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-Project Gutenberg's The British Army From Within, by Evelyn Charles Vivian
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: The British Army From Within
-
-Author: Evelyn Charles Vivian
-
-Release Date: September 4, 2016 [EBook #52974]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BRITISH ARMY FROM WITHIN ***
-
-
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-
-Produced by Brian Coe, Charlie Howard, and the Online
-Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
-book was produced from images made available by the
-HathiTrust Digital Library.)
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-
-THE BRITISH ARMY FROM WITHIN
-
-
-
-
-    THE BRITISH ARMY
-    FROM WITHIN
-
-    BY
-    E. CHARLES VIVIAN
-
-    AUTHOR OF
-    “PASSION FRUIT,” “DIVIDED WAYS,” ETC.
-
-
-    HODDER AND STOUGHTON
-    LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
-    MCMXIV
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
-    CHAPTER I
-                                         PAGE
-    “UBIQUE”: THE ARMY AS A WHOLE           9
-
-
-    CHAPTER II
-
-    THE WAY OF THE RECRUIT                 25
-
-
-    CHAPTER III
-
-    OFFICERS AND NON-COMS.                 46
-
-
-    CHAPTER IV
-
-    INFANTRY                               60
-
-
-    CHAPTER V
-
-    CAVALRY                                76
-
-
-    CHAPTER VI
-
-    ARTILLERY AND ENGINEERS                92
-
-
-    CHAPTER VII
-
-    IN CAMP                               106
-
-
-    CHAPTER VIII
-
-    MUSKETRY                              120
-
-
-    CHAPTER IX
-
-    THE INTERNAL ECONOMY OF THE ARMY      136
-
-
-    CHAPTER X
-
-    THE NEW ARMY                          158
-
-
-    CHAPTER XI
-
-    ACTIVE SERVICE                        169
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-“UBIQUE”: THE ARMY AS A WHOLE
-
-
-On the badges of the corps of Engineers, and also on those of the Royal
-Artillery, will be found the word “Ubique,” but it is a word that might
-just as well be used with regard to the whole of the British Army,
-which serves everywhere, does everything, undergoes every kind of
-climate, and gains contact with every class of people. In this respect,
-the British soldier enjoys a distinct advantage over the soldiers of
-continental armies; he has a chance of seeing the world. India, Africa,
-Egypt, the West Indies, Mauritius, and the Mediterranean stations are
-open to him, and by the time he leaves the service he has at least had
-the opportunity of becoming cosmopolitan in his tastes and ways--of
-becoming a man of larger ideas and better grasp on the problems of life
-than were his at the time when he took the oath and passed the doctor.
-Of that phase, more anon.
-
-It is of little use, in the present state of the British Army, to
-attempt to define its extent or composition, for it is in such a
-state of flux that the numbers of battalions, regiments, and batteries
-of a year ago are as obsolete as the Snider rifle. There used to
-be 157 battalions of infantry, 31 regiments of cavalry, and about
-180 batteries of horse and field artillery, together with about 100
-companies and 9 mountain batteries of Royal Garrison Artillery, forming
-the principal strength of the British Army. To these must be added the
-Royal Engineers, the Army Service Corps, the Royal Ordnance Department,
-the R.A.M.C., the Army Pay Corps, and other non-combatant units
-necessary to the domestic and general internal working of an army.
-To-day these various forces are increased to such an extent that no man
-outside the War Office can tell the strength of infantry, cavalry, and
-artillery; no man, either, can tell what will be the permanent strength
-of the Army on a peace footing, when the present urgent need for men no
-longer exists, and there is only to be considered the maintenance of a
-force sufficient for the garrisoning of colonial and foreign stations
-and for ordinary defensive needs at home.
-
-Generally speaking, the soldier at home, no matter to what arm or
-branch of the service he belongs, undergoes a continuous training. It
-takes three years to make an infantryman fully efficient, five years
-to make a cavalryman thoroughly conversant with his many duties, and
-five years or more to teach a gunner his business. The raw material
-from which the Army is recruited is mixed and sometimes uneducated
-stuff, and, in addition to this, recruits are enlisted at an age when
-they must be taught everything--they are past the age of the schoolboy
-who absorbs tuition readily and with little trouble to his instructors,
-and they have not attained to such an age as will permit them to take
-their work really seriously. This, of course, does not apply to a time
-of great national emergency, when the men coming to the colours are
-actuated by the highest possible motives, eager to fit themselves for
-the work in hand, and bent on getting fit for active service in the
-shortest possible time. In times of peace, recruits join the colours
-from many motives--pure patriotism is not a common one--and, in
-consequence, the hard realities of soldiering in peace time disillusion
-them to such an extent that they are difficult to teach, and thus need
-the full term of training for full efficiency. Half the work of their
-instructors consists in getting them into the proper frame of mind
-and giving them that _esprit de corps_ which is essential to the war
-fitness of a voluntary army.
-
-At the best, there is much in the work that a soldier is called on
-to do which is beyond his understanding, in the first years of his
-service. One consequence of this is that he learns to do things without
-questioning their meaning, and thus acquires a habit of obeying;
-this, up to a few years ago, was the object of military training--to
-instil into the soldier unquestioning obedience to orders, and the
-sentence--“obedience is the first duty of the soldier,” gained currency
-and labelled the soldier as a mere cog in a great machine, one whose
-duty lay in obeying as did that Roman sentinel at Pompeii. One of
-the chief lessons of the South African war, however, was that such
-obedience was no longer the first duty of the soldier; he must obey,
-no less than before, but scientific warfare demands an understanding
-obedience, and not the unquestioning, die-at-his-post fidelity of old
-time. The recruit of to-day must be taught not only to obey, but to
-understand, and by that fact the work of his instructors, and his own
-work as well, are largely increased. “Obedience” was the watchword of
-yesterday. “Obedience and initiative” is the phrase of to-day.
-
-To come down to concrete facts as regards the actual composition
-and general duties of the Army. The main station in England is
-Aldershot, headquarters of the first Army Corps. Theoretically, in
-all cases of national emergency, the Aldershot Command is first to
-move, and the units composing it are expected to be able to mobilise
-for active service at twenty-four hours’ notice. Next in importance
-are Colchester, Shorncliffe, York, and Bulford--the centre of the
-Salisbury Plain area under military control. In Ireland the principal
-stations are Dublin and the Curragh. In these stations, under normal
-circumstances, the furlough season begins at Christmas time and lasts
-up to the following March; for this period men are granted leave in
-batches, and drill and training for those who remain in barracks while
-the others take their holidays is somewhat relaxed. Serious training
-begins in March, when the corporals, sergeants, and troop and section
-officers begin to lick their squads, sections, and troops into shape.
-Following on this comes company training for the infantry, squadron
-training for the cavalry, and battery training for the artillery,
-and this in turn is followed by battalion training for infantry,
-regimental training for cavalry, and brigade training for artillery.
-Somewhere during the period taken up before the beginning of regimental
-and battalion training, musketry has to be fitted in, and, as the
-ranges cannot accommodate all the men at once, this has to be done
-by squadrons and companies, while those not engaged in perfecting
-their shooting continue with their other training. At the conclusion
-of the training of units--regiments, battalions, and brigades of
-artillery--brigade and divisional training is begun, and then manœuvres
-follow, in which the troops are given opportunities of learning the
-working of an army corps, as well as getting practical experience of
-camp life under conditions as near those obtaining on active service as
-circumstances will admit. By the time all this has been completed, the
-furlough season starts again, and the round begins once more with a few
-more recruits to train, a few old soldiers missing from the ranks.
-
-In addition to the regular course of training that lasts through the
-year and goes on from year to year, there are various “courses” to be
-undergone in order to keep the departmental staff of each unit up to
-strength. Thus, in the infantry, signallers must be specially trained,
-and pioneers, who do all the sanitary work of their units, must be
-taught their duties, while musketry instructors and drill instructors
-have to be selected and taught their duties. Each unit, except as
-regards medical service and a few things totally out of its range
-of activity, is self-contained and self-supporting, and thus it is
-necessary that it should train its own instructors and its own special
-men for special work, together with understudies to take their places
-in case of casualties. The cavalry trains its own signallers, scouts,
-shoeing smiths, cooks, pioneers, and to a certain extent medical
-orderlies. The artillery does likewise, and in addition keeps up a
-staff of artificers to attend to minor needs of the guns--men capable
-of repairing breakages in the field, as far as this is possible.
-Wherever horses are concerned, too, saddlers must be trained to keep
-leather work in repair.
-
-The Engineers, a body of men who seldom get the recognition their work
-deserves, have to train in telegraphy, bridge-building, construction
-and demolition of all things, from a regular defensive fortification
-to a field kitchen, and many other things incidental to the smooth
-working of an army in the field. Departmental corps, such as the Army
-Service, Army Ordnance, and R.A.M.C., not only train but exercise their
-functions in a practical way, for in peace time an army must be fed,
-equipped, and doctored, just the same as in war--except that in the
-latter case its requirements are more strenuous. The ancient belief
-entertained by civilians to the effect that the Army is a profession
-of laziness is thoroughly exploded as soon as one passes through the
-barrack gates, for the Army as a whole works as hard as, if not harder
-than the average man in equivalent stations of civilian life.
-
-In foreign and colonial stations, the work goes on just the same, as
-far as limitations of climate will permit. In “plains” stations in
-India, the heat of the summer months renders training during the day
-impossible, and men get their work over, for the most part, in the
-very early morning, or in the cool of the evening. Malta and Gibraltar
-are subject to the same limitations in a lesser degree, as is South
-Africa, while Mauritius and minor colonial stations have their own
-ways. But, no matter where the unit concerned may be, it works--fitness
-is dependent on work, and no unit is allowed to get rusty, while the
-variety of work involved prevents men from getting stale.
-
-At the same time, there is plenty of relaxation and sport as well as
-work in the routine of military life. Set a battalion down in a new
-station, and the chances are ten to one that on the evening of their
-arrival the men will be kicking a football about. Each company and
-squadron, and each battery of artillery as well, has its own sports
-fund and sports club, which keeps going the national games in the unit
-concerned. Men work hard and play hard, and their play is made to help
-their work. Infantry units organise cross-country races which help
-enormously in maintaining the men in fit marching condition; cavalry
-units get up scouting competitions and other sporting fixtures based on
-work--to say nothing of tent pegging, lemon cutting, and other forms of
-military sport of which the Royal Military Tournament annually affords
-examples, while shooting ranges form fields for weekly competitions at
-such times as they are not in use for annual musketry courses.
-
-The actual composition of the various units composing the British Army
-differs from that of continental armies, the only units of strength
-which are identical being those of the army corps, and the division,
-which is half an army corps. The next unit in the scale is the
-brigade, which is composed of three batteries of field or two of horse
-artillery, three regiments of cavalry, or four battalions of infantry.
-A division is made up of brigades, which vary in number and composition
-according to the work which that particular division will be expected
-to accomplish--there is a standard for the composition of the division,
-but changes now in process of taking place in the composition of the
-whole army render it unsafe to quote any standard as definite. A normal
-division, certainly, is composed of cavalry, artillery, and infantry in
-certain strengths, together with non-combatants and supply units making
-up its total strength to anywhere between 20,000 and 30,000 men.
-
-The unit of strength in which figures become definite is the brigade of
-artillery, the regiment of cavalry, and the battalion of infantry. The
-peace strength of each of these units may be regarded, as a rule, as
-from 10 to 20 per cent. over the war strength, and the war strength is
-as follows:
-
-For cavalry, a regiment consists of about 620 officers and men of all
-ranks; this body is divided into three service squadrons, each of an
-approximate strength of 160 officers, non-commissioned officers, and
-men, the remainder of the strength of the unit forming the “reserve
-squadron,” devoted to the headquarters staff--the commanding officer
-and administrative staff of the regiment, as well as the “pom-pom” or
-one-pounder quick-firer, of which one is included in the establishment
-of every cavalry regiment. In this connection it is probable that the
-experiences of the present European war will lead to the adoption of
-a greater number of these quick-firers, and in future each cavalry
-regiment will probably have at least two “pom-poms” as part of its
-regular equipment. The possession of these, of course, involves the
-training of a gun crew for each weapon--a full complement of gunners
-and drivers.
-
-For artillery, a brigade is divided into three batteries, each of an
-approximate strength of 150 men and six guns (the artillery battery
-corresponds to the cavalry squadron and to the infantry company)
-and, in addition, one ammunition column, together with transport
-and auxiliary staff, making up a total of about 600 officers,
-non-commissioned officers, and men. This refers to the field artillery,
-which forms the bulk of the British artillery strength, and is armed
-with 18½-pounder quick-firing guns. The Royal Horse Artillery is
-armed with a lighter gun, and is used mainly as support to cavalry
-in single batteries. It is so constituted as to be more mobile and
-capable of rendering quicker service than the R.F.A. Horse artillery
-is hardly ever constituted into brigades, as is the field artillery.
