

     With no undue hurry, we got aboard those all-metal lighters once more and chug-chugged away. On a calm sea we transferred without any real accident to a smallish steamboat — it accommodated all who were left of our big Battalion; many had died, but more had gone away sick, some wounded*********…

     Soon, out of sight of the explosions, some singing started up, our first for many a day. And then we really gave vent to the joy and relief we felt. A youngster who had obliged at concerts back in Malta climbed to a position by the bridge and sang a quickly improvised parody of that popular song, Moonlight Bay: “We were sailing away from Suvla Bay/We can hear the Turks a-singing/‘Please don’t go away/You are breaking our hearts/So please do stay’/‘Not bloody likely, boys/Goodbye to Suvla Bay’”. All joined in, inventing their own versions as we sang along time after time.’

******** Hyde’s Nathan biography notes the Battalion’s evacuation taking place on December 18-19, Saturday to Sunday overnight.

********* I think I remember my father saying that 147 came out “unscathed”, although in the text a little earlier he refers to around 200 being still active immediately after the late-November blizzard and, soon, he mentions that figure again; I couldn’t find any official figures.

The relief from danger, the reunion with what was left of his Battalion, the singing… for some hours and days to come, Sam basked in hopes for the future…

‘… soiled and unbathed, skinny almost to the point of emaciation, I was yet full of hope and joy because life once more offered prospects, changes of scene, sound and smell, and the luxury of sleeping with a roof of some sort over one’s head – a happy spell of rest and re-adjustment.

     So optimism and smiles all round were the order of the day. It would take time to build us up to general fitness and the Battalion to its full numerical strength, time in which we hoped to live a better sort of life than had been our lot recently.’

All the best – FSS

Next week: Gallipoli Rewind 5 (the last): Sam experiences more mixed emotions: the wretchedness of the collective sense of failure mitigated by the joy of a reunion with his brother Ted whom he’d last seen in Egypt, letters from home, free beer and Christmas cheer… but then on Boxing Day, their worst nightmare, they’re ordered to return to Gallipoli!

* 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.

Gallipoli rewind 2: Sam and pals land at Suvla Bay: their first time under fire, their first deaths. And then there’s the bloody food, the bloody latrines, the bloody Generals – and the bloody Turks!

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

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

Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… The home front in England felt the war more keenly than usual: a six-bomber moonlight raid on Sheerness docks, Kent, killed 132 and injured another 98, mostly Naval personnel (September 30); the following night the biggest raid on London to date killed 19, with 71 injured, while on the Yorkshire coast a German submarine surfaced and shelled Scarborough, killing three and injuring six. Presumably such attacks, with their small numerical impact compared to any of the battle Fronts, actually targetted civilian morale and “public support” for the war…

    On the Western Front, the Third Battle of Ypres/Passchendaele passed through a fairly static phase with reports only of small British advances at St Julien (September 3) and Villeret (6), and a small withdrawal near Frezenberg (6). Further south, the French attacked on the Meuse, taking Fosses and Chaume Woods. But a sinister German tactic appeared to emerge with a succession of attacks on Allied hospitals – at Verdun and Vadelaincourt (5) and an American hospital near the Channel coast (7; I can’t find a specific location, but probably the Base Hospital at Boulogne).

    The Battle Of Riga and/or Jugla shut down (September 3) with the German Army occupying the Latvian capital and Russian troops effecting a “successful retreat” – live to fight another day really, despite massive casualties (25,000 compared to 5,000 German). The Russians pulled back 30 miles towards Petrograd, the national capital, which promptly hit the news for reasons which only re-emphasised the evolving collapse of the country’s war effort. In an utterly confused and confusing episode, Army C-in-C General Kornilov purportedly misunderstood Provisional Government leader Kerensky, whom he intended to support(?), and led a would-be attack on the Petrograd Soviet, the Communist council which ran the city. But Kerenski armed the worker/soldier alliance and, apparently without a fight, arrested and jailed Kornilov (of whom more later!).

    On the southern extreme of the Eastern Front, the Battle Of Marasesti drew to a close (September 3), a stalemate in itself, but of more import than may have been understood at the time. It turned out that the revived Romanian Army’s holding the line had brought a permanent halt to the Central Powers’ ambition to take the country.

