Sam and starving POW pals wonder what’s going on: new uniforms! money! his first shower since March! new boots! Well, clogs… But still he’s so emaciated “I would not have been recognised by my own father…”

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

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Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… The Allies’ ultimately decisive Amiens Offensive (August 8-September 3), which began last week with the Battle Of Amiens (8-11) resulting in a 10-mile advance and 30,000 German prisoners taken, developed further through the continuing Battle Of Montdidier (8-15; about 24 miles southeast of Amiens, Somme department).

    The latter saw British, Canadian, French and Australian troops widen the initial Allied attack and push forward 11 miles by August 13. Meanwhile, the French advanced around Lassigny (13-15; about 38 miles southeast of Amiens) and under general Allied pressure the German Army retreated from the rivers Ancre and Oise (14-15), before holding their ground again for the more extended Second Battle Of Noyon (17-29; about 44 miles southeast of Amiens).

    In other notable Western Front moments, the British began their long-term drive in Flanders (18) and the German long-range gun targetting Paris fired its last shell (15).

    In turmoiled and confused Russia, the Bolsheviks, who had been doing rather badly in the further-flung outposts, took a town called Merv in Transcaspia (now Turkmenistan) from the regional, temporarily independent government (August 15). Otherwise, the redoubtable Czecho-Slovak Legion, spread as it was more or less the length of the Trans-Siberian railway, fought off Bolshevik counterattacks at Irkutsk (16; Siberia) and on the Ussuri river (16; Khabarovsk, far eastern Russia).

    And down in Italy, a long but small part of the campaign to get the Austria-Hungary Army out of Italy began when a surprise attack instigated the Battle Of San Matteo (August 13-September 3; Ortler Alps, northwest Italy) – the highest-altitude battle ever fought at the time – immediately ousting the garrison but then having to defend the gain.

[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. Come November/December, 1917, during his final home leave, he assured his parents that he would survive (irrationally, he knew). In December, probably, he returned to France, unattached to any specific Battalion pro tem, and dogsbodied for Brigade HQ in Arras – including excursions to 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

Of course, my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe, four months a POW now and his starving band apparently settled for a while in southern Germany, knew nothing of new developments in the war.

    Last week, he had guard Captain Kayser kick him in the crutch for scrumping and ate raw liver nicked from pigswill by his pal Wally.

    But even amid that demeaning desperation for food, the summer’s sense of things looking up – just a little and relatively – continued when Sam and pals sneaked haircuts with the horse-hospital shears and Kayser decided that was a good idea and brought in regular (rough) barbering for all. Further accommodations followed (alongside continuing starvation and brutality):

‘After that, one Sunday morning, the guards told us to take off our very soiled khaki uniforms. They handed us tunics, trousers and caps, all made of loosely woven, dark-blue material with a wide, orange stripe down each trouser-leg and round the cap. So there we were – socks and underwear unwashed for months, but brand-new uniforms. If only we could somehow have a bath…

     Everything appeared to be going our way, however. Soon, they lined up half our lot in front of an officer and gave each of us several tickets, on which were printed some German words, now only partially remembered – “Kriegsgefangenen Lager Nr. ??”, then cards of different colours printed with “Gutschein für 5 Pfennig(2)” (or 10 or 20). We needed no instruction on what these cards were all about, they were money substitutes. So where could we spend them?

     Next, they marched us off to a railway station where we entered Fourth-Class compartments with hard, wooden seats – just like the hop-pickers’ train in Kent when we were digging the outer London defences back in 1914(3). Britain and Deutschland had that much in common, I thought; the harder you worked, the harder you travelled. But I can well recall the inner pleasure I felt at this seeming return to a more normal sort of life. A clean uniform, some sort of money in my pocket, and a trip on a train to… well, I must wait and see.

     In the excitement, I almost forgot my ever-present hunger. Once more, we crossed the Rhine and this time we detrained at Mühlhausen, which we had passed through on our journey south. As we marched through its main street, I observed the townspeople taking a real interest in the spectacle of these shuffling, bent-kneed, sunken-cheeked beings. Meanwhile, I saw two civilian-dressed men moving among them, apparently answering enquiries about us. “English soldiers – look at the condition to which those people are reduced,” I heard one say. I felt sure we were the first British prisoners of war seen in those parts.