-Horse artillery, again, has no counterpart in the armies of Continental
-nations, so far as mobility and quality of armament are in question.
-
-Infantry reckons its numbers by battalions, of which the war strength
-is approximately 1010 officers, non-commissioned officers, and men
-per battalion. Each battalion is divided into four double companies,
-the “double-company system” having been adopted in order to compensate
-for a certain shortage of officers. The double company may be reckoned
-at 240 officers, non-commissioned officers, and men, roughly, and
-the remainder of the total is taken up by two maxim-gun sections and
-the headquarters staff of the unit. As in the case of the cavalry
-“pom-pom,” it is more than likely that the number of maxims or
-machine-guns per battalion will be increased, as a result of the
-experiences gained in the present Continental war.
-
-Engineers and departmental units are divided into companies of varying
-strengths, according to the part they are called on to play when the
-division is constituted. Thus it is self-evident that an average
-division will require more Engineers, who do all the field work of
-construction and demolition, than it will Army Ordnance men, who attend
-to the equipment of the division--fitting out with clothing, provision
-of transport vehicles, etc. The number of men of departmental corps
-allotted to each division in the field varies with the strength of the
-division and with its distance from its base of supplies.
-
-There is a permanent and outstanding difference between the British
-Army as a whole and any Continental army as a whole. In the case of
-the Continental army--no matter which one is chosen for purposes of
-comparison, the conscript system renders it a part of the nation
-concerned, identifies the army with the nation, and incidentally takes
-out the element of freedom. A man in a conscript army is serving
-because he must, and, no matter how patriotic he may be, there are
-times when this is brought home to him very forcibly by the discipline
-without which no army could exist. In the British Army, on the other
-hand, the men serving are there by their own choice; this fact gives
-them a sense that the discipline, no matter how distasteful it may be,
-is a necessity to their training--by their enlistment they chose to
-undergo it. But the British Army, until the present war linked it on
-to the man in the street, was not a part of the nation, but a thing
-distinct from the nation; it was a profession apart, and none too
-enviable a profession, in the opinion of many, but something to be
-avoided by men in equivalent walks of civilian life.
-
-There are advantages as well as disadvantages in the voluntary system
-by which our Army is raised and maintained. As an advantage may be
-set first the spirit of the men; having enlisted voluntarily, and
-ascertained by experience that they must make the best of it or be
-considered utterly worthless, men in a voluntary army gain a spirit
-that conscripts can never attain. They are soldiers of their own
-free will, with regimental traditions to maintain, and practice has
-demonstrated that they form the finest fighting body, as a whole, among
-all the armies of the world. On the other hand, they have no political
-significance, and are but little understood, as regards their needs
-and the constitution of the force to which they belong. In France, for
-instance, the rule is “every citizen a soldier,” and it is a rule which
-is observed with but very few exceptions. The result is that every
-citizen who has been a soldier is also a voter, and in the matter of
-army requirements he votes in an understanding way, while the British
-voter, with the exception of the small percentage who have served in
-the Army, is as a rule unmoved by Army needs and questions. To this
-extent the Army suffers from the voluntary system, though the quality
-of the Army itself under present voluntary conditions may be held to
-compensate for this. It is doubtful whether it does compensate.
-
-Further, the voluntary system makes of life in the ranks a totally
-different thing from civilian life. In conscript armies the discipline
-to which men are subjected makes their life different from that of
-their civilian days, but not to such an extent as in the voluntary
-British Army. The civilian can never quite understand the soldier;
-Kipling came nearer than any other civilian in his understanding, but
-even he failed altogether to appreciate the soldier of to-day--perhaps
-he had a better understanding of the soldier of the ’eighties and
-’nineties, before the South African war had come to awaken the Army to
-the need for individual training and the development of initiative.
-However that may be, no man has yet written of the soldier as he really
-is, because the task has been usually attempted by civilians, to whom
-the soldier rarely shows his real self. Soldiers have themselves given
-us glimpses of their real life, but usually they have specialised
-on the dramatic and the picturesque. It is necessary, if one would
-understand the soldier and his inner life, that one should have a
-grasp of the monotony of soldiering, the drill and riding school, the
-barrack-room routine, and all that makes up the daily life, as well as
-the exceptional and picturesque.
-
-In the following chapters, showing as far as possible the inner life
-of the Army from the point of view of the soldier, an attempt has
-been made to show the average of life in each branch of the service.
-Exceptions occur: the quality of the commanding officer makes all the
-difference in the life of the unit which he commands; again, apart
-from the influence exercised by the personality of the commanding
-officer, that of the company or squadron officer is a very potent
-factor in the lives of the men under his command. The British Army,
-fine fighting machine though it is, is not perfect, and there are
-instances of bad commanding officers, bad squadron and company
-officers, just as there are instances of superlatively good ones.
-Between these is the influence exerted by the mass on the mass, from
-which an average picture may be drawn.
-
-That picture is the portrait of the British soldier, second to none.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-THE WAY OF THE RECRUIT
-
-
-The way of the recruit, though still a hard one, is not so hard as
-it used to be, for, especially in the cavalry and artillery, various
-modifications have been introduced by which the youngster is broken in
-gradually to his work. This is not all to the good, for under the new
-way of working the training which precedes “dismissal” from recruit’s
-training to the standing of a trained soldier takes longer, and,
-submitting the recruit to a less strenuous form of life for the period
-through which it lasts, does not produce quite so handy and quick a
-man as the one who was kept at it from dawn till dark, with liberty at
-the end of his official day’s work to clean up equipment for the next
-day. Still, the annual training of the “dismissed” soldier is a more
-strenuous business now than in old time, so probably the final result
-is about the same.
-
-The recruit’s first requirements, after he has interviewed the
-recruiting sergeant on the subject of enlistment is to take the
-oath--a very quick and simple matter--and then to pass the doctor,
-which is not so simple. The recruit is stripped, sounded, tested for
-full physical efficiency, and made to pass tests in eyesight and
-breathing which, if he emerges satisfactorily, proclaim him as near
-physical perfection as humanity can get without a course of physical
-culture--and that course is administered during his first year of
-service. Kept under the wing of the recruiting sergeant for a matter of
-hours or days, as the case may be, the recruit is at last drafted off
-to his depot, or direct to his unit, where his real training begins in
-earnest.
-
-We may take the case of a recruit who had enlisted from mixed motives,
-arrived at a station whence he had to make his way to barracks in the
-evening, in order to begin his new life; here are his impressions of
-beginning life in the Army.
-
-He went up a hill, and along a muddy lane, and, arriving at
-the barracks, inquired, as he had been told to do, for the
-quartermaster-sergeant of “C” Squadron. He was directed to the
-quartermaster-sergeant’s office, and, on arrival there, was asked
-his name and the nature of his business by a young corporal who took
-life as a joke and regarded recruits as a special form of food for
-amusement. Having ascertained the name of the recruit, the corporal,
-who was a kindly fellow at heart, took him down to the regimental
-coffee bar and provided him with a meal of cold meat, bread, and
-coffee--at the squadron’s expense, of course, for the provision of the
-meal was a matter of duty. The corporal then indicated the room in
-which the recruit was to sleep, and left him.
-
-The recruit opened the door of the room, and looked in. It was a long
-room, with a row of narrow beds down each side, and in the middle two
-tables on iron trestles, whereon were several basins. On almost every
-bed sat a man, busily engaged in cleaning some article of clothing or
-equipment; some were cleaning buttons, some were pipeclaying belts,
-some were engaged with sword-hilts and brick-dust, some were cleaning
-boots--all were cleaning up as if their lives depended on it, for
-“lights out” would be sounded at a quarter-past ten, and it was already
-past nine o’clock. When they saw the recruit, they gave him greeting.
-“Here’s another one!” they cried. “Here’s another victim!” and other
-phrases which led this particular recruit to think, quite erroneously,
-that he had come to something very bad indeed. Two or three were
-singing, with more noise than melody, a song which was very old when
-Queen Anne died--it was one of the ditties of the regiment, sung by its
-men on all possible and most impossible occasions. One man shouted to
-the recruit that he had “better flap before he drew his issue,” and
-that he could not understand at all. Translated into civilian language,
-it meant that he had better desert before he exchanged his civilian
-clothing for regimental attire, but this he learned later. They seemed
-a jolly crowd, very fond of flavouring their language with words which,
-in civilian estimation, were terms of abuse, but passed as common
-currency here.
-
-The recruit stood wondering--out of all these beds, there seemed to
-be no bed for him. After a minute or two, however, the corporal in
-charge of the room came up to him, and pointed out to him a bed in one
-corner of the room; its usual occupant was on guard for twenty-four
-hours, and the recruit was informed that he could occupy that bed for
-the night. In the morning he could go to the quartermaster’s store and
-draw blankets, sheets, a pillow, and “biscuits” for his own use. After
-that, he would be allotted a bed-cot to himself. Biscuits, it must be
-explained, are square mattresses of coir, of which three, placed end to
-end, form a full-sized mattress for a military bed-cot.
-
-Sitting on the borrowed bed-cot, the recruit was able to take a good
-look round. The ways of these men, their quickness in cleaning and
-polishing articles of equipment, were worth watching, he decided. They
-joked and chaffed each other, they sang scraps of songs, allegedly
-pathetic and allegedly humorous; they shouted from one end of the room
-to the other in order to carry on conversations; they called the Army
-names, they called each other names, and they called individuals who
-were evidently absent yet more names, none of them complimentary. They
-made a lot of noise, and in that noise one of them, having finished his
-cleaning, slept; when he snored, one of his comrades threw a boot at
-him, and, since the boot hit him, he woke up and looked round, but in
-vain. Therefore he calmly went to sleep again, but this time he did not
-snore. The recruit, who had come out of an ordinary civilian home, and
-hitherto had had only the vaguest of notions as to what the Army was
-really like, wondered if he were dreaming, and then realised that he
-himself was one of these men, since he had voluntarily given up certain
-years of his life to their business. With that reflection he undressed
-and got into bed. After “lights-out” had sounded and been promptly
-obeyed, he went to sleep....
-
-His impressions are typical, and his introduction to the barrack-room
-may serve to record the view gained by the majority of those who
-enlist: that first glimpse of military life is something utterly
-strange and incomprehensible, and the recruit sleeps his first
-night in barracks--or stays awake--bewildered by the novelty of his
-surroundings, and a little afraid.
-
-In a few days the recruit begins to feel a little more at home in his
-new surroundings. One of his first ordeals is that of being fitted with
-clothing, and with few exceptions, all his clothing is ready-made,
-for the quartermaster’s store of a unit contains a variety of sizes
-and fittings of every article required, and from among these a man
-must be fitted out from head to foot. The regimental master-tailor
-attends at the clothes’ fitting, and makes notes of alterations
-required--shortening or lengthening sleeves, letting out here, and
-taking in there. When clothes and boots have been fitted, the recruit
-is issued a “small kit,” consisting of brushes and cleaning materials
-for himself and his clothes and equipment, even unto a toothbrush and
-a comb. As a rule, he omits the ceremony of locking these things away
-in his box when he returns to the barrack-room, with the result that
-most of them are missing when he looks on the shelf or in the box where
-he placed them. For, in a barrack-room, although all things are not
-common, the property of the recruit is fair game, and he catches who
-can.
-
-Gradually, as the recruit learns the need for taking care of such
-property as he wishes to retain, he also learns barrack-room slang and
-phrasing. In the Army, one is never late: one is “pushed.” One does
-not eat, but one “scoffs.” A man who dodges work is said to “swing
-the lead,” and there is no such thing as work, for it is “graft,” or
-“kom.” Practically every man, too, has his nickname: all Clarkes are
-“Nobby,” all Palmers are “Pedlar,” all Welshmen in other than Welsh
-regiments are “Taffy,” all Robinsons are “Jack,” and every surname in
-like fashion has its regular nickname. But, contrary to the belief
-entertained by the average civilian, the soldier does not readily take
-to nicknames for his superiors. For his own officers he sometimes finds
-equivalents to their names through their personal peculiarities, but
-if one spoke to a soldier of “K. of K.,” the soldier would request an
-explanation, while “Bobs” for Lord Roberts might be understood, but
-would not be appreciated. The general officer and the superior worthy
-of respect gets his full title from the soldier at all times, and
-nicknames, except for comrades of the same company or squadron, form a
-mark of contempt, especially when applied to commissioned officers.
