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To British Red Cross
Dear all
A hundred years ago… on the Western
front the three-day Battle Of Neuve Chapelle and the three-month Battle of
Champagne ended on March 13 and 17. Though it’s not obvious what “ended” meant
in that war; perhaps attack and counter-attack ceased and attrition resumed, at
least in the eyes of the commanders. The lack of clarity about events may be
deduced from the fact that two quite recent learned studies of Champagne
calculate French casualties as either 93,000 or 240,000.
A
cluster of firsts occurred: the first neutral shop sunk by German submaries
(13th), the first merchant ship attacked by German aircraft (15th, SS Blonde off North Foreland, five bombs all
missed), the first airship raid on Paris (21st). But also a last: the sinking
of the last German cruiser afloat (14th, Dresden,
off Chile by a squadron of three British ships).
But
other events were already shaping the future of my father, Private Sam
Sutcliffe’s 2/1st City Of London Battalion, Royal Fusiliers
– 1,000 volunteers, including 16-year-old Sam’s brother Ted, 18, and their two
mates from Edmonton, north London, Len Minns and Harold Mellow, all just
arrived at their new barracks on sunny Malta for further training. They had no
idea what the Army planned for them – some months ahead as it turned out. And
they had no idea what was happening around the Gallipoli peninsula…
Namely, the British and French Navies
backed out of the ill-conceived bombardments of Smyrna (15th) and the
Dardanelles forts (18th; that day Ottoman mines sank three battleships). And at
that point (17th) command of the Dardanelles Expeditionary Force transferred to
a man, General Sir Ian Hamilton, Sam Sutcliffe had never heard of, but about
whom he would, in due course, develop forthright views (see autumn 1915 in the
Memoir or Gallipoli episode e-book).
FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
Via
some sweaty marching from the dockside, last week the Battalion arrive at St
George’s Barracks, a building which stood alone in a barren area and put young
Sam in mind of Foreign Legion outposts in the weekly story magazines he’d read.
They fed on stew and those big hard biscuits – possibly preserved from
Napoleonic times – which one dab hand with a hammer and chisel carved and sold
as frames for photographs. Then Sam, curious as always, started to recce the
place – NB new readers, as ever up to this point, in his Memoir Sam wrote about
himself in the third person as “Tommy”. He recalled his first evening’s
wanderings in vivid detail:
‘With no further duties that day, Tommy wandered around the
barracks to get a general idea of the layout; outside one of the rooms he came
across dour, old Len, squatting on the covered pavement — strangely enough, its
roof also appeared to be made out of little paving stones. Len the silent was
really as much of a romantic as the younger Tommy, whose pleasure at being
allowed to live in such exciting quarters he shared. He said, “It’s funny to
think that, if we’d been put into such bare buildings in chilly old England,
we’d have thought it was worse than a prison. Yet here, with sunshine and
warmth around us, we’re thrilled!”
Tommy told Len
where he was living and soon discovered his brother and Harold lodging in the
same block, on the ground floor. He chatted with them in their room and,
glancing around at their companions, he began to feel that his brother might be
a little out of place. Marlow for instance: about 22, nose flattened (where
else than in a boxing ring), but in a way that made him look handsome with his
very white teeth and wide smile; he was a natural intimidator who, having
selected his victim, would shift his weight constantly from one foot to another
while talking, and suddenly flash a right to the eye, a left to the jaw and a
right to the solar plexus… none of them actually landed, but they were so
close. Although his equals would have returned the treatment and no harm done,
he didn’t appear to select equals.
He and several
others spoke a garble, parts of it difficult to understand. Hard men, they
supported each other’s boasts about bits of trickery and ponces and fights in
the King’s Cross area. But Ted didn’t appear bothered about them and Tommy
guessed that, as he had always done in the past, his brother would fight his
way through any trouble which cropped up.
Before darkness
fell, the orderlies fetched four candle-lamps and a large, iron, piss tub,
which they placed, on the balcony outside the door. At 10 the Sergeant came
round banging on doors and shouting “Lights out!” Someone doused the candles…
and Tommy was awakened after what seemed a very short night by cries of “Show a
leg! Hup, hup!” So hup he got, grabbed soap and towel, and followed others to a
large covered area with rows of metal bowls and cold-water taps.
A good wash made
him feel fine and awoke him to the fact that he hadn’t put on his trousers,
unlike the others. But men around him busy with brush, soap, lather and
cutthroat razors hadn’t time to notice him. He resolved to go through that
shaving routine from time to time, for he saw that, once he’d covered his face
with lather no one could observe that he had no whiskers to remove. Today he
washed his feet by way of a treat, but soiled them somewhat walking back to his
room because he hadn’t put his boots on either. So started his first full day
on foreign soil.’
Sam’s trouser problem
resolved, he (and his comrades) soon – and at last – received a rather crucial
item of soldierly gear they’d almost forgotten they were missing… rifles!
‘The routines of parades and meals soon became established
and, at last, they were given rifles, bayonets and other items of equipment.
The rifles looked pretty old, but that sort of weapon never really wore out.
Lance Corporal X*, wearer of a South African War** ribbon, said he’d used the
long Lee-Enfield rifles with the short bayonets back then***. He taught the
rudiments of their use and care – most of the officers, and many NCOs, had
little knowledge of these matters and groups of them were sent off for training
from which they returned very brisk and well-informed.’
* My father didn’t name him at all;
nothing significant I’m sure – at that moment he probably just couldn’t come up
with one of the aliases he liked to deploy.
** Or the Boer War, that is.
*** Accrued from various
sources, I’m no expert etc – Lee-Enfield supplied the main British Army rifle
1895-1926; bolt-action, ten .303 rounds in the magazine, loaded either a round
at a time or in 5-round “chargers”; the First World War model was the SMLE MK
III, price £3 15/-, introduced in 1907 along with the Pattern 1907 sword
bayonet; however, from what my father goes on to say, it’s clear that, on
Malta, his Battalion got issued with the older “long” version the Boer War
veteran Lance Corporal mentions (30.2-inch barrel compared to 21.2-inch shorter
version); redesigns simplified the Mk III during the war, for ease of
manufacture more than usage, apparently; Lee- Enfield took its name from the
designer of the bolt-action system James Paris Lee and the Royal Small Arms
Factory, Enfield – adjacent to my father’s district, Edmonton, North London.
All
the best –
FSS
Next week: Mediterranean fever!
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