    Meanwhile, the 11th Battle Of The Isonzo  (August 18-September 12) proceeded bloodily with a decisive Italian victory looking likely, as it often had during the 11th’s many predecessors. They attacked the Austrian Army near Gorizia and on the southern Carso plain (4-6), then at Monte S Gabriele, and recovered positions lost in the Brestovica valley (7) – the Austrians struck back by bombing Venice.

[Memoir background: 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)… until officialdom 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 took up the offer, 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… An interesting year ensued – four months of blizzards, a meningitis scare, special training in various northern locations, and then, just after his 19th birthday on July 6, a few summer weeks stomping around Yorkshire on a route march… which in due course leads him to hospital again, to recover from some lurking effects of trench warfare and prepare him for more. However, now I have to break off from the this-week-100-years-ago excerpts from his Memoir because my father didn’t write enough about his year “out” to provide 52 blog excerpts. So, for the next 10 weeks until November, before he returns to the France and the Front from December onwards, I’m revisiting his previous accounts of historic battles as seen by an ordinary front-line Tommy – the Somme and, first, Sam’s Gallipoli, his initiation into the realities of war.]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

My father, Sam Sutcliffe, was 17 by the time his 2/1st Battalion Royal Fusiliers approached Suvla Bay, Gallipoli, on the night of September 25, 1915. They’d trained for 12 months in London, Tonbridge, Malta, and briefly in Egypt since they volunteered in September 1914 – Sam becoming a Lance Corporal Signaller en route. Last week, we saw him deal with the wrench of separation from his older brother Ted – detained by the authorities on the dock at Alexandria because of a dental problem of all things – and then, as the small steamer bearing his H Company and one other got closer to the coast, absorbing the sounds of shells and bullets “being fired with intent to kill”… not practice, but deadly warfare.

    Before they can land they have to change vessels again, which meant crossing on to the deck of a lighter. No easy matter in even a gentle swell, given that, as a Signaller, he carried yet more equipment than a plain infantryman – he reckoned it weighed 90 pounds all together. Here’s the tricky transfer:

‘One foot on the lighter deck, then it rose 12 inches or so, and in the moment while it sank again I forced myself across the slight gap and the weight of my body and all my equipment carried me forward. It was difficult to avoid crashing into men ahead of me, but this I managed somehow and then braced myself to steady the next oncoming bloke. By lucky chance, I hadn’t pushed anyone overboard and I certainly didn’t intend to be shoved off the lighter by anyone else.

     Its deck, I found, was metal – as were the tips and heels of our Army boots, so retaining a good foothold presented difficulties. The chaps around me did afford some support, but they were not to be leant against or grabbed, as their remarks quickly made clear. Certainly, the men on the seaward edge must have had a very dicey trip towards the shore.’

Teetering thus, they pressed on towards the beach and their first steps on to a battlefield – Sam now emitting what he would forever after think of as the literal “smell of fear”…

‘A howl became a shriek, then a shattering explosion – and a short silence was followed by numerous thuds as what had gone up came down on the nearby beach. While still at sea I heard for the first time that sad, though urgent call, “Stretcher-bearers!” A tightening of the gut and clamping together of the jaws accompanied an inner alarm which then and many times afterwards seemed to produce an acid-like smell on hands and other parts of the body.

     The lighter moved in closer and our Sergeant Major’s voice came clear above all other sounds, “Take your turn! Go quickly down the ramp, then form two ranks and follow your leader!” As we faced the shore it seemed that rifle fire came mainly from half-left and a fair distance away. But from a wider range of positions came artillery fire.

     With some relief I formed the opinion that the troops who made the first landing had done a good job in clearing the Turks from the beach, but I soon discovered that the occasional sniper had stayed behind to harass and scare by the uncertainty he created. As I took my turn down the ramp, I heard a quiet chat going on between our Company officer and someone ashore. Without pause, in pairs, we followed our leader on to the beach – the while he continued his conversation with the stranger.