-Sometimes the soldier finds a nickname for a comrade out of a personal
-peculiarity, as when one is particularly mean he gets the name of
-“Shonk,” or “Shonkie,” which is equivalent to “Jew,” with a reference
-to usury and extortion.
-
-If a regimental officer gets a nickname, it may be generally assumed
-that he is not held in very great respect by his men. “Bulgy,” of whom
-more anon, was a very fat young lieutenant with more bulk than brains;
-“Duffer” was another lieutenant, and his title explains itself--it was
-always used in conjunction with his surname; “Bouncer” was a major who
-had attained his rank by accident, and left the service because he
-knew it was hopeless to anticipate further promotion. The officer who
-commands the respect of his men does not get nicknamed, and the recruit
-very soon learns to call his superiors by their proper names when he
-has occasion to mention superior officers in course of conversation
-with his comrades.
-
-As a rule, the recruit is subjected to one or more practical jokes by
-his comrades in his early days as a soldier. In cavalry regiments, a
-favourite form of joke is to get the recruit to go to the farrier-major
-for his “shoeing-money,” a mythical allowance which, it is alleged,
-every recruit receives at the beginning of his service. The pretext
-might appear a bit thin if only one man were concerned in the
-deception, but the recruit is assured by a whole barrack-roomful of
-soldiers that “it’s a fact, and no hank,” and in about five cases out
-of ten he goes to the farrier-major, who, entering into the spirit of
-the thing, sends the victim in to the orderly-room sergeant or the
-provost-sergeant, and from here the recruit goes to the next official
-chosen, until he finds out the hoax. If a non-commissioned officer can
-be found with the same sense of humour as induced the shoeing-money
-hoax, he--usually a lance-corporal--orders the recruit to go to the
-sergeant-major or some other highly placed non-com. for “the key of
-the square.” As a rule, this request from the recruit provokes the
-sergeant-major to wrath, and the poor recruit gets a hot time. There
-is a legend of a recruit having been sent to the quartermaster’s store
-to get his mouth measured for a spoon, but it may be regarded as
-legend pure and simple, for there are limits to the credulity, even,
-of recruits, though authenticated instances of hoaxes which have been
-practised show that much may be done by means of an earnest manner and
-the thorough preservation of gravity in giving recommendations to the
-victim. Many a man has gone to the armourer to get his spurs fitted,
-and probably more will go yet.
-
-If a civilian takes a thorough dislike to his work, he has always the
-opportunity of quitting it; if he fails to satisfy his employers, he
-is either warned or dismissed. In the Army, the man who dislikes his
-work has to pocket the dislike and go on with the work, while if his
-employers, the regimental authorities, have any fault to find with him,
-they do not express it by dismissal until various forms and quantities
-of punishment for slackness have been resorted to. The recruit gets
-far more punishments than the old soldier, for the latter has learned
-what to do and what to avoid, in order to make life simple for himself;
-his punishments usually arise out of looking on the beer when it is
-brown to an extent incompatible with the fulfilment of his duties, and,
-when sober, he generally manages to evade “office” and its results.
-But the recruit finds that the corporal in charge of his room, the
-drill instructor in charge of him at drill, the sergeant in charge
-of his section or troop, the non-commissioned officer under whose
-supervision he does his fatigues, and a host of other superiors, are
-all capable of either placing him in the guard-room to await trial or
-of informing him that he is under open arrest, and equally liable for
-trial--and this for offences which would not count as such in civilian
-life, for three-quarters of the military “crimes” are not crimes at all
-in the civil code. Being late on parade, a dirty button--that is, a
-button not sufficiently brilliant in its polish--the need of a shave,
-a hasty word to one in authority, and half a hundred other apparent
-trivialities, form grounds for “wheeling a man up” or “running him in.”
-And the guard-room to which he retires is the “clink,” while, if he
-is so persistent in the commission of offences as to merit detention,
-the military form of imprisonment, he is said to go to the “glass
-house”--that is, he is sent to the detention barracks for the term to
-which he is sentenced--and his punishment is spoken of as “cells,”
-and never anything else. A minor form of punishment, “confined to
-barracks,” or “defaulters’,” involves the doing of the regiment’s dirty
-work in the few hours usually devoted to relaxation, with drill in full
-marching order for an hour every night, and answering one’s name at the
-guard-room at stated intervals throughout the afternoon and evening, in
-order to prevent the delinquent from leaving barracks. This the soldier
-calls “doing jankers,” and the bugle or trumpet call which orders him
-out on the defaulters’ parade is known as “Paddy Doyle”--heaven only
-knows for what reason, unless one Paddy Doyle was a notorious offender
-against military discipline in far-back times, and his reputation has
-survived his personal characteristics in the memory of the soldier.
-
-The accused, whoever he may be, is paraded first before his company,
-squadron, or battery officer, and the charge against him is read out.
-First evidence is taken from the superior officer who makes the charge,
-and second evidence from anyone who may have been witness to the
-occurrence which has caused the trouble. Then the accused is asked what
-he has to say in mitigation of his offence, and if he is wise, unless
-the accusation is very unjust indeed, he answers--“Nothing, sir.” Then,
-if the case is a minor one, the company or squadron or battery officer
-delivers sentence. If, however, the crime is one meriting a punishment
-exceeding “seven days confined to barracks,” the case is beyond the
-jurisdiction of the junior officer, and must be sent to the officer
-commanding the regiment or battalion or artillery brigade for trial. In
-that case, the offender is paraded with an escort of a non-commissioned
-officer and man, and marched on to the verandah of the regimental
-orderly room when “office” sounds--almost always at eleven o’clock
-in the morning. When the colonel commanding the unit--or, in case of
-his absence, his deputy--decrees, the offender is marched into the
-presence of his judge; the adjutant of the regiment reads the charge,
-the evidence is stated as in the case of trial by a company or squadron
-officer, and the colonel pronounces his verdict.
-
-Acquittals are rare; not that there is any injustice, but it is
-assumed, and usually with good reason, that if a man is “wheeled up”
-he has been doing something he ought not to have done. Then, too, the
-soldier’s explanations of how he came to get into trouble are far too
-plausible; officers with experience of the soldier and his ways come
-to understand that he can explain away anything and find an excuse
-for everything. It is safe, in the majority of cases, to take a harsh
-view. However, the punishments inflicted are, in the majority of
-cases, light: “jankers,” though uncomfortable, is not degrading to any
-great extent, and the man who has had a taste or two of this wholesome
-corrective will usually be a more careful if not a better soldier in
-future.
-
-“Cells” is a different matter. Not that it lowers a man to any extent
-in the estimation of his comrades, but it is a painful experience,
-practically corresponding to the imprisonment with hard labour to
-which a civilian misdemeanant is subjected. It involves also total loss
-of pay from the time of arrest to the end of the period of punishment,
-while confinement to barracks involves only the actual punishment, and,
-unless the crime is “absence,” there is no loss of pay. Drunkenness
-is punished by an officially graded system of fines, as well as by
-“jankers” or “cells.”
-
-The average man, however, performs work of average quality, avoids
-drunkenness, and keeps to time, the result being that he does not
-undergo punishment. Barrack-room life, for the recruit, is a fairly
-simple matter. He makes his own bed, and sweeps the floor round it.
-He folds his blankets and sheets to the prescribed pattern; the way
-in which he folds his kit and clothing, also, is regulated for him by
-the company or squadron authorities, and, for the rest, he is kept too
-busy throughout the day at drill, and too busy throughout the evening
-in preparing for the next day’s drill, to get into mischief to any
-appreciable extent. The recruit who involves himself in “crime” is,
-more often than not, looking for trouble.
-
-It has already been stated that a full day’s work for the recruit is a
-strenuous business. If we take the average day of a recruit in, say, a
-cavalry regiment, and follow him from réveillé to “lights out,” it will
-be seen that he is kept quite sufficiently busy.
-
-Réveillé sounds anywhere between 4.30 and 6.30 a.m., according to the
-season of the year, and, before the sound of the trumpet has ceased
-the corporal in charge of the room will be heard inviting his men to
-“Show a leg, there!” The invitation is promptly complied with, for in
-a space of fifteen minutes all the men in the room have to dress, wash
-if they feel inclined to, and get out on early morning stable parade to
-answer their names. They are then marched down to stables, where they
-turn out the stable bedding and groom their horses for about an hour.
-The horses are then taken out to water, returned to stables, and fed,
-and the men file back to their rooms to get breakfast and prepare for
-the morning’s drill. This latter involves a complete change of clothing
-from the rough canvas stable outfit to clean service dress and putties
-for riding-school use. The riding-school lesson is usually over by
-half-past ten, and after this the recruit takes his horse back to the
-stables, off-saddles, and returns to the barrack-room to change into
-canvas clothing once more, and enjoy the ten minutes, more or less, of
-relaxation that falls to him before the trumpeter sounds “stables.”
-Going to stables again, the men groom their horses, and when these
-have been passed as clean by the troop sergeant or troop officer the
-troopers set to work and clean steel work and leather. The way in which
-this is done in the Army may be judged from the fact that, after a
-morning’s parade, it takes a full hour to clean saddle and head dress
-and render them fit for inspection. It is one o’clock before midday
-stables is finished with, and then of course it is time for dinner.
-
-For this principal meal of the day one hour is allowed; but that hour
-includes the getting ready for the afternoon parade for foot drill,
-in which the cavalry recruit is taught the use of the sword and all
-movements that he will have to perform dismounted. This lasts an
-hour or thereabouts, and is followed by a return to the barrack-room
-and another change of clothing, this time into gymnasium outfit. The
-recruit is then marched to the gymnasium, where, for the space of
-another hour, the gymnastic instructor has his turn at licking the raw
-material into shape. Marched back to the barrack-room once more, the
-recruit is free to devote what remains to him of the minutes before
-five o’clock to cleaning the spurs, sword, etc., which have become
-soiled by the morning’s riding-school work. At five “stables” sounds
-again; the orders for the day are read out on parade, and the men march
-to stables to groom, bed down, water, and feed their horses, a business
-to which an hour is devoted. Tea follows, and then, unless the recruit
-has been warned for night guard, he is free to complete the preparation
-of his equipment for the next day’s work, and use what little spare
-time is left in such relaxation as may please him.
-
-In the infantry the number of parades done during the day is about
-the same; there is, of course, no “stables,” but the time which the
-cavalryman devotes to this is taken up by musketry instruction, foot
-drill, and fatigues. In the artillery there is more to learn than in
-the cavalry, for a driver has to learn to drive the horse he rides,
-and lead another one as well, while the gunner has plenty to keep him
-busy in the mechanism of his gun, its cleaning, and the various duties
-connected with it.
-
-To the recruit the perpetual cleaning, polishing, burnishing, and
-scouring are naturally somewhat irksome; and it is not until a man has
-undergone the whole of his recruits’ training that he begins dimly to
-understand the extreme delicacy and fineness of the instruments of
-his trade--or profession. He comes gradually to realise that a rifle
-is a very delicate piece of mechanism; a spot of rust on a sword may
-impair the efficiency of the blade, if allowed to remain and eat in;
-while a big gun is a complicated piece of machinery needing as much
-care as a repeater watch, if it is to work efficiently, and a horse
-is as helpless and needs as much care as a baby. At first sight there
-seems no need for the eternal cleaning of buttons, polishing of spurs,
-and other trivial items of work which enter into the daily life of a
-soldier, but all these things are directed to the one end of making the
-man careful of trifles and thoroughly efficient in every detail of his
-work.
-
-Old soldiers, having finished with foot drill (known in the
-barrack-room as “square”) and with riding school (which is allowed
-to keep its name), have a way of looking down on recruits; the chief
-aim of the recruit, if he be a normal man, is to get “dismissed” from
-riding school, square, and gymnasium, and the attitude of the old
-soldier encourages this ambition. Usually a recruit is placed under
-an old soldier for tuition in his work, and it depends very much on
-the quality of the old hands in a barrack-room as to what quality of
-trained man is turned out therefrom. Service counts more than personal
-worth, and in fact more than anything else in barrack-room life. The
-man with two years’ service will get into trouble sooner or later if
-he ventures to dictate to the man of three years’ or more service,
-whatever the relative mental qualifications of the two men concerned
-may be. “Before you came up,” or “before you enlisted,” are the most
-crushing phrases that can be applied to a fellow soldier, and no amount
-of efficiency atones for lack of years to count toward transfer to the
-Reserve or discharge from the service to pension.
-
-So far as the infantry recruit is concerned, foot drill and musketry,
-together with a certain amount of fatigues, comprise the day’s routine.