     A busy, prosperous town, Mühlhausen impressed me most with its cleanliness. Not that English towns of those days were dirty(4), but Mühlhausen had a special look in 1918, so well cared for. The housewives must have thought so too, for they, in many cases, hung feather mattresses and quilts over window sills to give them the benefit of the clean, soft air, not deterred therefrom by what the neighbours might think, as would usually be the case in England.

     We entered what appeared to be a large, public building and – more by signs than by word of mouth – were told to remove all our clothing. Ahead sat a man in a white coat to whom, in turn, we each had to present ourselves. He dipped a fairly large brush into a can and painted our scrotums and armpits with blue paste. We moved on to another white coat who shaved off the blue-painted hair.

     Finally, we entered a shower cubicle where the water, though cold, enabled us to make ourselves cleaner than we had been for many a day. Soap was not available, but long-handled brushes vigorously applied did the job. The Treaty of Geneva(5) was working at last, for which I was truly thankful.

     We had no towels so we had to dry our bodies with our trousers or tunics, but I had no complaint, feeling so refreshed by this unexpected cleansing. Unfortunately, I then had to dress myself once more in the rank vest, shirt, pants and socks. But dismay and horror hit me when I realised that my boots had vanished. A quick search of our men’s sacks and bundles failed to restore them to me, so I had to appeal to the Postens who were in charge of us. They said they knew nothing about the theft.

     However, I suspect even they couldn’t face the prospect of walking through the town in full public view with one of their prisoners bare-footed. Perhaps for that reason, they reported my loss to a senior officer at the cleansing station and one of his men handed me a pair of wooden clogs the like of which I had previously seen only in pictures of Dutch working people… at school we’d been told they wore clogs and smoked cigars, even when very young; I had no cigars, but gladly shoved my feet into these hand-carved-from-a-piece-of-wood shoes; I didn’t find them too uncomfortable, except that they cut into my insteps.

     Now I must have really looked the genuine POW in my bright, orange stripes, socks a dirty grey with trousers tucked into them, and those heavy clogs with their pointed toes. Add sunken cheeks, staring eyes and bent knees to the picture – I would not have been recognised by my own father.’

(2) Gutschein für 5 Pfennigs: voucher for 5 “pennies”.

(3) See Blog 23 December 12, 2014. Sam described the carriages conveying his first Battalion, the 2/1st Royal Fusiliers, from billets in Tonbridge to dig a trench system south of London as “Cattle trucks, pigsties, travelling chicken sheds” normally reserved for “Hop-pickers— seasonal migrants, mostly from the city, who worked hard during the few weeks of the harvest. Because they were poor people the railway company had gone to the trouble of constructing this shabby transport for them.”

(4) My father footnoted: “So many of them are in 1976, as I write” – something the older generation of every generation remarks on, no doubt.

(5) Wikipedia says a series of Geneva treaties began with Swiss businessman/social activist Henri Dunant’s reaction to the battle of Solferino, in the kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, 1859, between French/Sardinian and Austrian Armies; first the Red Cross was formed in Geneva, then in 1864 came the first Geneva Convention, aka “the Red Cross Treaty”; adopted initially by 12 nations, it codified the treatment of sick and wounded soldiers on the battlefield during declared wars, and the neutrality of medical personnel, but said of prisoners only that they should be returned to their country; the list of original signatories varies from source to source, but Wikipedia has, from International Law: A Treatise by Ronald Roxburgh, 1920: Baden, Belgium, Denmark, France, Hesse, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Prussia, Spain, Switzerland and Wurttemberg; another web page now no longer available didn’t show the German then-independent states and added Norway (with the many later ratifiers including Britain and Turkey 1865, Russia 1867, USA 1882); a Convention covering war at sea was added in 1906, then further revisions came long after World War I, in 1929, 1949 (it removed the “declared war” limitation), 1977 and 2005; protection of POWs in World War I depended more on the Hague Regulations of 1899 and 1907 which the war proved deficient, leading in part to the 1929 Geneva Convention revision covering particularly “the prohibition of reprisals and collective penalties”, says http://ow.ly/cLQz30kUrfr.

All the best– FSS

Next week: Sam spends his Gutschein on soap and fags, then sneaks off to buy a pie on the qv from the Hügelheim Gasthaus – and even fantasise about a sweet young girl.

(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.

Sam and half-starved POW pals get the worst and best of their German guards – set up for a kicking from the sick war horses they’re tending… but then offered the blessing of windfall greengages

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 final bloody phases of World War 1’s key turnaround campaign , the Second Battle Of The Marne (July 15-August 1/4/5/6 by different counts) played out with combined Allied forces reversing what began with a German attack and ended in near-rout.

