Sam and the 2/1st get paid at last! But the pain-in-the-rear new Colonel just carries on giving them gyp – even when he praises them!

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Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… the first phase of the German Army’s Verdun onslaught, begun on February 21, petered out around Douamont, held up by snow and the French 33rd Infantry Regiment (27-9). This allowed the French to bring up 90,000 men and a lot more guns and ammunition, enabling their artillery to repulse the German second phase attack at Poivre Hill (March 4) and east of Vacherauville (5) – casualties in the tens of thousands already.

    In the North Sea, German raider Greif and British cruiser Alcantara sank each other (February 29). Of wider strategic significance, especially to America, the German Navy declared the extension of its submarine campaign – according to different sources, this was either just to include “defensively armed merchantmen” or, in fact, everything that sailed, no limits (March 1).

    Further south, the Russian Army developed its push toward Trebizond on the Ottoman Black Sea coast by landing fresh troops at Atna (March 4) and, separately, occupied Bitlis, eastern Turkey, mainly through its 1st Battalion of Armenian volunteers (avenging the 1915 genocidal attack).

    And in Africa the Allies had two successes when the German Government of Cameroon surrendered to the British and French (February 28) and the British began an advance towards Mount Kilimanjaro in German East Africa (March 5; now partly in Tanzania, plus Rwanda and Burundi).

    Meanwhile, the 200-odd 2/1st City Of London Battalion Royal Fusiliers comrades who’d come through Gallipoli, had constructed a tented town, shared with other Battalions, adjacent to a village called Beni Salama, on the banks of the Nile and the edge of the Sahara 30 miles north-west of Cairo. After that terrible campaign – for them, featuring two evacuations, Suvla Bay and then V Beach – this wasn’t such a bad life for my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London (still under-age at 17), his older brother Ted (19, lately converted from foot-slogging to horse wrangling), and their mates – not for long, though…

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week, Sam wrote about the general sense of comradeship the 2/1st’s remnants shared in the aftermath of Gallipoli – and the threat to it immediately perceived in the appearance, straight from London, of a new Colonel who soon elbowed aside the beloved CO who had led them through their first months of war, Major “Booth” (my father’s alias for Major Harry Nathan, see details in footnote last week).

    Now my father recalls how the Colonel turned their worries to bitterness with a series of tactless missteps:

‘We drew our first pay for a long time*, followed shortly by our first ration of fresh meat (tough, probably camel, but a step in the right direction). In fact, we had started to achieve something towards becoming cleaner and healthier… when along comes this Colonel** to take over and humiliate our guvnor.

     A parade – us, mind you, ordered to fall in, stand to attention, at ease, and all that stuff! – was ordered. Groups representing former Companies*** lined up, an officer standing in front of each. We Signallers stood together and found, for the first time, that we too had an officer, a slick, young man in light breeches, soft cap tilted a little to one side, a cane under his arm. Our gallant Major did indeed stand before us all, called us to attention and then turned and waited as, on the lovely Black Bess****, the new, unwanted Colonel rode forward.

     The final degradation came when our Major saluted the Colonel, then strode away out of our sight. All this seemed unreal… taking place on a flat, sandy waste under a hot, African sun, like a scene from a Foreign Legion yarn in one of the weeklies I’d read before I enlisted.

     Formalities over, astride the big, black horse, the Colonel addressed us. The Battalion had acquitted itself well on active service, he knew, but now the time had come for reorganisation, for training in up-to-date skills of warfare. He had been deputed to originate and carry out the new programme and felt sure that all would co-operate… And so on and on while the resentment boiling up among those glaring at him must have been almost visible like a green cloud ascending from the tops of our heads.

     He crowned his unpopularity and poisoned the minds of all except us, the Signals Section, when he turned in our direction and proclaimed, “And I expect special attention to the details of your work from you, the Signals Section. You are the cream of the Battalion and will be expected to set the pace in this new effort.”