-With foot drill may be bracketed bayonet drill, in which the recruit
-is taught the various thrusts and parries which can be made with that
-weapon for which the British infantryman has been famed since before
-Wellington’s time. Both in the cavalry and infantry, every man has to
-fire a musketry course once a year; the recruit’s course of musketry,
-however, is a more detailed and, in a way, a more instructive business
-than the course which the trained man has to undergo. The recruit has
-to be taught that squeezing motion for the trigger which does not
-disturb the aim of the rifle; he has to be taught, also, the extreme
-care with which a rifle must be handled, cleaned, and kept. It may be
-said that the recruits’ course is designed to lay the foundation on
-which the trained man’s course of musketry is built, and at the end of
-the recruits’ course the men who have undergone it are graded off into
-first, second, and third class shots, while “marksmen” are super-firsts.
-
-On the whole the first year of a man’s service is the hardest of any,
-so far as peace soldiering is concerned. There is more reason in this
-than appears on the surface. A recruit joins the army somewhere about
-the age of twenty--the official limit is from eighteen to twenty-five;
-it is evident that in his first year of service a man is at such a
-stage of muscular and mental growth as to render him capable of being
-moulded much more readily than in the later military years. It is best
-that he should be shaped, as far as possible, while he is yet not quite
-formed and set, and, though the process of shaping may involve what
-looks like an undue amount of physical exertion, it is, in reality, not
-beyond the capabilities of such men as doctors pass into the service.
-It is true that the percentage of cases of heart disease occurring
-in the British Army is rather a high one, but this is due not to the
-strenuous training, but in many cases to excessive cigarette-smoking
-and in others to the strained posture of “attention,” combined with
-predisposition to the disease. The recruit has a hard time, certainly,
-but many men work harder, and the years of service which follow on the
-strenuous period of recruits’ training are more enjoyable by contrast.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-OFFICERS AND NON-COMS.
-
-
-The higher ranks of officers have very little to do with the daily
-life of the soldier. Two or three times a year the general officer
-commanding the station comes round on a tour of inspection, while other
-general officers and inspecting officers pay visits at times. The
-highest rank, however, with which the soldier is brought in frequent
-contact is the commanding officer of his own regiment or battalion.
-This post is usually held by a lieutenant-colonel, as by the time an
-officer has attained to a full colonelcy he is either posted to the
-staff or passed out from the service to half-pay under the age limit.
-
-By the time a man has reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel he is, as
-a rule, far more conversant with the ways and habits of the soldier
-than the soldier himself is willing to admit. It would surprise men, in
-the majority of cases, if they could be made to realise how intimately
-the “old man” knows his regiment. The “old man” is responsible for the
-efficiency of the regiment in every detail, since, as its head, he is
-responsible for the efficiency of the officers controlling the various
-departments. He is assisted in his work by the second-in-command, who
-is usually a major, and is not attached to any particular squadron
-or company, but is responsible for the internal working and domestic
-arrangements incidental to the life of his unit. These two are assisted
-in their work by the adjutant, a junior officer, sometimes captain
-and sometimes lieutenant, who holds his post for a stated term, and
-during his adjutancy is expected to qualify fully in the headquarters
-staff work which the conduct of a military unit involves. So far as
-commissioned officers are concerned, these three form the headquarters
-staff; it must not be overlooked, however, that the quartermaster,
-who is either a lieutenant or a captain, and has won his commission
-from the ranks in the majority of cases, is also unattached to any
-particular squadron or company. He is, or should be, under the control
-of the second-in-command, since, as his title indicates, he is
-concerned with the quarters of the regiment, and with all that pertains
-to its domestic economy. He cannot, however, be regarded as a part of
-the headquarters staff; his position is unique, somewhere between
-commissioned and non-commissioned rank, and it is very rarely that he
-is accorded the position of the officer who has come to the service
-through Sandhurst.
-
-The colonel and the second-in-command, as a rule, know their regiment
-thoroughly; they know the special weaknesses of the company or squadron
-officers; they are conversant with the virtues and the failings of
-Captain Blank and Lieutenant Dash; they know all about the troubles in
-the married quarters, and they are fully informed of the happenings in
-the sergeants’ mess. Not that there is any system of espionage in the
-Army, but the man who reaches the rank of colonel is, under the present
-conditions governing promotion, keen-witted, and in the dissemination
-of all kinds of news, from matter for legitimate comment to rank
-scandal, a military unit is about equivalent to a ladies’ sewing
-meeting. The colonel and the second-in-command know all about things
-because, being observant men, they cannot help knowing.
-
-To each squadron of cavalry, battery of artillery, or company of
-infantry is allotted a captain or major as officer commanding, and,
-in the same way as a colonel is responsible for the efficiency of his
-regiment, so the captain or major is responsible for the efficiency
-of the squadron, battery, or company under his charge. The squadron
-or company officer is usually not quite so conversant with the more
-intimate details of his work as is the lieutenant-colonel. For one
-thing, he has not had so much experience; for another, he may not have
-the mental capacity required in a lieutenant-colonel; the squadron or
-company officer is usually a jolly good fellow, mindful of discipline
-and careful of the comfort of his men, but there are cases--exceptions,
-certainly--of utter incompetency. A battery officer, on the other hand,
-is of a different stamp. Of the three arms, the artillery demands
-most in the way of efficiency and knowledge; the mechanism of the
-guns creates an atmosphere in which officers study and train to a far
-greater extent than cavalry and infantry officers. The battery officer,
-in nine cases out of ten, is quite as competent to take charge of an
-artillery brigade as the cavalry or infantry lieutenant-colonel is to
-take charge of his regiment or battalion.
-
-Next in order of rank are the lieutenants and subalterns, youngsters
-learning the business. The lieutenant, having won his second star, is
-a reasonable being; the subaltern, fresh from Sandhurst or Woolwich,
-and oppressed by the weight of his own importance, is occasionally
-“too big for his boots,” a bumptious individual whom his superiors
-endeavour to restrain, but whom his inferiors in rank must obey, though
-they have little belief in his judgment or in his capability to command
-them intelligently. This may appear harsh judgment on the subaltern,
-but experience of things military confirms it; Sandhurst turns out
-its pupils in a raw state; they have the theory of their work, but,
-just as it takes years to make a soldier, so it takes years of actual
-military work to make an efficient officer, and the trained man in
-the ranks generally views with extreme disfavour the introduction
-of a raw subaltern from Sandhurst into the company or squadron to
-which he belongs, though very often the young officer shapes to his
-work quickly, wins the respect and confidence of his men, and adds
-materially to the efficiency and well-being of his troop or section.
-Again, a young officer may not be popular among his men in time of
-peace, but may win all their respect and confidence on the field, where
-values alter and are frequently reversed from peace equivalents.
-
-Lieutenants and subalterns are given charge of a troop in the
-cavalry, a gun or section--according to the number of young officers
-available--in a battery and of a section of men in an infantry
-company. Nominally in command of their men, they are in practice
-largely dependent on their senior non-commissioned officers for
-the efficiency of the men under their command. An officer’s real
-efficiency, in peace service, does not begin until he “gets his
-company” or squadron: in other words, until he is promoted to the rank
-of captain.
-
-Next in grade of rank to the commissioned officers stands the
-regimental sergeant-major, who is termed a warrant-officer, since
-the “warrant” which he holds, in virtue of his rank, distinguishes
-him from non-commissioned officers. He has, usually, sixteen years
-or more of service; he has even more knowledge of the ways of the
-regiment than the commanding officer himself, and his place is with the
-headquarters staff, while his duties lie in the supervision and control
-of the non-commissioned officers and their messes and training. His
-position is peculiar; the etiquette of the service prevents him from
-making close friends among non-commissioned officers, while that same
-etiquette prevents commissioned officers from making a close friend of
-him. The only non-commissioned officer who stands near him in rank is
-the quartermaster-sergeant, who is directly under the control of the
-quartermaster, and is also a member of the headquarters staff.
-
-From this point of rank downward the ways of the different arms of the
-service diverge. In the infantry, the chief non-commissioned officer of
-a company is the colour-sergeant, who is responsible both for internal
-economy and efficiency at drill. In the cavalry and artillery the
-presence of horses and the far greater amount of equipment involved
-divide the work that is done in the infantry by the colour-sergeant
-into two parts. In the cavalry each squadron, and in the artillery each
-battery, is controlled, so far as drill and efficiency in the field is
-concerned, by a squadron sergeant-major and a battery sergeant-major,
-respectively, while the domestic economy of the squadron or
-battery is managed by squadron quartermaster-sergeant or battery
-quartermaster-sergeant.
-
-Next in order of rank come the sergeants, the non-commissioned
-equivalent to troop and section officers, but of far more actual
-importance than these, since parades frequently take place in the
-absence of the troop or section officer, while the troop or section
-sergeant is at all times responsible to his superiors for the
-efficiency of his men. The rank of sergeant is seldom attained in less
-than seven years, and thus the man of three stripes whom Kipling
-justly described in his famous phrase “as the backbone of the Army” is
-a man of experience and fully entitled to his post.
-
-Next in order of rank to the sergeant is the corporal, whose duties
-lie principally in the maintenance of barrack-room discipline, though
-he is largely responsible for the training of squads and sections of
-men in field work. Often in the cavalry he is given charge of a troop
-temporarily, and in the artillery, though each gun is supposed to be
-in charge of a sergeant, it happens at times that the corporal has
-charge of the gun. The lowest rank of all is that of lance-corporal,
-aptly termed “half of nothing.” Men resent, as a rule, any assumption
-of authority by a lance-corporal--and yet the lance-corporal has to
-exercise his authority at the risk of being told he was a private
-only five minutes ago. Bearing in mind the material from which the
-Army is recruited, it is not surprising that a large percentage of
-lance-corporals, having tried for themselves what non-commissioned
-rank feels like, give it up and revert to the rank of private. There
-are certain advantages in being a lance-corporal; there is a distinct
-advantage, for instance, in being “in charge of the guard” instead
-of having to do sentry go; another advantage arises in the matter of
-fatigues: the lance-corporal--so long as he behaves himself--merely
-takes his turn on the roll after the full corporals in charge of a
-fatigue party; he is a superintendent, not a worker, so far as fatigues
-are concerned. The chief disadvantage consists in the way in which his
-former comrades regard him. As one concerned in their training and
-discipline he is no longer to be considered as a comrade and equal by
-the privates; in many infantry units, lance-corporals are definitely
-ordered not to fraternise with the men, although they perforce sleep in
-the same rooms and share the same meals.
-
-The sergeants of each unit--taking the regiment or battalion as a
-unit--have their own mess, in the same way that the officers have
-theirs. They take all their meals in the mess, and they sleep in
-“bunks”; their separateness from the rank and file is thus emphasised
-and their control over the men rendered more definite and easy by this
-separateness. In each unit there is also established a corporals’ mess,
-but this is merely a recreation room in the same way that the canteen
-forms a recreation room for the privates. Corporals and lance-corporals
-take their meals with the men and sleep in the same rooms as the men.
-This, especially in the case of lance-corporals, diminishes authority,
-but at the same time it renders easier the maintenance of barrack-room
-discipline and the control of barrack-room life, for which corporals
-and lance-corporals are held responsible.
-
-Mainly in connection with the development of initiative which arose
-out of the experience gained from the South African war, a system of
-understudies has been created among non-commissioned officers and
-senior privates. Each rank in turn is expected to be able to assume the
-duties of the rank immediately above it, in case of necessity, and all
-are trained to this end. It may be remarked that certain certificates
-of education must be obtained by non-commissioned officers; as soon as
-a lance-corporal gets his stripe he is expected to go to a military
-school in the evenings until he has obtained a second-class certificate
-of education, the qualifications for this being equivalent to those
-evidenced by the possession of an ordinary fourth-standard school
-certificate. The higher ranks of non-commissioned officer--that is, all
-above the rank of sergeant--are expected to qualify for a first-class
-Army certificate of education, which is quite equivalent to an ex-7th
-standard council-school certificate.
-
-Further, every non-commissioned officer must obtain certificates of
-proficiency in drill and musketry, showing that he is a capable
-instructor as well as fully conversant with drill on his own account.
-The way to promotion is paved with certificates of various kinds.
-There are courses in signalling, scouting, musketry, drill, and the
-hundred and one items of a soldier’s work; these courses qualify for
-instructorship, and some of them are open only to non-commissioned
-officers. The passing of such courses, increasing the efficiency of the
-non-commissioned officers concerned, is evidence of fitness for further
-promotion, and is rewarded accordingly.