    They assailed the German lines north of Oulchy-le-Château (July 29; Aisne department, 13 miles south of Soissons) with the French taking Grand Rozoy, the French and the British Buzancy, while further north the Australians occupied Merris (Nord department). Although the German Army mounted a strong counterattack the next day, it failed and the Americans occupied Seringes-et-Nesles, northeast of Fere-en-Tardennois (July 31), with the whole Allied line then advancing five miles and the great battle’s major shifts concluding when Soissons fell to the French (August 2; occupied by a German advance on May 29). The Germans fell back across the rivers Vesle and Ancre as the action subsided (August 3).

    In Russia – the “Eastern Front” having become a different kind of chaos altogether – German invasion, revolution, counter-revolution and multi-faceted Allied invasions continued their Jackson Pollock military-political spatterings on a vast canvas. Down in Ukraine, the governor under the German military dictatorship declared on April 29, Field Marshall Von Eichhorn was assassinated by Socialist Revolutionaries – as distinct from Bolsheviks (July 30). On successive days, an Allied Expeditionary Force overcame the defences of Russian White Sea port Archangel, a thousand miles north of Moscow, and a pro-Allied revolution in the city ousted the Bolsheviks and welcomed them in (August 1-2).  Meanwhile, 5,600 miles west of Moscow, British troops landed at Vladivostok (3; lately occupied by Allied allies the Czechoslovak Legions). Further, British troops reached Baku on the Caspian (4) where they became involved in one of the most complicated corners of the whole war, drawing in forces from Bolshevik and Menshevik Russia versus the Muslim Azerbaijan Democratic republic, established May 28, supported by the Ottoman Empire. Confused? They may have been. More later on that one…

[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). 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, at Wharncliffe War Hospital, Sheffield). 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. Come November/December, 1917, during his final home leave, he assured his parents that he would survive (irrationally, he knew). In December, probably, he returned to France, unattached to any specific Battalion pro tem, and dogsbodied for Brigade HQ in Arras – including excursions to 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 less uncomfortable/filthy camp for the summer, mainly working on sick and wounded German war horses.]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe, encountered a distraction from the POW’s obsession with sneaking any edible morsel available anywhere – a personal/ethical problem about whether he should parlay his smattering of picked-up German into an offered and potentially privileged position as a camp translator (Dolmetscher). Having seen other occupants of these posts take on their more aggressive guards’ characteristics, Animal Farm-style, he decided against.

    Now he moves on to further experiences of guard brutality… and also surprising kindness:

‘On the camp’s Sunday “day off”, a few prisoners went out to the stables just to feed and water the horses, but nobody did any grooming, as the Germans observed the Sabbath. We could stroll around inside the barbed wire or, when the sun shone, we would lie on the ground in a space between the huts and feel free to chat, stretch luxuriously, and perhaps reminisce about life before we became captives.

     Warm days – July, August, by then, I’m not sure – tempted the Kapitän to have a number of horses, who were nearing recovery from their ailments, released from the stables into a nearby field. The beasties went berserk. They raced about and frolicked and kicked each other, a joy to behold.

     One of those horses needed its regular treatment during that afternoon and a small, but tough, British lad was told to take a rope and lead it out of the field. But, as he approached, some frisky beasts circled around him and turned their hindquarters towards him. Kicks rained on the poor boy. Grabbing pitchforks or anything handy, some of us tried to break up the ring, but it took some moments and, by the time we rescued him, his injuries were many and awful.

     We blamed German callousness for sending in one lad when the horses were so excited – and it was said that some of the guards stood laughing during the incident.

     On other occasions, to a lesser degree, I found myself on the receiving end from both animals and guards. They ordered me to lead a big stallion through a small gap between a stable wall and a line of young fillies tethered with their hindquarters towards me. I just had to keep going while each filly in turn lashed out at the stallion as we passed. That huge brute took fewer kicks than I did. And I definitely heard laughter behind me and assumed it was a put-up job.

     Shortly after that incident, a guard took me to a stable in which I had not worked before and told me to groom an animal somewhat larger than a donkey, but smaller than the average pony. Several Germans stood around. As I went into its stall the thing commenced kicking. “Arbeit! Fest Arbeit!”(2) yelled the watching Germans, laughing as I tried to keep close to the mad creature to lessen the effect of its kicks. Occasionally, I made contact with the currycomb, sometimes achieved a stroke with the brush, but I directed most of my efforts towards avoidance of being kicked to death.