     That blackballed our little group to the rest of the men – ensured that our name stank among them for good and always. Had the Major made such a statement we could have strutted around with haloes illuminating our bonces but, coming from the unwanted Colonel, it infected us like some dirty plague and separated us from all but the most generous among our former good friends.

     And, of course, down there in the Transport lines was my brother Ted who groomed, polished and trained the horse between the new man’s beefy thighs. Wouldn’t Ted be the popular one now it had been revealed for whom he was labouring!’

* Their first pay since before Gallipoli (September, 1915).

** Almost certainly Lieutenant Colonel A.C.H. Kennard, as detailed in a footnote to last week’s Blog (No. 85, February 21).

*** Meaning that when recruited in September, 1914, the Battalion’s eight Companies comprised around 125 men each. After Gallipoli, with numbers reduced erratically across the Companies, they averaged 31/32 men each.

**** A stallion! No, nobody ever heard an explanation for the misnomer, but no doubt Kennard got the blame and the mockery (as well as Ted).

All the best – FSS

Next week: Sam’s Signallers, now officially the “cream of the Battalion” get the jammy jobs to go with it – arousing the ire of their detested RSM who vows to “make the sods sweat!”...

Sam’s Battalion builds its masterpiece – an enormous communal al fresco latrine that looks like a bandstand. Sam also encounters some dire desert dentistry, and a bit of fraternal friction...

For details of how to buy Sam’s full Memoir in paperback or e-book & excerpted Gallipoli episode mini-e-book & reader reviews see right-hand column

All proceeds to British Red Cross

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

Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… nothing that’s much remembered occurred and yet WW1 filled seven days with fighting in barely numerable locations… on the Western Front it hammered back and forth around Ypres (February 14, 18, 20), and the French regained ground at Tahure, Champagne (15).

    In the East, the Russians continued their successes against the German Army in Dvinsk (14/15; Latvia) and in Bukovina (20; current Romania/Ukraine) and, a long way south concluded their push to take Erzerum from the Turks (16, campaign began January 10; the Caucasus), while pressing on towards Trebizond on the Turkish Black Sea coast (Feb 5-April 15) and, more or less en route, taking Mush and Aklat (18; Armenia, following the Turkish genocide of 1915).

    The Mediterranean saw a deal of confusing action with Austria bombing Italian cities Milan, Treviglio, Bergamo and Monza (14) and occupying Berat (17; Albania), while Montenegrin troops fleeing their Army followed the defeated Serbs in landing on Corfu (16) and British forces occupied neutral Greece’s Chios (17; Aegean island lately taken from Turkey) and the Bulgarian Army entered the northern Greek mainland, occupying Xanthi (20).

    A clear win for British and French Allies in Cameroons, though, as the last German fort there, at Mora, surrendered (18/19; the country had been part of the German Empire since 1884).

    Meanwhile, the 200-odd 2/1st City Of London Battalion Royal Fusiliers comrades who’d survived four months in Gallipoli without serious wound or illness, were kept busy in their new Egyptian location adjacent to a village called Beni Salama, 30 miles north-west of Cairo. My father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London (still under-age at 17), his mates, and other British and Australian Battalions who followed them got stuck into building their own tented town on the banks of the Nile and the edge of the Sahara…

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week, unpaid for months (like his comrades) and hankering for some tasty treat, Sam, with the “help” of his older brother Ted, approached a group of local peasants with a view to flogging the heavy wool Army underpants which seemed surplus to requirements in Egypt… that was “help” in inverted commas because Ted’s main contribution to this al fresco transaction was to lose patience with the Arab hagglers and lash out with his fists.

    Sam, who later made his living as a market trader/barrow boy back home in Edmonton, discovered the glimmering of that talent by nonetheless taking a couple of the startled and bruised fellaheen aside to do the deal for at least enough piastres to buy a tin of pears.