     We moved uphill for a while, veered right just before reaching the top of a ridge, and shuffled along on this fairly steep slope, left leg bent, t’other extended, an awkward progress, overloaded as I was. When our leader stopped and squatted, we all did likewise along the line. “Stay well below the ridge top and await orders,” was the next instruction passed along.

     I was in a full tizzy of excitement having been primed by a confiding officer on the ship to expect immediate and violent action. However, when we stayed there for some while, pangs of hunger became pressing – we had not eaten since early morning. In a fairly loud voice, which I hoped would reach our officer’s ears, I said I was starving. “Quiet!” came a reproof, but muttering spread along the line, confirming that others also felt empty. A word of mouth message passed from man to man brought a junior officer over and he explained that no rations had been issued since we left the island harbour. Rightly or wrongly, he agreed that we should start on our iron rations**.

     Fortunate the ridge concealed us, for we were soon lighting our little methylated stoves to heat water in our mess tins. Into this we dropped beef cubes and some of the small, hard biscuits. With this below our belts we felt stronger. I set about chewing dry biscuits as well. A swig from my water bottle, and I felt twice the man.’

** Iron rations, detailed last week as “comprising a bag of small, hard biscuits, single packets of beef cubes, tea and sugar, and a can of Maconochie’s stewed beef”. The troops had been advised that they were “for extreme emergencies only” – but an Army marches on its stomach etc…

Soon, as they advance in fits and starts, some of a fairly random volley of shots come their way – as does their first fatality:

‘We hugged the ground, of course, to let the bullets pass harmlessly above us, but one of those wretched things broke that rule. When one move forward started, young Nibs, more of a boy even than I was, didn’t get up. The Captain was told, all paused again, and the shocking news came along that he was dead, shot through the head. Had he been standing up, that bullet would presumably have damaged a foot or ankle. Stretcher-bearers carried him to the beach.

     Our first casualty, I thought, young Nibs, the cheerful Cockney; a victim of random firing, not an aimed shot… Later, though, I learned that Nibs was not, after all, the first member of the Battalion killed; old Ewart Walker, the erudite ex-journalist, had died within moments of reaching the beach – a time-fused shell exploded above his head, relieving him of any requirement to further tax his ageing body, and depriving us of a very good comrade.’

After a night of digging shallow holes – rather than trenches – in flakey, unstable ground with unsuitable trenching tools, when dawn starts to lighten the scene, Sam experiences the first of many waves of helpless gloom at the purpose of their fighting in this arid, dangerous place:

‘Surveying the scene around me, I had doubts about our fitness, at that moment, to advance and capture the heights which loomed above. Facing the hills which, apparently, would be our objective, I saw that someone appeared to have selected a base for our Battalion’s attack which was completely exposed to enemy observation and fire. The terrain to our left and half-left rose gradually at first, thereafter steeply. Before us, ridges and several lowish hills. Beyond those, steadily rising country ascending at some distance from us to a considerable height — black hills of daunting aspect, enough to make me despair of reaching their peaks, even without an enemy’s presence.’

Still, they breakfast handsomely on fried bread and bacon – not to be confused with Sam’s “hole-mate” Bacon – fetched from the beach by their Quartermaster’s men and cooked on their portable stoves. But then more evidence of poor organisation – and/or the recklessness of some of these inexperienced Tommies… plus Sam observes their first crack-up:

‘Some men either had no heaters or found them unsatisfactory so, regardless of their own safety or ours, they lit small fires in the open beside their holes. Our luck gave out at that point. The Turks had either not been looking our way or else observing us with disbelief that we could be so foolhardy, but the smoke offered a perfect target for their range-finders.

     Shrapnel shells shrieked our way, burst at a height of 20 to 30 feet and sprayed the area. Howls of pain, calls for help, and the disappearance into their holes of the thoughtless fools who had brought the rain of hurtling metal down on us, all occupied but a few seconds. We had wounded and possibly dead men to care for, but we required a few minutes at least to allow the shock of this unexpected attack to subside.