-
-Technically speaking, the post of lance-corporal is an appointment, not
-a promotion, and therefore the lance-corporal can be deprived of his
-stripe on the word of his commanding officer. With the exception of
-the rank of lance-sergeant, which admits a corporal to the sergeants’
-mess and takes him out of the barrack-room without a corresponding
-increase of pay, all ranks from corporal upward count as promotions,
-and can only be reduced by way of punishment by the sentence of a
-court martial. A regimental court martial, which has power to reduce
-a corporal to the ranks and inflict certain limited punishments on
-a private, is composed of three officers of the unit concerned. A
-district court martial, with wider powers, including the reduction of
-a sergeant to the ranks, is composed of three officers; the president
-must not in any case be below the rank of captain, and usually is
-a major, and he and the two junior officers who form the tribunal
-usually belong to other regiments than that of the accused. Military
-law differs in many respects from civil law; there is, of course, no
-such thing as a trial by jury; the adjutant of the regiment to which
-the accused belongs is always the nominal prosecutor, but in actual
-practice the witnesses for the prosecution are of far more importance
-than is he. Evidence for the prosecution is taken first, then the
-evidence for the defence; the accused, if he wishes, can speak in his
-own defence; if the court is satisfied of the innocence of the accused,
-he is at once discharged; if, on the other hand, there is any doubt
-of his innocence, he is marched out while the court consider their
-finding and sentence, and the latter is not announced until the two or
-three days necessary for confirmation of the proceedings by the general
-officer commanding the station have elapsed.
-
-The promulgation of a court-martial sentence is an impressive ceremony.
-The regiment or battalion to which the accused belongs is formed up
-to occupy three sides of a square, facing inwards. The accused,
-under armed escort, together with the regimental sergeant-major and
-the adjutant of the unit, occupy the fourth side of the square, and
-the adjutant reads a summary of the proceedings concluding with a
-recital of the sentence on the accused. In the case of a private the
-ceremony is then at an end, and the regiment is marched away, while
-the accused returns to the guard-room under escort. In the case of a
-non-commissioned officer the regimental sergeant-major formally cuts
-the stripes from off the arm of the accused. It is to be hoped that in
-the near future this court-martial parade, degrading to the accused
-man, and not by any means an edifying spectacle for his comrades, will
-be abolished, for a record of the court martial and of the punishment
-inflicted is always inserted in the regimental orders of the day.
-
-Fortunately, however, court martials are infrequent occurrences, and,
-so far as the non-commissioned officer is concerned, life is a fairly
-pleasant business. There is plenty of hard work to keep him in good
-health, but there are also many hours that can be spent in pleasant
-recreation, and the man who takes his profession seriously may now hope
-to attain to higher rank. Promotions to commissions from the ranks
-have, in the past, been infrequent; but the prospect is now much
-more hopeful, and, in any case, the non-commissioned officer can look
-forward to a pension which will serve as a perpetual reminder that his
-time has not been wasted.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-INFANTRY
-
-
-The old-time term, light infantry, has little meaning at present as far
-as difference in the stamp of man and the weight of equipment carried
-is concerned; one infantry battalion is equal to another in respect
-of “lightness,” except that some Highland battalions, recruiting from
-districts which provide exceptionally brawny specimens of humanity,
-obtain a taller and weightier average of men. Varieties of equipment
-in the old days made infantry “heavy” and “light,” but the modern
-infantryman is kept as light as possible in the matter of equipment in
-all units.
-
-Certain battalions possess and are very proud of distinctions awarded
-them for feats on the field of battle. Thus it is permitted to one
-infantry regiment, including all its battalions, to wear the regimental
-badge both on the front and the back of the helmet in review order,
-also on their field-service caps, to commemorate an action in which
-the men were surrounded and fought back to back until they had
-extricated themselves from their perilous position--or rather, until
-the survivors had extricated themselves. In another regiment, the
-sergeants are permitted to wear the sash over the same shoulder as the
-officers, in view of the fact that on one occasion all the officers
-were killed, and the non-commissioned officers took command, with
-noteworthy results. Yet another distinction, but of a different kind,
-is the concession made to Irish regiments in allowing them to wear
-sprigs of shamrock on St. Patrick’s days.
-
-In the “review order” or full dress of modern infantrymen--and in fact
-of all British soldiers--there are certain buttons and fittings which
-serve no useful purpose, and soldiers themselves, even, sometimes
-wonder why these things are worn. The reason is that, in old time,
-all these fittings had a use; the buttons on the back of the tunic
-supported belts which are no longer worn, or covered pockets which no
-longer exist. There is a reason also in the officer wearing his sash on
-one shoulder and the sergeant his on another, and in the same way there
-is a reason for every seemingly useless fitting in a soldier’s review
-uniform--it perpetuates a tradition of the particular battalion or
-regiment concerned, or it keeps alive a tradition of the service as a
-whole. To the outsider, these may appear useless formalities, but they
-are not so in reality; the soldier is intensely proud of these things,
-which make for _esprit de corps_ and maintain the spirit of the Army
-quite as much as material advantages.
-
-The actual spirit in which the infantryman views his work is a
-difficult thing to assess. One noteworthy example of that spirit is
-the case of Piper Findlater, who, wounded beyond the power of movement
-at Dargai, sat up and piped--an amazing piece of courage and coolness
-under fire. Yet that same Piper Findlater, invalided home and out of
-the service, could display himself on a music-hall stage, an action
-which was incomprehensible to the civilian mind. But, to the average
-infantryman, there was nothing incongruous in the two actions--one
-was as much the right of the man as the other was to his credit, and
-Findlater was typical of the British infantryman.
-
-Under the present system, each infantry regiment is divided into two or
-more battalions. Under the old system, each battalion was distinguished
-by a number, but the numbers have been abolished in favour of names of
-counties or districts, and two or more battalions form the regiment of
-a county or division of a county. It is very seldom that these two or
-more portions of the same regiment meet each other, for, in the case of
-a two-battalion regiment, one battalion is usually on foreign service
-while the other is domiciled in England, and the home battalion feeds
-the one on foreign service with recruits as needed to keep the latter
-up to strength. A notable exception to this rule occurred in the case
-of the Norfolk Regiment a few years ago, when the first and second
-battalions met at Bloemfontein, one outward bound at the beginning of
-its term of foreign service, and the other about to start for home.
-
-The infantryman is fitted for what constitutes the greater part of
-his work, when the season’s “training” is over, by what is known as
-“route marching.” In this, a battalion is started out at the beginning
-of the route-marching season on a march of a few miles, in light
-order--carrying rifles and bayonets only, perhaps. The distance covered
-is gradually increased, and the weight of equipment carried by the men
-is also increased, until the men concerned are carrying their full
-packs and marching twelve or fourteen miles a day. Service conditions
-are maintained as far as possible, so as to make the men fit for long
-marches at any time; by this means the men’s feet are hardened and the
-men themselves brought thoroughly into condition, while weaklings are
-picked out and marked down for future reference. “Falling out” on a
-route march without good and sufficient reason means days to barracks
-for the offender, at the least, and “cells” is a possibility.
-
-The work of the infantryman is less complex than that of any other
-branch of the service: he has to be trained to march well and to know
-how to use his rifle and bayonet. Principally, given the physical
-endurance for the marching part of the business, he has to learn to
-shoot, and the simplicity of his duties is compensated for by the
-thoroughness with which he is taught. Then, again, discipline is of
-necessity stricter in infantry units than in other branches of the
-service; the cavalryman, with a horse to care for as well as himself
-and his arms and equipment, and the driver or gunner of artillery, with
-“two horses and two sets” (of saddlery) or his gun or limber to mind,
-is kept busy most of the time without an excess of discipline, but
-the infantryman in time of peace is concerned only with himself, his
-arms and equipment, and his barrack-room--a small total when compared
-with the cares of the man in the cavalry or artillery. By way of
-compensation, the infantryman is made to give more attention to his
-barrack-room; he is restricted, in a way that would not be possible in
-the cavalry or artillery, in the way in which he employs his leisure
-hours, and parades are made to keep his hands out of mischief, as well
-as to train him to thorough efficiency.
-
-A brigade of infantry, consisting of four battalions, looks a perfectly
-uniform mass of men on, say, a service, dress parade, but intimate
-knowledge of the characteristics of the men in each battalion reveals
-a world of difference; each regiment has its own traditions, and each
-battalion differs widely from the rest in its methods of working,
-its way of issuing commands, and its internal arrangements. There is
-a standard of bugle calls for the whole Army, but practically every
-infantry battalion infuses a certain amount of individuality into
-the method of sounding the call. The buglers of the Rifle Brigade,
-for instance, would scorn to sound their calls in the way that the
-East Surreys or the York and Lancaster battalions sound theirs, and
-conversely a York and Lancaster or an East Surrey man would smile at
-the bugle call of the Rifle Brigade battalion. The districts from
-which men are recruited, too, account for many little peculiarities
-in the ways of different battalions. There is obviously a world of
-difference between the way in which a man of the King’s Own Yorkshire
-Light Infantry will view a given situation, and the view adopted by a
-man of the East Surreys, for one is “reet Yorkshire,” while the other
-is Cockney all through. Dialects and regimental slang combined make
-the language of the one almost unintelligible to the other, and, while
-each arrives at precisely the same end by slightly varying means, each
-claims superiority over the other.
-
-The spirit of the British infantryman, with very few exceptions,
-consists mainly in his belief that he is a member of the best company
-in the very best battalion of infantry in the service. As for his
-particular arm of the service, he points with pride to the fact that he
-comes in from a march and gets to his food while the poor cavalryman is
-still fretting about in the horse lines, and _he_ has no two sets of
-harness to bother about after a field day. He slings his equipment on
-the shelf and goes off to his meal when the field day is over, while
-the poor gunner is busy with an oil rag, keeping the rust from eating
-into his gun and its fittings until the time comes to clean it. Thus
-the infantryman on his advantages, and with some justice, too.
-
-But in the barrack-room the cavalryman and artilleryman have the
-advantage. They can make down their beds and snooze when work is done,
-secure from interruption until “stables” shall sound and turn them out
-to care for their “long-faced chums.” The infantryman, on the other
-hand, has to prepare for barrack-room and kit inspections at all times;
-he has to wet-scrub and dry-scrub the floors, blacklead the table
-trestles and legs of forms, whitewash himself tired on articles which,
-to the civilian eye, appear already sufficiently coated with whitewash,
-pick grass off the drill ground, and carry out a host of orders which
-seem designed for his especial irritation, though in reality they are
-designed to keep him at work and prevent him from being utterly idle.
-In certain hours, the infantryman must be made to work to keep him in
-condition, and if the work of a necessary nature is not sufficient to
-keep him employed, then work is made for him. It must be said that,
-owing to the existence of undiscerning commanding and other officers,
-a lot of this work, although undoubtedly it fulfils its purpose, is
-irritating to the last degree, and might with advantage be exchanged
-for tasks which would exercise the intelligence of the men instead of
-rousing their disgust. Grass-picking is an especially detested form
-of labour which is common in some battalions of the infantry. In most
-units, however, men are put to useful occupations; in some stations
-where available ground admits, gardens are allotted to the men, who
-cultivate creditable supplies of vegetables for the use of their messes
-and flowers for decorative purposes.
-
-Another favourite form of exercise, in which the infantryman is
-indulged with what appears to him unnecessary frequency, is kit
-inspection. At first sight, it would seem that the circumstance of an
-officer inspecting the kit and equipment of his men is not one which
-would cause an undue amount of trouble, but the reverse of this is the
-case in practice. Each man has to lay down his kit to a regulation
-pattern; at the head of the bed, on which the clothing and equipment
-is laid out, the reds and blues and khaki-coloured squares represent
-much time spent by the man in folding each article of clothing to the
-last half-inch of size and form, prescribed by the regulation affecting
-the way in which kit must be laid down for inspection. Then come the
-underclothing, knife and fork, razor, Prayer Book and Bible, brushes,
-and other odds and ends with which every man must be provided. If any
-article is deficient from the official list, the man is promptly “put
-down” for a new article to replace the deficiency--and for this he has
-to pay. The upkeep of a full kit is most strictly enforced, and, in
-addition to the completeness of the kit, the amount of polish on the
-various articles calls for much attention on the part of the inspecting
-officer. A knife or fork not sufficiently bright, boots not quite as
-well cleaned and polished as they might be, or brass buttons displaying
-a suspicion of dullness, lead at the least to an order to show again
-at a stated hour--not the single article, but the whole kit--while
-repeated deficiencies, either in the quantity of the articles or in the
-evident amount of care bestowed on them, will lead to defaulters’ drill
-or even cells.
