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Dear all
A hundred years ago this week… the
focus of fighting was actually Serbia, where the invasion from different
compass points by Bulgarian and German/Austro-Hungarian forces numbering
400,000 in all proceeded steadily. The Serbs lost at Ovche Pole (November 15),
Babuna Pass and Prilep (16), Novi Pazar (20) and Krivolak (21) – but the French
defeated the Bulgarians by the Cherna river in the south of the country (16) to
continue heading off any move on Greece.
While
the Russian Army complained of lacking guns and uniforms on the Eastern Front,
in Persia their advance neared its objective, Teheran.
Elsewhere,
the Canadian Army raided the Germans at Messines, Belgium (November 18), the
bloody 4th Battle Of The Isonzo between Italy and Austria-Hungary continued, a
mine sank British hospital ship SS Anglia
off Folkestone (17, losses diversely recorded as 85 and 175, wounded soldiers
and crew), and the Allies occupied Tibati in German Cameroons (21).
Meanwhile,
in Gallipoli Lord Kitchener visit on November 10 was to result in the British
Cabinet agreeing an evacuation to start in December. But the troops knew
nothing of it. At Suvla Bay, the 2/1st City Of London
Battalion, Royal
Fusiliers, including my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe
from Edmonton, north London (still under-age at 17) continued their by then
attritional struggle with the Turks… their original 1,000 much reduced by the
effects of poor food, water shortage, disease, fatigue, and the emotional wear
and tear of fear and the constant effort to keep it in check…
FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
Last week, my father took a brief break from
his 24-hour, seven-days-a-week hilltop Signals station – and his dispiriting
comrade Harry Green – and wandered down to the Battalion’s main trenches in
Essex Ravine, en route dodging snipers, strange new black-smoking shells, the
first warplanes he ever saw (a pair of Taubes) – and being deeply moved by a
passing encounter with the indefatigable professionalism of a standing-Army
Royal Scots Company.
But
now came one of the campaign’s most desperate trials for both sides (the spread
of material my father wrote means I have to begin the story of the great
blizzard one blog earlier than the attempted “100-years-ago-this-week” schedule
would dictate):
‘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.’
With no better offer
forthcoming, Sam set off back to his hilltop Signals post and poor Harry Green:
‘On my journey back, the going was tough, especially when I
slid down into a trench with ice at the bottom. Each step forward broke the ice
and I was continually delayed by struggles to free my boots.
Exhausted and in
despair I had a great piece of luck, for I discovered an entrance to another of
those short, covered trenches. 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.
I found Green, my
mate on the hilltop, 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.’
* The Gallipoli blizzard began on November 27, 1915; in
Strong For Service, his biography of
Lord Nathan (at this point Major Harry Nathan, commanding officer of the 2/1st
Royal Fusiliers, aliased by my father as “Booth”) H. Montgomery Hyde notes
12,000 cases of frostbite and exposure arising; he reports that, in a letter
home, Nathan wrote of “15 degrees of frost” (meaning a temperature of 17° Fahrenheit).
** This suggests that, in reality, the arrangement, mentioned in
Blog 70 8/11/15, 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.
*** 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. Any further information on the Bishop welcome!
All
the best –
FSS
Next week: A thaw reveals the blizzard’s outcome in full – and Sam’s
sniper-dodging tricks lead to tragedy when an even younger boy tries to copy
him…