     And then, almost as unwelcome as the shellfire, came the behaviour of one man, our RSM, who – with his batman – happened to occupy the next hole to the one Bacon and I shared. He briefly showed himself, brandishing a pistol, and shouted: “Keep down! Stay under cover! I’ll shoot the first man who shows himself above ground without permission!”

     I had not seen much of this gentleman previously, but for a while, in Malta, he had enjoyed immense popularity with the rank and file…  At the time, we all felt he was the man to make real soldiers out of us amateurs, God’s gift to a mob of willing, but unskilled volunteers. So we sweated our guts out in high Mediterranean temperatures, unbelievably anxious to merit the approval of this military Messiah… Now, in addition to this artillery attack, we faced the threat of bullets from our own RSM’s pistol… Realisation of the awful position in which someone’s error had placed us, had a bad effect on morale. And the RSM’s queer behaviour deepened the gloom…

     Apparently, when the order to dig in was issued, he and his batman secured pick and shovel and spent the hours of darkness getting his hidey-hole down to a really useful depth. Indeed, over the following days, their excavations became so elaborate that, by design I think, though to what end I could not deduce, they tunnelled through to our hole. It introduced an unwelcome intimacy. My feelings must have shown for this RSM never loved me.’

My father greatly appreciated the soldiers who worked on battlefield sanitation, yet here the “toilets” turn out to be inconvenient, to say the least:

‘Canvas screens surrounded the bucket areas. With bullets and shells wreaking their havoc, these men exercised great self-discipline in servicing the latrines. Men needing to use them sat in real peril, their excretory movements probably accelerated by bursting shells and whining bullets. Holes appearing in the canvas screens added urgency to these operations.’

At least his Signalling job leaves him little time for boredom as he and his comrades work to establish Battalion communications:

‘I had to move around constantly; as a Signaller I had no choice. When our comrades built and occupied new trenchworks, we had to run out lines and man the instruments to maintain communications from Battalion HQ to Company and from Company to Company.’

But still, like many another Tommy no doubt, his mind regularly turns to the matter of food:

‘We settled in. No more advances. And no more bacon. Most days there were only two items of “solid” food available, namely, hard biscuits and apricot jam. How come? It appeared that, for some weeks, a ship stuffed with these two eatables plus tea, sugar, and canned milk, served as our sole source of supplies. We of the PBI (Poor Bloody Infantry) accepted these rations without question, believing what we were told without doubt or quibble…

     At first, the weather stayed hot, very hot. Some troops, not compelled to English standards of hygiene on account of their easy-going colonial habits***, unwittingly fed and caused to multiply millions of dirty, fat flies and any foodstuff, or even hot tea, exposed, however briefly, to their attention instantly turned black with swarms of these filth carriers.

     Dysentery plagued the Army and many men existed in a weakened, dazed condition with only moderate chances of survival because they had no opportunity to replace the large loss of body fluid caused by the disease. When they finally collapsed, they had to be carried off to the beach, there to await transport to the Greek island hospital or to Egypt. This scourge spread alarmingly and one missed comrades only to learn that they had succumbed to it.’

*** Given the 2/1st’s location location, this is probably a dig at the Anzacs, already established for several weeks just a little further along the coast from Suvla.

On the disease front though, Sam was lucky. In an early delivery of packages from home his thoughtful parents provided him with two bottles of water-purifying tablets. So, in Gallipoli anyway, he steers clear of serious intestinal illness.

    Now here’s a deadly quirk of Turkish soldiery I haven’t seen written about elsewhere:

‘All of us had to beware of a constant danger from some Turk marksmen’s practice of making careful observations to find places where British troops frequently passed, and setting their rifles on small tripods with their aim fixed on those spots. During hours of darkness, one man could move around, fire each rifle and replace the used bullet. This caused many casualties. Even when sighted on a sandbag wall, each gun’s repeated shots had the sand draining away unnoticed in the dark until the next bullet cut through freely and, perhaps, fatally.’

Three or four weeks in and my father recalls feeling more and more desperate about the mess the strategists had got them into. He comes to despise the remotely located General leading the operation – a constant theme later too, when he fights on the Western Front. He had some understanding, even empathy, for most of the officers in the front lines living in the same conditions as the Tommies, while bearing heavy extra responsibilities. The all-but-invisible HQ types, though…

‘All hope of quick action and outcome gave way to pessimism engendered by the prospect of enduring a long period of this wretched life with an Army which had no effective leadership. We all felt it and cursed it.