One morning, as we shuffled out of the compound and started to form into our usual work groups, a chap shorter even than my 5ft 8½ inches, gripped one of my cuffs and whispered “Come with my little lot today”. So I stood with him and about four others and, when the boss shouted “Vorwärts!”, our small party turned in the opposite direction to the usual one. Accompanied by just one Posten(3), we set off on a longish, uphill walk.

     Sheer cheek appeared to have paid off, for no complaint about my presence came from the Posten. In fact, as we marched along the lovely country roads the rather obese German, a country lad if ever I saw one, said the odd word to me. I learned he had worked in London for some months in a hotel.

     Among the hedgerows some big fruit trees grew, and I saw one young farmhand at the top of a ladder filling a basket with those fine big plums sold in England back then as Christmas gifts in pretty boxes(4). Perhaps realising how our mouths watered, our tubby Posten told us we could help ourselves to any windfalls lying in our path and some sweet greengages helped to assuage hunger pangs on such days as I was able to get a place at the front of the group…’

(2) “Arbeit! Fest Arbeit!”: “Work! Work hard!”

(3) Posten: seems to mean something like “a person in a job”; it doesn’t translate specifically as “guard”, but, clearly, my father heard it used as a generic for the men guarding him.

(4) Fruit had become a common Christmas present through the Victorian era in all social classes – the amount, type, and presentation varying according to means, of course.

All the best– FSS

Next week: Sam judges a new taskmaster called Kayser “fair, if surly” – despite a kick in the crutch that made “my groin hurt for days”! Fighting starvation remains the POWs’ obsession: scrumping, picking raw liver out of pigs’ swill – but also a small bid for self-respect via some unofficial barbering with horse shears…

(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.

No-longer-seasick Sam enjoys a couple of days as a WW1 tourist – until the Fusiliers finally sets foot on foreign soil

For Details Of How To Buy Sam’s Memoir In Paperback Or E-Book See Right-Hand Column – All Proceeds To The British Red Cross

For Free Sampler Gallipoli Chapter & Reader Reviews See Right-Hand Column

For Excerpts In AUDIO Click Here

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Dear all

A hundred years ago… today, the 22nd of February, the Russian Army stemmed the German advance at the 2nd Battle Of The Masurian Lakes (despite a defeat enumerated by 200,000 casualties against 16,000), and South African forces made further advances into German South-West Africa (now Namibia); on the 23rd British Marines moved on to Lemnos (an Aegean island annexed from the Ottoman Empire by Greece in 1912 – and scene of the remnants of Sam Sutcliffe Battalion’s 1915 Christmas dinner!), and a couple of days later began operations against Turkish Dardanelles forts to prepare the way for the Gallipoli invasion; and, of course, the attritional grind of the Western Front trenches continued.

      Meanwhile, the thousand-strong 2/1st City Of London Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, including my father, Sam Sutcliffe, still 16, and his brother, Ted, 18, both under-age volunteers, and their pals Harold Mellow and Len Minns from Edmonton, north London, sailed on… still some months from their own Gallipoli landing...

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

After last week’s brief stopover in Gibraltar harbour and, for the Londoners, the exotic experience of haggling for bargains with the bumboatmen, the Galena, the ungainly tub serving as their troopship, pottered on into the Mediterranean – destination still unknown to the Fusiliers. At least, with the Biscay storms behind them, a clean-up and recovery period could begin, as Sam wrote in his Memoir (NB, new readers, up to this point he still wrote in the third person, calling himself “Tommy”):

‘Their NCOs outlined a vigorous programme: cleansing of quarters, polishing of boots and buttons, and daily exercise in small groups. This was received with enthusiasm. There followed three days during which all on board improved both appearance and spirits…

     Tommy enjoyed the role of traveller, particularly leaning over the rail at the ship’s stern, watching the churned-up water, its apparent phosphorescence and the always widening wake – he felt a sense of urgency, a scurrying away of water humiliated, thrashed by the propellers…

     The present, happier way of life put him in a state of optimism and appreciation of the moment’s blessings – able, for instance, to largely ignore the unappetising, badly cooked and underdone food still served to them, regardless of calmer seas. Strong tea, often taken with hunks of bread and watery jam, usually passed for breakfast. That jam wouldn’t have fetched tuppence a pound in a grocer’s shop; issued in tins and made by a firm seldom heard of before or since that war, it needed no spoon, it ran like water.