-
-Kit inspection counts as a “parade,” and not as a “fatigue.” The latter
-term is used to imply all kinds of actual work in connection with the
-maintenance of order in the battalion, and varies from washing up in
-the sergeants’ mess to carrying coals for the barrack-room or married
-quarters. To each unit, as a rule, there is a coal-yard attached, and
-from this a certain amount of coal is issued free each week for cooking
-purposes, while in the winter months a further amount is allotted
-to the men to burn in the barrack-room stoves. If the allowance is
-exceeded--and since it is a small one it is usually exceeded--the men
-club round among themselves to purchase more, at the rate of a penny or
-twopence a man. The fetching of this extra coal does not count as a
-“fatigue” in the official sense.
-
-A roll is kept of all men liable for fatigue duty, and each man takes
-his turn in alphabetical order in the performance of the various tasks
-that have to be done. As these tasks differ considerably in nature and
-extent, it follows that the alphabetical way of ordering the roll is
-as fair as any, though artful dodgers, getting wind of a stiff fatigue
-ahead, will get out of doing it by exchanging their turns with those
-men who would otherwise get an easier task. As a rule, sergeants’ mess
-fatigue is one of the least liked, except on Sunday mornings, when it
-releases the man who does it from church parade--of which more later.
-
-For the actual housemaid work of the barrack-room, a roll is usually
-kept in each room, and the men of the room take turns at “orderly man,”
-as it is called. This involves the final sweeping out of the room after
-each man has swept under his own bed and round the little bit of floor
-which is his own particular territory. It involves the care of and
-responsibility for all the kits in the room while the remainder of the
-men are out at drill, and also the fetching of all meals and washing
-up of the plates and basins after each meal. The orderly man of the
-day is not supposed to leave the room during parade hours, except to
-fetch meals for the rest; it is his duty, after all have gone out, to
-put the boxes at the foot of the beds in an exact line, that there may
-be nothing to disturb the symmetry of things when the orderly officer
-or the colour-sergeant comes round on a morning visit of inspection.
-In a home station, as far as infantry is concerned, practically all
-barrack-room inspections take place before one o’clock in the day,
-and in the afternoons such men as are in the barrack-room have it to
-themselves. It is the rule in some battalions, however, that no beds
-may be “made down” before six o’clock--a harsh rule, and one which
-serves no useful purpose, unless it be considered useful to keep a man
-from lying down to rest.
-
-While guard duty is kept as light as possible in mounted branches
-of the service, it is allowed to assume large proportions in the
-infantry. In a cavalry regiment, the “main guard,” which mounts duty
-for twenty-four hours and has charge of the regimental guard-room and
-prisoners confined therein, is composed at the most of a corporal and
-three men, but in the infantry the main guard of a battalion consists
-of a sergeant, a corporal or lance-corporal, and six men, providing
-three reliefs of two sentries apiece. Guard duty is done in “review
-order.” That is to say, the men dress up in their best clothes, with
-the last possible polish on metal-work and the best possible pipeclay
-on all belts and equipment that permit of it; and the inspection to
-which the guard is submitted before taking over its duties is the most
-searching form of inspection which the soldier has to undergo after he
-has been dismissed from recruits’ training. The men of the guard do
-turns of two hours sentry-go apiece, and then get four hours’ rest,
-except in very inclement weather, when the periods are reduced to one
-hour of duty and two hours of rest. Experience has placed it beyond
-doubt that the “two hours on and four hours off” is the best way of
-doing duty in reliefs; it imposes less strain on the men, who have to
-keep up their duty for a day and a night, than any other form in which
-it could be arranged.
-
-Certain men in infantry units--and in fact in all units--are excused
-from the regular routine of duty in order to fill special posts.
-Noteworthy among these are the “flag-waggers” or regimental signallers,
-a body of men maintained at a certain strength for the purpose of
-signalling messages with flags, heliograph, or lamps, by means of
-the Morse telegraphic code, and also with flags at short distances
-by semaphore. Bearing in mind the average education among the rank
-and file, it is remarkable with what facility men learn the use of
-the Morse code. Against this must be set the fact that only selected
-men are employed as signallers; these are taught the alphabet, and
-the various signs employed for special purposes, by being grouped in
-squads, and, after their preliminary instruction is completed, they are
-sent out to various points from which they send messages to each other,
-under conditions approximating as nearly as possible to those which
-obtain on active service.
-
-In order to maintain the signallers of a unit in full practice and
-efficiency, the men are excused from all ordinary parades for a
-certain part of the year; during manœuvres they are attached to the
-headquarters staff of their unit and carry on their work as signallers,
-not as ordinary duty-men. The wagging of flags is only a part of their
-duty, for they have to learn the mechanism and use of the heliograph,
-since, when sunlight permits of its use, this instrument can be
-employed for the transmission of messages to a far greater distance
-than is possible even with large flags. Lamps for signalling by night
-are operated by a button which alternately obscures and exhibits the
-light of a lamp placed behind a concentrating lens. The practised
-signaller is as efficient in the use of flags, lamps, and heliograph
-as is the post-office operator in the use of the ordinary telegraph
-instrument, though the exigencies of field service render military
-signalling a considerably slower business than ordinary wire telegraphy.
-
-Another course of instruction which carries with it a certain amount
-of exemption from duty in the infantry is that of scout. The practised
-scout is capable of plotting a way across country at night, marching
-by the compass or by the stars, making a watch serve as a compass,
-military map-reading--which is not as simple a matter as might be
-supposed--and of making sketches in conventional military signs of
-areas of ground, natural defensive positions, and all points likely to
-be of interest and advantage from a military point of view. The work
-of the signaller has been going on for many years, but the training of
-scouts is a movement which has come about and developed almost entirely
-during the last twelve years, which, as the Army reckons time, is but a
-very short period. It may be anticipated that the practice of scouting
-and the training of scouts will develop considerably as time goes on.
-
-Needless to say, the orderly-man is excused all parades during his day
-of duty as such. Only in exceptional circumstances are cooks taken for
-parades, and such men as the regimental shoemaker, the armourer and his
-assistants, and other men employed in various capacities, attend the
-regular duty parades very seldom. On field days occasionally, and also
-on certain commanding-officers’ drill parades, the orders of the day
-announce that the battalion will parade “as strong as possible.” This
-means a general sweep up and turning out of men employed in various
-ways and excused from parades as a rule, and their unhandiness owing to
-lack of practice sometimes results in their being relieved from their
-posts and returned to duty, while frequently it involves their doing
-extra drills in addition to their regular work.
-
-The duty-man affects to despise the man on the staff, but this
-affectation is more often a cloak for envy. “Staff jobs,” as the
-various forms of employment in a unit are called, generally mean extra
-pay; in nineteen cases out of twenty they mean exemption from most
-ordinary parades and from a good deal of the ordinary routine work of
-the unit concerned; in almost all cases they mean total exemption from
-fatigues. Under these circumstances it is not to be wondered at that
-the secret ambition of the average infantryman at duty, when he has
-relinquished all hope of promotion, is to get on the staff.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-CAVALRY
-
-
-Practically any man of the twenty-eight cavalry regiments of the line
-will announce with pride that he belongs to the “right of the line.” By
-this claim is meant that if the British Army were formed up in line,
-the regiment for which the claim is made will be on the right of all
-the rest. As a matter of fact this claim on the part of the cavalryman
-is incorrect, for when the Royal Horse Artillery parade with their
-guns, they take precedence of all other units, except the Household
-Cavalry.
-
-British cavalry is divided normally into three regiments of Household
-Cavalry and twenty-eight cavalry regiments of the line. These latter
-are subdivided into seven regiments of Dragoon Guards, three of
-Dragoons, and eighteen regiments of Lancers and Hussars. Theoretically,
-Lancers take precedence over Hussars, but in actual practice the two
-classes of cavalry are about equal. Dragoon Guards and Dragoons rank
-as heavy cavalry; Lancers are supposed to be of medium weight, and
-Hussars light cavalry. In reality Dragoon Guards and Dragoons are
-slightly heavier than other corps--except the Household Cavalry, who
-are heaviest of all--but Lancers and Hussars are of about equal weight,
-both as regards horses and men.
-
-The possession of a horse and the duties involved thereby render the
-work of a cavalryman vastly different from that of an infantryman. In
-the matter of guard duties, for instance, it would be possible in time
-of peace to abolish all infantry guard duties without affecting the
-well-being of the units concerned. In cavalry regiments, on the other
-hand, it is absolutely necessary that a certain number of men should
-be placed on night guard over the stables, since horses are capable
-of doing themselves a good deal of harm in the course of a night, if
-left to themselves. This is only one instance of the difference between
-cavalry and infantry, but it must be apparent to the most superficial
-observer that a vast difference exists between the two arms of the
-service.
-
-Cavalrymen affect to despise the infantry, whom they term “foot
-sloggers” and “beetle crushers,” while various other uncomplimentary
-epithets are also applied at times to the men who walk while the
-cavalry ride. Each section of the cavalry has its own particular
-prides and prejudices. The Household Cavalry, for instance, consider
-themselves entitled to look down on the regiments of the line; line
-cavalrymen, conversely, affect to despise the men of the Household
-Brigade, who, they say, count it a hardship to go to Windsor and never
-get nearer to foreign service than Aldershot. Further, a Dragoon Guard
-considers himself immensely superior to a mere Dragoon; both look
-down--a long way down--on the thought of service in the Lancers, and
-all three affect to despise the idea of serving as Hussars. In the
-meantime the Hussars declare that Dragoons are big, heavy, and useless,
-while Lancers are not much better, and the Hussar is the only perfect
-cavalryman. All this, however, is a matter of good-humoured chaff,
-and in reality Dragoons and Lancers, or Dragoons and Hussars, or any
-two regiments belonging to different branches of the cavalry, when
-placed side by side in the same station, respect each other’s qualities
-without undue regard to their particular designations.
-
-Among the many little legends and traditions of the cavalry, that
-attaching to the Carabiniers (Sixth Dragoon Guards) is as interesting
-as any, though not a particularly creditable one. It is alleged that
-some time during the Peninsular Campaign this regiment misbehaved
-itself in some way, and the sentence passed on it was to the effect
-that officers and men alike should no longer wear the red tunic common
-to Dragoon and Dragoon Guard regiments. Thenceforth a blue tunic was
-substituted for the more brilliant red, and in addition a mocking
-tune was substituted for the ordinary cavalry réveillé, while the
-band was ordered to play before réveillé each morning--possibly the
-band was guilty of exceptionally bad behaviour in order to merit this
-extra-special punishment. In any case the blue tunic, the réveillé
-and the band-playing have persisted unto this day, and even yet it is
-unsafe to inquire too closely of a Carabinier into the reason of his
-wearing a blue tunic while all others of his kind wear red, although
-the regiment elected to retain the blue tunic when a further change of
-colour was proposed.
-
-Another tradition is that of the 11th Hussars, who on one historical
-occasion were supposed to have covered themselves in gore and glory
-to such an extent that the original colour of their uniforms, and
-especially that of their riding-breeches, was no longer visible. For
-this meritorious feat, which is more or less authentic, the regiment
-was granted the privilege of wearing cherry-coloured riding-breeches
-and overalls, and this privilege, like the Carabiniers’ blue jacket,
-still survives. It is hardly necessary to add that the “Cherry-picker,”
-as the 11th Hussar names himself, is considerably prouder of his
-cherry-coloured pants than is the Carabinier of his jacket. A different
-explanation of the colour is that it was adopted in honour of the
-Prince Consort, and since the regiment still retains as its title “The
-Prince Consort’s Own,” the latter is more probably correct.
-
-From the beginning to the end of his service the cavalryman never
-gets quite clear of riding school. Riding-school work forms the chief
-portion of his training as a recruit, when he is taught to ride both
-with and without stirrups, to take jumps with folded arms, to vault
-on to a horse’s back, and, in brief, to do all that can be done with
-a horse. Supposing him to be an average horseman, he comes back to
-riding school annually, at least, to refresh his memory with the old
-riding-school lessons, while, if he is a really good horseman, he
-is set to training remounts, in the course of which he has to train
-practically unbroken horses to do their part in the work which he
-himself has learned on the back of a horse already trained. The best
-riders of all in a regiment are singled out as “rough riders” or
-riding-school instructors, and their duty is to take charge of rides
-of remounts, to instruct men and horses too, and to pay particular
-attention to the breaking in of especially unmanageable young horses.
-
-The riding-school training adopted in the British cavalry is based on
-the system inaugurated by Baucher, the famous French riding-master
-who came over to England and revolutionised all ideas with regard to
-horsemastership in the early part of the nineteenth century. Under
-this system a horse is taught to obey pressure of leg and rein to the
-fullest possible extent, and the bit mouthpiece forms only a part of
-the rider’s means of control. By this means the horse is saved a good
-deal of unnecessary exertion, which is an important thing as far as
-cavalry riding is concerned, since the object of the cavalryman on
-active service is to save his horse as far as possible against the need
-for speed or effective striking power.