     News filtered through that the General in charge of the whole operation, Hamilton****, lived in a battleship some miles out to sea and sent home wordy reports of our progress – progress of which we, in the front line, were quite unaware. Poetry was his speciality, they said, and he wrote as if for the school history books in flowery language, the sort of bilge which had persuaded children that mass murderers like Napoleon were somehow brave and wonderful men.

     From towering hills the Turks looked down on us continually; we lived in their sights from dawn to dusk, and the fact that we sustained some sort of existence in that situation proves how difficult it is to destroy an Army except by physically and individually killing every soldier. But attrition continued every day.

     Rough seas meant poor rations, slack organisation of supplies back at the bases resulted in monotonous repetition of the same food items, as with the already mentioned apricot jam and hard biscuits – the oft-abused corned beef became, at times, a welcome luxury. If some bully beef came our way we felt stronger, the nourishment taking effect rapidly in our debilitated bodies. If a piece of bread and a chunk of cheese filtered down through the hands of all those who organised supplies to the ranker, the lowest level of Army life, then there was much slow, careful chewing and such pleasure evinced as would warm the heart of whoever had consigned the delicious grub to such humble men. Unfortunately, long gaps lingered between such treats.

     With the best will in the world, our officers could not attain efficient feeding and welfare of their men under active-service conditions. They had not received the necessary training and it was easy to let things slide, to let the willing workers overtax themselves while slackers lurked in places they believed safe spots. A good officer would see that every man had his share of what’s available; not many of ours took so much trouble, probably because they themselves were overcome by discomforts and lack of rest and sleep.

     Anxious though I was to prove myself a man who could stick it out, I became aware of a slowing down of my movements. But I need not have worried that this might make some suspect I was still too young to be wearing a uniform; everybody knew that disease was just as likely as enemy action to put paid to a man.

     So, for reasons obscure to themselves, British troops continued to man outposts and trenches while always aware that a mere three or four miles lay between their front line and the sea.’

**** General Sir Ian Standish Monteith Hamilton, 1853-1947; World War I Prime Minister Herbert Asquith described him as “having too much feather in his brain”; but he’d served in Burma, India and South Africa – in the Boer War, he was twice recommended for the Victoria Cross, but rejected first for being “too junior” and second for being “too senior” (more to that story, no doubt); he did write a volume of poetry and his reports from Gallipoli appeared in the London Gazette (various items at www.1914-1918.net/) and were collected as early as 1915, titled Sir Ian Hamilton’s Despatches From The Dardanelles and then in 1920 as Gallipoli Diary, 1920 (just two of his 163 published works). In March, 1915, Kitchener appointed Hamilton to command the Allied Mediterranean Expeditionary Force (from Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand – the ANZACs – India and Newfoundland) specifically for the Gallipoli campaign, withholding him from the Western Front because of his unorthodox tendencies, such as deeming cavalry obsolete. The notorious April 25, 1915, Allied landings at six beaches on Cape Helles resulted in heavy casualties and little progress because of a) forewarning – the British Navy had bombarded on February 19 and March 18 b) lack of troop numbers (78,000, when some recommended up to 200,000) c) lack of appropriate training d) a shortage of landing craft. The Suvla Bay landings followed from August 6 and pulled up short largely because of the Turkish Army’s dominant position on the Anafarta Heights; that proved the last significant Allied attempt to gain ground in Gallipoli; by October, evacuation was already being proposed, and Hamilton’s opposition to it directly led to his replacement, on October 16, by Lieutenant General Sir Charles Monro; Hamilton later distinguished himself as a pre-World War II enthusiast for the peaceful intentions of Adolf Hitler.

All the best – FSS

Next week: Sam has a bizarre encounter with “Number 9”, the Battalion sawbones, and nearly dies of a centipede bite. Then he’s sent to a hole on a hilltop for the duration, which leads him to the “accidental” saving of Signaller Jackson…

* 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.