     Even the boy could guess at the sort of profits the villains made and, in idle moments, soldiers discussed what they would like to do to the manufacturer and the people in authority who placed the orders and, no doubt, shared his gains and guilt.

     For some reason, the same low standards did not apply to Army biscuits, as they were called. Tommy believed that just one firm supplied the square, white, easily chewed biscuits – very different to the brick-hard squares referred to earlier. Proud of its product, the company baked its name, Jacob’s, into each biscuit – and men rejoiced when they were given them. For the rest, as far as Tommy could see, anonymity concealed the shame of their victuallers. If soldiers’ hopes have been realised they all live in a hell where the diet consists solely of their own provender.’

Note that “Tommy enjoyed the role of traveller”; from time to time, in more tranquil moments, my father would escape the hardships, terrors and horrors of war by becoming a boy entranced, imagination flying, as he saw the world outside England for the first time (and, like most of his working-class generation, he never did go abroad again after World War 1). This flight of fancy first occurred on the voyage from Gibraltar, leading him into romantic phantasms about his own thus far poor and mundane life:

‘At the end of a day of calm and deep blue sea, the sun hovered for a while, apparently, at about 30 degrees above the horizon before finally dropping towards the water. Tommy watched it descend; the whole sphere rested on the sea’s surface for a moment, then it quickly sank to three-quarters, a half, a quarter, then nothing remained save a bright glow, and that only briefly. Darkness came and, with a small amount of lighting permitted at that time, Tommy had flickering reflections to watch and accompany romantic, boyish thoughts.

     Leaning on the rail, he was joined by Jimmy Green, a nice fellow with whom he had chatted occasionally – probably four years older than Tommy, he belonged to G Company, Ted’s lot.

     Several months in the Army had not hardened or toughened Jimmy. His blond hair and pale face had that fresh, cared-for look Tommy already associated with the upper middle classes. One wondered how these types achieved it. Ordinary blokes well washed and scrubbed looked fine, but still ordinary. The Jimmy Greens of that period had quit their usually pleasant occupations and homes, generally on patriotic impulses. Their parents must have been terribly shocked but, in many instances, ensured their sons would at least have the King’s commission to cushion them against the worst buffetings of war… well, to some degree. Jimmy’s gentleness and trustfulness, his gay, white-toothed smiles, induced in Tommy a feeling of untaught inferiority which, he hoped to goodness, didn’t show.

     Some sort of counterbalance seemed to be required, so he said, almost casually, “Ah, there it is, straight ahead”. “What is?” said Jimmy, peering through the night. “Algiers, brightly lit up. You can actually trace the layout of the streets by the lines of the lights. That wide one in the middle comes straight from the back of the town down to the harbour. Now, taking the ones which branch right from the main street, can you see the second one up from the sea? That’s where we used to live.”

     Green responded with immense interest to this lie and begged for more details. Tommy promised to return to the subject later, but pleaded the urgency of a visit to the Ohang, as the bog had become known. Leaving Jimmy, he actually entered the place convulsed with laughter, but also feeling somewhat uneasy about the silly untruth. Anybody but Jimmy would have jeered jovially and perhaps called him something chummy like “You lying little sod!” and the boy might have had to duck a sideswipe, but no harm would have been done.

     Now, for the moment, he relegated the matter to his mental storeroom as he looked along the spotless seating with its circular holes evenly spaced – how many could it accommodate at a sitting? How many had suffered frozen bums while attending to natural requirements in that novel latrine? Indeed how many had almost drowned when the raging sea thrust upward through the holes, rushed along the deck and away through the scuppers? He could grin now as he thought about this formerly filthy, wet, and slippery contraption and recalled the hymn, For Those In Peril On The Sea.’

Soon enough – on February 11, eleven days after leaving Southampton – Sam/”Tommy”, the happy traveller, had to resume soldiering, albeit not too close to the battle lines for some while yet:

‘On the third day after Gibraltar, a blur on the horizon rapidly took shape as an island and the ship approached it at what appeared to be almost indecent speed for the old tub. Tommy was so enjoying his first Mediterranean cruise that the sight of land ahead failed to excite him.