    Now he describes another substantial advance in the direction of achieving sanitary living conditions in this remote spot:

‘… we had been busy during most of our waking hours, erecting tents to create this huge camp. I considered our masterpiece a latrine which in shape and size resembled a large bandstand, but without a roof.

     First, we’d dug out a large hole, say 15 foot deep. Into it we threw layers of quicklime, shingle, straw and coarse sand. This arrangement, said the Royal Engineers officer who designed the contraption, would assist in speedy dispersal of the deposits which, he anticipated, large numbers of visitors would be eager to contribute. The seating – good, stout wood with plank back-rests – ran around the perimeter of this vast hole, facing outward.

     Each morning all seats were occupied, while a circle of waiting clients kept keen watch for imminent vacancies. All this took place in full view of our camp and must have excited some interest among passengers on the nearby railway.’

Of course, some might have thought this very public toilet contrary to British habits of privacy, but settling into this bare yet exotic location seemed easy to Sam and his pals the moment they thought back a few weeks to their hungry, thirsty, roasting, freezing and terrifying existence in Gallipoli. He writes:

‘Still no money and a very limited diet – though now including dates, from which we often had to scrape annoying grains of sand. We remembered, however, the trying conditions recently endured, and there were few grumbles.

     To sleep, I used to make a hollow in the sand into which a hip could sink, then fold one blanket double and, clad in just a vest, lie down with the other blanket wrapped around me. Using my pack for a pillow, I slept in real comfort most nights. So different, almost luxurious, compared with the Peninsula… I would recall one trench in the reserve area where one could never stand upright during hours of darkness because a number of Turkish fixed rifles targeted that position and bullets thudded into the back of the trench at regular intervals… So a tent on the edge of a desert was much to be preferred.

     However, one night a double tooth* gave me hell and I walked around the camp in awful agony. At dawn, I dressed, told my mates what ailed me, and made my way to a distant tent over which flew a Red Cross flag. There I found a Medical Corporal who, without comment, sat me on a box. He got a grip on the bad tooth with his extractor pliers and, with a knee in my back and a firm grip on my head, he pulled. Without benefit of anaesthetic, the brief agony while he heaved proved memorable, but the relief when he’d finished made it worthwhile.’

Here he turns to an unfamiliar awkwardness creeping into his relationship with Ted, his brother and hero, whom Sam had followed to the recruitment office in September, 1914, when they were both under age at 16 and 18:

‘My brother and his Transport mates finally rejoined us – tough types mostly, who had never taken kindly to drill and only tentatively to military discipline. They cared well for the animals entrusted to them: at that time, a few wagon horses and ten or 12 officers’ mounts. Ted had sole charge of a fine, black stallion, which – out of respect for a former lawless horseman, or perhaps in sheer ignorance, and anyway quite bizarrely – had been dubbed Black Bess. He groomed and rode this handsome animal with a skill he’d acquired during those months working in the Qantara** horse lines.

     Under the surface, Ted and I remained as close as ever brothers could be, but now my one measly stripe marked me as a conformer, I felt, where he and his merry mates were freebooters. In other circumstances, perhaps, they would not have got away with it, but they managed to prove that parades and such were not for the likes of them. On the other hand, if heavy lifting or transporting jobs required doing, they had the know-how and strength when others didn’t.

     If an officer had the authority – which probably depended on the cash – to acquire a mount, then one of them would readily find time to act as the groom.’

* “Double tooth” means it has a double crown.

** Now officially Al Qantarah El Sharqiyya, 160 kilometres northeast of Cairo in Ismailia; the Battalion sent Ted there in September, 1915, after he’d been hauled off the boat to Gallipoli for dental treatment because his front teeth had been punched out in a fight.

All the best – FSS

Next week: A new Colonel comes between the Battalion and the Major who’d stood with them through the bullets and blizzards of Gallipoli – Sam and the lads don’t give him the best of their love…