-
-Following on the work of the riding school the cavalryman is taught on
-the drill ground to ride in line of troop at close order. Theoretically
-the interval between men is “six inches from knee to knee,” but in
-practice the knees of the men are touching. When a troop of men can
-keep line perfectly at a gallop, a squadron line is formed; the
-culminating point of cavalry training is perfection of line in the
-charge, of which the rate of progression is the fastest pace of the
-slowest horse. A charge produces its greatest effect when the men ride
-close together and keep in line, the object being to effect a definite
-shock by throwing as much weight as possible against a given point
-at as great a pace as possible. The impact of the charge, in theory,
-carries the men who make it through and beyond the enemy against whom
-they have charged, when they are expected to break up their formation
-and re-form, facing in the direction from whence they have come.
-
-The training which a man has to undergo in order to fit him for
-participating in these shock tactics is necessarily long and severe. In
-addition to this, cavalry training is directed toward a multiplicity of
-ends. In any military action infantry have their definite place, which
-involves bearing the full brunt of attack, maintaining the defensive,
-or in exceptional circumstances assuming the offensive and charging
-with the bayonet. Cavalry, however, very rarely bear the full brunt of
-a sustained attack, as their organisation and equipment render them
-unfit for prolonged defensive operations. They are used, generally on
-the flanks of a field force, for making flank attacks and pursuing
-retreating enemies; they are also used in small bodies, known as
-patrols, as the eyes and ears of an army. Preceding other arms of the
-service in the advance, they spy out and bring back information of the
-position and strength of the enemy, avoiding actual contact as far as
-possible. Work of this kind calls for such initiative and self-reliance
-on the part of the rank and file as infantrymen are seldom called on to
-exercise.
-
-Further, all cavalrymen are expected to be as proficient in the use
-of the rifle as are infantrymen, while they have also to learn the
-use of the sword, and Lancers still carry and use the lance, which,
-carried by a certain proportion of the men in the ranks of the Dragoon
-Guards and Dragoons at the end of the last and beginning of the present
-century, is no longer used by them. It will be seen from the foregoing
-that a properly trained cavalryman must be a thoroughly intelligent
-individual, and must be capable of greater initiative and possessed of
-more resource than his brother on foot. In many directions, also, he
-is required to exercise more initiative than the artilleryman, who is
-always protected by an escort either of cavalry or infantry, and is
-called on to think for himself and work the gun himself only when all
-his officers and non-commissioned officers have been shot to stillness.
-
-At first sight it would appear that the Lancer has an immense advantage
-over the man armed only with a sword, but in actual practice the man
-with the sword is slightly better off; the Lancer gets one effective
-thrust, but, if this is parried or misses its object, the man with the
-sword can get in two or three thrusts before the Lancer has the chance
-for another blow. Thus Dragoons and Dragoon Guards lose little by the
-absence of the lance, since they, in common with all other cavalry
-regiments, still carry the sword. The American Army, by the way, is the
-only one so far which has tried the experiment of arming the rank and
-file of its mounted units with revolvers or pistols; in the British
-Army revolvers are carried only by sergeants and those of higher rank,
-and the rank and file trust to cold steel for mounted work, reserving
-the rifles which they carry for use on foot.
-
-The bane of the cavalryman’s life in his own opinion is stables, where
-he spends about four hours each day in grooming, cleaning, sweeping
-out, taking out bedding and bringing it in, and various other duties.
-Grooming in a cavalry regiment is a meticulous business; the writer
-has personal knowledge of and acquaintance with a troop officer who
-used to make his morning inspection of the troop horses with white kid
-gloves on, and the horses were supposed to be groomed to such a state
-of cleanliness that when the officer rubbed the skin the wrong way
-his gloves remained unsoiled. Such a state of perfection as this, of
-course, is possible only in barracks, and it is hardly necessary to say
-that the officer in question was not exactly idolised by his men. Like
-most youths fresh from Sandhurst, he was incapable of making allowances.
-
-On manœuvres and under canvas generally, grooming is not expected
-to be carried to such a fine point as this; on active service it
-frequently happens that there is no time at all for grooming; but the
-general rule is to keep horses in such a state of cleanliness as will
-avert disease and assist in keeping the animals in condition. During
-the South African war it was found that grey and white horses were
-dangerously conspicuous, and animals of this colour were consequently
-painted khaki. It is not many years since a proposal was made that
-the 2nd Dragoons, known in the service as the Scots Greys, from the
-nationality of the men and the colour of the horses, should have their
-grey horses taken from them and darker coloured animals substituted.
-From the time of the founding of this regiment its men have been proud
-of their greys, and the order necessitating their disappearance caused
-a certain amount of outcry, in spite of the fact that modern military
-conditions rendered the substitution desirable. Regimental traditions
-die hard, and the Scots Greys elected to remain “Greys” in reality,
-while they will retain their name as long as the regiment exists.
-
-The cavalryman, far more than the infantryman, makes a point of wearing
-“posh” clothing on every possible occasion--“posh” being a term used
-to designate superior clothing, or articles of attire other than those
-issued by and strictly conforming to the regulations. For walking out
-in town, a business commonly known as “square-pushing,” the cavalryman
-who fancies himself will be found in superfine cloth overalls, wearing
-nickel spurs instead of the regulation steel pair, and with light,
-thin-soled boots instead of the Wellingtons with which he is issued.
-It is a commonplace among the infantry that a cavalryman spends half
-his pay and more on “posh” clothing, but probably the accusation is a
-little unjust.
-
-There is in the cavalry a greater percentage of gentleman rankers than
-in any other branch of the service, and there are more queer histories
-attaching to men in cavalry regiments than in units of the other arms.
-The gentleman ranker usually shakes down to a level with the rest of
-the regiment. It has never yet come within the writer’s knowledge that
-any officer accorded to a gentleman ranker different treatment from
-that enjoyed by the majority of the men, in spite of the assertions of
-melodrama writers on the subject. Favouritism in the cavalry, as in
-any branch of the service, is fatal to discipline, and is not indulged
-in to any great extent, certainly not to the benefit of gentlemen
-rankers as a whole. Work and efficiency stand first; social position in
-civilian life counts for nothing, and the gentleman ranker who joins
-the service with a view to a commission must prove himself fitted to
-hold it from a military point of view.
-
-The gentleman ranker is frequently a remittance man, and in that case
-he is certain of many friends, for the frequenters of the canteen are
-usually short of money a day or two before pay-day comes round, and
-thus the man with a well-lined pocket is of material use to them.
-Disinterested friendships, however, are too common in the Army to call
-for comment, and many and many a case occurs of one cavalryman, quick
-at his work, helping another at cleaning saddlery or equipment after he
-has finished his own, without thought or hope of reward.
-
-The mention of saddlery takes us back to stables, where the cavalryman
-goes far too often for his own peace of mind, although, as a matter
-of fact, the three stable parades per day which he has to undergo are
-absolutely necessary for the well-being of the horses. The really
-smart cavalryman is conspicuous not only for keeping his horse in
-exceptionally good condition, but also for the way in which he keeps
-the leather and steel-work of his saddle and head-dress. Regulations
-enact that all steel-work in the stables shall be kept free from rust,
-and slightly oiled, and leather-work shall be cleaned and kept in
-condition with soft soap and dubbin only. This regulation, however, is
-honoured in the breach rather than in the observance, for by the use
-of brick-dust followed by the application of a steel-link burnisher
-steel-work is given the appearance of brilliantly polished silver, and
-various patent compositions are used on leather to give it a glossy
-surface, this latter with very little regard for the preservation of
-the leather. All this means a lot of extra work in the stable for the
-cavalryman; it is induced in the first place by one man desiring to
-give his outfit a better appearance than the rest. The squadron officer
-approves of the polish and brilliance--or perhaps the troop officer
-is responsible--and as a result all the men take up what is merely
-extra work with no real resulting advantage. In some extra-smart
-units the men are even required by their superiors to scrub the stable
-wheelbarrows and burnish the forks used for turning over the bedding,
-but this, it must be confessed, is not a general practice. At the same
-time, the fetish of polish and burnish is worshipped far too well in
-cavalry units, with the occasional result that efficiency takes second
-place in time of peace to mere surface smartness.
-
-As has already been stated in a different connection, the barrack-room
-life of the cavalryman is easier than that of the infantryman. Kit
-inspections and arms inspections take place at stated intervals, and
-barrack-rooms are kept clean, though not kept with such fussy exactness
-as in infantry units. The trained cavalryman in normal times finishes
-the main part of his work at midday. He then has his dinner, and after
-this makes down his bed as it will be for the night. Unless it is his
-turn for fatigue, he generally snoozes through the afternoon until
-about half-past four, when it is time to get ready for stable parade.
-In India especially a cavalryman has a light time of it, for there
-is allotted to each squadron a definite number of syces, or native
-grooms, who assist the men as well as the non-commissioned officers
-in the care of their horses, and who do a good deal of the necessary
-saddle-cleaning. Cavalry serving in Egypt also get a certain amount of
-assistance in their work, and, on the whole, a cavalryman is far better
-off on foreign service than he is in a home station. The advantages of
-the home station consist mainly in the presence of congenial society
-among the civilians of the station. The soldier abroad is a being
-apart, and for the most part civilians leave him very much alone. There
-remains, however, the ever-present football by way of consolation.
-
-As in infantry units, bodies of signallers and scouts are necessary
-to the establishment of every cavalry regiment. Signallers, for the
-period of their training, are excused from all duties connected with
-horses and stable work. Cavalry scouts, on the other hand, have to use
-their horses in the course of their training, and thus attend stables
-like the rest of the men, although stable discipline in their case is
-somewhat relaxed. The cavalry scout requires more training than the
-infantry scout; with his horse he is able to go farther afield, and
-his work is more definitely that of reconnaissance and the obtaining
-of information which may be of more use to a brigade or divisional
-commander than that any infantryman is capable of obtaining without a
-horse to carry him.
-
-To his other accomplishments the cavalryman is expected to add some
-slight knowledge of veterinary matters, in order that, when forced
-to depend on himself and his horse, he can find remedies for simple
-ailments, and keep the horse in a state of fitness. The shoeing-smith
-and farriers who form a special department of every cavalry regiment
-are under the control of the veterinary officer included in the
-establishment of each cavalry unit, and the veterinary officer
-constitutes the final court of appeal when anything affecting a
-“long-faced chum” is in question.
-
-Sufficient has been said about the cavalryman on duty to show that
-his tasks are legion. His fitness to perform them has been attested
-on recent battlefields as well as on earlier historic occasions. Off
-duty and in time of peace he is, in the main, a fairly pleasant fellow,
-often a very shy one, and usually capable of using the King’s English
-in reasonable fashion. The average cavalryman has a sufficiency of
-aspirates, and, in the matter of intelligence, the nature of the duties
-he is called upon to perform voices his claims quite sufficiently.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-ARTILLERY AND ENGINEERS
-
-
-The Royal Artillery of the British Army is divided into three branches,
-known respectively as Horse, Field, and Garrison Artillery. In
-normal times the Royal Horse Artillery consists of some twenty-eight
-batteries, distinguished by the letters of the alphabet, together with
-a depot and a riding establishment. On parade the Horse Artillery
-batteries take precedence of all other units, with the exception of
-Household Cavalry. The Royal Field Artillery consists of 150 batteries
-and four depots, and the Royal Garrison Artillery consists of 100
-companies and nine mountain batteries.
-
-“A” Battery of the Royal Horse is officially designated the “Chestnut”
-troop, from the colour of its horses, and the Horse Artillery as a
-whole is one of the few corps of the service which retains the stable
-jacket for parade use. In the case of the R.H.A. this garment is of
-dark blue with yellow braid, and the head-dress of the horse gunner is
-a busby with white plume and scarlet busby-bag, similar to that of the
-Hussars. The Field and Garrison Artillery wear tunics in full dress,
-and their helmets are surmounted by a ball instead of a spike.
-
-While the weapon of the Field Artillery is the 18½-pounder quick-firing
-gun, and gunners ride on the gun and limber, the R.H.A. is armed
-with the 13-pounder quick-firing gun, and its gunners are mounted
-on horseback. The object of this is to obtain extreme mobility. The
-Royal Horse are expected to be able to execute all their manœuvres
-at a gallop, and to get into and out of action more quickly than the
-Field Artillery. They are designed specially to accompany cavalry in
-flying-column work; their mobility is only achieved by a sacrifice
-of weight in the projectile which the gun throws, and they are only
-expected to hold a position supported by cavalry until the heavier guns
-come into play. The horse gunners may be regarded as the scouts of the
-artillery, in the sense in which the cavalry are the scouts of the
-whole army.