     For an hour or two, the ship lay off the island, just outside a bay with rocky headlands at each extremity, a lookout tower on each. Beyond the shore, the land rose gradually in levels defined by walls, with some houses visible of a type which pleased Tommy’s eye. In England most houses had roofs of blue-grey slates sloping from a ridge – frequently seen against a grey sky, often in chilly, wet weather… the lad’s mind associated them with feelings of depressing discomfort. But here the houses – some in groups, others isolated – all had flat roofs, their walls white or cream or pastel shades of yellow or green. At that distance, under a blue sky, the bay appeared to be the home of wealthy, fortunate people, living in abodes of luxury and romance.

     Tommy concluded that the possibility of being put ashore in this heavenly place must be remote, but he enjoyed the experience of gazing at its beauty. Regret, he felt, when the ship moved off… then renewed excitement when she sailed into a large and wonderful harbour, busy with several freighters and other troopships – naval vessels anchored on the far side in front of a cluster of dockland cranes. As at Gibraltar, many small boats quickly surrounded the Galena, each with a man standing in its stern skilfully manoeuvring among the swarm by wiggling an oar from side to side. Looking back to the harbour entrance, Tommy saw stone buildings everywhere, not a brick in sight. Occasional horse-drawn carriages passed along a road on the side nearest the Galena.

     Soon NCOs moved around advising any who hadn’t heard that the island was Malta and telling their men to pack kitbags and prepare to gather in Companies. H Company grouped around the forecastle area…’

While still aboard, a Captain Boden – unseen on their voyage until that point – introduced himself as H Company’s new officer. This was the first they’d heard about the replacement of Lieutenant Swickenham, who Sam described as “kindly, but rather ineffectual” (see blog 28 “Sam and the lads get a lantern lecture on VD – and Malta?”). The men prepared to disembark:

‘Tommy procured his rations and chewed busily while trying to take in the great harbour scene: the naval ships, sailing craft, one of those fishing boats with a funnel and a sail at the stern, and lots of small boats being rowed or paddled busily between shore and ships.

     On the Galena’s foredeck, three horses, presumably officers’ mounts, were being released from the small containers in which they had spent the entire voyage, poor devils. Tommy could see these containers had sides and tops of padded leather, but the horses’ legs and bodies bore awful lacerations and discolourations. Tommy wondered if they could ever be restored to a decent condition. What a hell they had endured, confined thus and, for the first week, thrown about day and night.

     Tommy met up with Ted and Harold briefly and enjoyed pleasant speculation about the island, where they would live, and for how long they would remain there. One thing they knew for certain already – the temperature was higher than they had ever experienced, except on the very hottest days at home. They shared a particular happiness because they and the Galena would shortly part company. That ship was a bad’un and they’d had enough of her.

     Even while the men gathered in Companies, the ship eased towards a quay where the crew made it fast and placed two gangways in position. Captain Boden announced that six men would be needed from each Company to offload stores. CSM West asked H Company for volunteers… who would later travel on the transport wagons, he shrewdly added, whereas everyone else would march to their destination carrying their kitbags. Since the whole Company suddenly became volunteers, the CSM selected the biggest and beefiest.

     The Captain led his men ashore past an enterprising member of the ship’s crew who positioned himself at the head of the gangway and sold pictures of the Galena to those who wanted to treasure a memory of that floating palace. Tommy bought one, and never regretted the financial outlay of 2d – shown to friends, it provided many a laugh in later years.*

     On reaching the road, Captain Boden turned left and, followed by his men in no particular formation, continued walking for some distance. Then he stopped and, loudly, requested the CSM to carry on. After ten days of confinement in the old ship, the smartness in drill which had become customary in England could not be regained immediately. All had recovered from their sickness, but lack of exercise and indifferent food had taken their toll. However, the novelty of being in a strange country – first steps on foreign soil for nearly all of them – and the certainty of release from their hammocks in the cargo holds made them anxious for a fresh start under their new officer.

     The Company soon lined up in correct sections and platoons with their Corporals and Sergeants; the roll was called and the CSM reported, “All present and correct, sir!”’

* Unfortunately, we’ve long since lost my father’s postcard of the Galeka (Galena being one of the many slight aliases he used in his memoir, for reasons I never wholly understood), but you can see what may well be the same image at http://www.simplonpc.co.uk/UnionCastle1.html - anchor5228

All the best – FSS

Next week: The Fusiliers settle into their new “home” in Malta…