ONLINE: “Gallipoli, a foot soldier’s First Battle” - Phil Sutcliffe ZOOM

Email jd@wfa-birmingham.org.uk to attend

“Gallipoli, a foot soldier’s First Battle” - Phil Sutcliffe ZOOM

Sam Sutcliffe, 16, lied about his age to enlist with his older brother Ted in September, 1914, expecting to find himself on the Western Front in no time. Instead, after unusually extensive training that made him a Signaller Lance Jack, he first heard shots fired “with intent to kill” in September, 1915, when his 2/7 Royal Fusiliers approached Suvla Bay. He and his pals endured three months assailed by heat, flies, centipedes, blizzards, malnutrition – and the Turkish Army. No sooner had evacuation’s blessed humiliation offered the Battalion remnants Xmas easement in Lemnos than a small-hours Sergeant-Major’s roar on Boxing Day sent them back to the peninsula. So, V Beach, a second evacuation, and further additions to the tragedy/sometimes comedy of Sam’s story (featuring poor young Nibs, Lieutenant Chalk’s hip bath, the Bishop Of Croydon, glum Harry Green, “No. 9” the awful MO, Peter Nieter’s mighty organ, the Essex machine-gunners’ side of beef, Asiatic Annie, the SS River Clyde, Germans dropping bombs from planes(!), Sedd el Bahr and… more! This is Sam’s own account, read by his son Phil, who edited his WW1 Memoir, Nobody Of Any Importance