-
-Since, in the Royal Horse, gunners as well as drivers are mounted,
-the number of horses to a battery is greater than in the Field
-Artillery, and work is consequently harder. Officers of the Royal
-Horse are specially selected from the R.F.A., to which they return on
-promotion, and the rank and file are picked men, chosen for physique
-and smartness. It is a maxim of the service that the work of the R.H.A.
-is never done, and when one takes into account the fact that gunners
-have a horse and saddle apiece to care for as well as their gun, while
-drivers have two horses and two sets of harness apiece to keep in
-condition, it will be seen that there is a certain amount of truth in
-the statement. In old times, when field-day and manœuvre parades were
-carried through in review order, the horse gunner was eternally in
-debt over the matter of the yellow braid with which his stable jacket
-is adorned, for these jackets are particularly difficult to keep
-clean. The general adoption of service dress for working parade has
-neutralised this disability. The horse gunner of to-day is a very good
-soldier indeed in every respect, both by real aptitude for his work and
-by compulsion.
-
-Not that the men of the Field Artillery are not equally good soldiers,
-for they are. The Field Artillery, however, divides itself naturally
-into two branches, drivers and gunners. Each driver has two horses
-and two sets of harness to manage, and, if the cavalryman has reason
-to grouse at the length of time he spends at stables, the driver
-of the “Field” has more than four times as much reason to grouse.
-Moreover, the cavalryman is permitted to clean his saddlery during
-the official stable hour, but drivers of the R.F.A. are expected to
-concentrate their attention on their horses during the time that they
-are officially at stables; they can stay in the stables and get their
-sets of harness cleaned and fit for inspection in their own time. They
-are then at liberty to clean up their own personal equipment, and,
-until the turn for guard comes round, have the rest of their time to
-themselves.
-
-Gunners of the R.F.A. have all their time taken up by the care of the
-gun, its fittings and appointments, as well as by the various separate
-instruments connected with the use of a gun. For instance, all arms of
-the service possess and make use of range-finding instruments, known
-as mekometers, but in the artillery the mekometer is a larger and more
-complicated affair, for the range of the gun is several times greater
-than that of the rifle, and range finding is consequently a far more
-complex business. The simple gunner must understand this, just as he
-must understand the business of “laying” or adjusting the sights of the
-gun to the required range, the use of telescopic sights, the delicate
-mechanism of the breech-block, the method of putting the gun out of
-action or rendering it useless in ease of emergency, and a hundred and
-one other things which involve really complicated technical knowledge,
-and lie in the province of the commissioned officer rather than in
-that of a private soldier. The reason for teaching these things to the
-private soldier lies in the accumulated experience which shows that
-on many occasions all the officers and non-commissioned officers of a
-battery have been blown to pieces by the enemy’s fire, and there have
-remained only a few private soldiers to do their own work and that of
-their officers as well. It is to the eternal credit of the Army, and
-especially to that of the artillery, that men thus placed have never
-once failed to do their duty nobly, and the present war has already
-afforded more than one instance of single men sticking to their guns
-to the last. Desertion of the guns has never yet been charged against
-British artillery, nor is it ever likely to be.
-
-Field-guns are always accompanied by an escort, sometimes of cavalry,
-but more often of infantry, for the gunner is admittedly helpless
-against infantry at close range or against charging cavalry. The charge
-of the Light Brigade at Balaclava forms an instance of what cavalry can
-do against unescorted guns, and, though the pattern of gun in use has
-changed for the better, the projectile being far more powerful, and
-the number of shells per minute far greater, such feats as that of the
-immortal Light Brigade are still within the range of possibility.
-
-The business of the gunner in an army assuming the offensive is to
-open the attack. The fuse of the shrapnel shell is so timed that the
-missile, which contains a quantity of bullets and a bursting charge
-of powder, shall explode immediately over the position held by the
-enemy. When a sufficient number of shells have been fired to weaken
-resistance, the infantry advance in order to drive the enemy from
-the chosen position. In defensive action the use of the gun lies in
-retarding the advance of the enemy, and inflicting as much damage as
-possible before rifles and machine-guns can come into play.
-
-For this business ranges must be taken swiftly and accurately. Loading
-must be performed expeditiously, and, though the pneumatic recoil of
-the modern field-gun renders it far less liable to shift in action,
-the sights must be correctly aligned after each shot. A gun crew must
-work swiftly and without confusion, and peace training is devoted
-to attaining that quickness and thorough efficiency which renders a
-battery formidable in war.
-
-There is, perhaps, less show about the work of a gunner than in that of
-any other arm of the service with the exception of the Royal Engineers.
-A good bit of his work is extremely dirty; cleaning a gun, for
-instance, after firing practice with smokeless powder, is a hopelessly
-messy business, and the infantryman, who pulls his rifle through and
-extracts the fouling in about five minutes, would feel sorry for
-himself if he were called on to share in the work of cleaning the
-bore of an 18½-pounder after firing practice. There is a considerable
-amount of drill of a complicated nature which the field-gunner has to
-learn in addition to ordinary foot-drill; there is all the mechanism
-of the gun to be understood; there are courses in range-finding,
-gun-laying, signalling, and other things, and on the whole it is not
-surprising that it takes at least five years to render a field gunner
-thoroughly conversant with his work. The finished article is rather a
-business-like man, quieter as a rule in his ways than his fellows in
-the cavalry and infantry, rather serious, and little given to boasting
-about the excellence of service in the Royal Field Artillery. He knows
-his worth and that of his arm too well to waste breath in declaring
-them.
-
-The driver of the Field Artillery has even more of riding-school work
-to do than the average cavalryman. It would be idle to say that he is
-a better rider, for the average cavalryman is as good a rider as it
-is possible for a man to be. Artillery horses, however, are heavy and
-unhandy compared with cavalry mounts, and the driver has not only to
-drive the horse he rides, but has also to lead and control the horse
-abreast of his own. The principal responsibility for the path which the
-gun takes lies with the lead or foremost driver, though almost as much
-responsibility is entailed on the man controlling the wheel or rearmost
-horses, and, compared with these two, the centre driver has an easy
-time of it in mounted drill and field work.
-
-Notwithstanding the extremely hard work to which drivers of artillery
-are subjected, the same trouble over harness as obtains over cavalry
-saddlery is experienced in some batteries. “Soft soap and oil” are the
-cleaning materials prescribed by the regulations, but certain battery
-commanders enforce the use of steel-link burnishers on steel-work, and
-brilliant polish on leather, the last-named polish being obtained by
-the use of a mysterious combination of heel-ball, turpentine, harness
-composition, and, according to legend, old soldiers’ breath. The
-mixture is known among the drivers as “fake,” and “fake and burnish”
-is synonymous with unending work in the stables. It is the fetish of
-smartness, a misdirected enthusiasm, which brings things like this to
-pass and inflicts extra work on men whose energies should be devoted
-solely to the attaining of fitness for active service, where “fake and
-burnish” have no place.
-
-The Royal Horse and Royal Field Artillery are the only branches of the
-service in which substantial prizes are given annually to encourage
-men in their work. In each battery three money prizes are offered for
-competition among the drivers; the amounts offered are substantial,
-and the general result is a spirit of healthy emulation, though far
-too often, and with the full sanction of the battery officer, this
-degenerates into the “fake and burnish” craze. This, however, is not
-the fault of the prize-giving system, but of the officers who not only
-permit, but encourage and even order this unnecessary work, which,
-while entailing added labour on the men, assists in the deterioration
-of the leather-work in harness. For all leatherwork requires constant
-feeding with oil in order to keep it fit and pliant, while the “fake”
-dries the fibres of the leather and starves it, rendering it liable to
-cracking and perishing.
-
-The branch of the Artillery of which least is heard is that of the
-Royal Garrison Artillery, whose hundred companies are scattered about
-the British Empire in obscure corners, engaged in the work of coast
-defence and the management of siege guns. It is fortunate for the
-garrison gunners that they have no “long-faced chums” to worry about,
-for they are admittedly the hardest-worked branch of the service as
-it is. Gibraltar houses several companies; you will find some of them
-managing the big guns at Dover, and at every protected port. They are
-big men, all; strong men, and lithe and active, for their work involves
-the hauling about of heavy weights, combined with cat-like quickness
-in loading and firing their many-patterned charges. The horse and
-field gunner have each to learn one pattern of gun thoroughly, but the
-garrison gunner, employed almost entirely in garrisoning defensive
-fortifications, has to learn the use of half a hundred patterns, from
-the little one-pounder quick-firer to the big gun on its disappearing
-platform, and the 13·4-inch siege-gun. The horse and field gunner may
-complete their education some day, for the pattern of field-gun changes
-but seldom, and the present pattern is not likely to be improved on
-for some years to come. The garrison gunner, however, is the victim of
-experiment, for every new gun that comes out, after being tested and
-passed either at Lydd or Shoeburyness, is handed on to the garrison
-gunners for use, and there is a new set of equipment and mechanism
-to be mastered. In order to ascertain the quality of their work, one
-has only to get permission to visit the nearest fort, when it will be
-seen that the guns are cared for like babies, nursed and polished and
-covered away with full appreciation of their power and value.
-
-Garrison gunners suffer from worse stations than any other branch of
-the service. They are planted away on lonely coast stations for two
-or three years at a time, and Aden, the bane of foreign service in
-the infantryman’s estimation, is a pleasant place compared with some
-which garrison gunners are compelled to inhabit for a period. Lonely
-islands in the West Indies, isolated places on the Indian and African
-coast, forts placed far away from contact with civilians in the British
-Isles--all these fall to the lot of the garrison gunner, and the nature
-of his work is such that, unlike his fellows in the field and horse
-artillery, he gets neither infantry nor cavalry escort.
-
-Reckoned in with the Garrison Artillery are the nine Mountain
-Batteries, which, organised for service on such hilly country as is
-provided by the Indian frontier, form a not inconspicuous part of the
-British Army. In these batteries the guns are carried in sections on
-pack animals; Kipling has immortalised the Mountain Batteries in his
-verses on “The Screw Guns,” a title which conveys an allusion to the
-fact that the guns of the Mountain Batteries screw and fit together
-for use. The use of these guns can be but local, for they are not
-sufficiently mobile to oppose to ordinary field-guns on level ground,
-nor is the projectile that they throw of sufficient weight to give
-them a chance in a duel with field-guns. They are, however, extremely
-useful things for the purpose for which they are intended; they form a
-necessary factor in the maintenance of order on the north-west frontier
-of India, and, together with their gun crews, they instil a certain
-measure of respect into the turbulent tribes of that uneasy land.
-
-A consideration of the various branches of the service would be
-incomplete if mention of the Royal Engineers were omitted. The
-Engineers are looked on as a sister service to the Royal Artillery,
-and consist of various troops, companies, and sections, according
-to the technical work they are called on to perform. Thus there are
-field troops of mounted engineers for service with cavalry, field
-companies for duty with the field army, fortress companies for service
-in conjunction with the garrison gunners, balloon sections and
-telegraph sections for the use of the intelligence department, and
-pontoon companies for field bridging work. Every engineer of full age
-is expected to be a trained tradesman when he enlists, and the special
-qualifications demanded of this branch of the service are acknowledged
-by a higher rate of pay than that accorded to any other arm. The motto
-of the Engineers, “Ubique,” is fully justified, for they are not only
-expected to be, but are, capable of every class of work, from making a
-pepper-caster out of a condensed-milk tin to throwing across a river
-a bridge capable of conveying siege-guns. There is no end to their
-activities, and no end to their enterprise, and in the opinion of
-many the Engineers, officers and men alike, are the most capable and
-efficient body of men in any branch of the Government service.
-
-Their work is little seen; to their lot falls the task of constructing
-the barbed-wire entanglements with the assistance of which infantry
-battalions can put up a magnificent defence against any kind of attack;
-the Engineers are responsible for the construction of the bridge by
-means of which the cavalry arrive unexpectedly on the other side of
-the river and spoil the enemy’s plans by getting round his flank; it
-is the Engineers, again, who repair the blown-up railway line and
-permit of the transport of trainloads of troops to an unexpected point
-of vantage, thus again upsetting the plans of the enemy. One hears of
-the magnificent defence maintained by the infantry; one hears of the
-brilliant exploits of the cavalry on the flank of the enemy; one hears
-also of the skill of the commander who moved the troops with such
-suddenness and disconcerted his enemy; but the work of the Engineers,
-who made these things possible, generally goes unrecognised outside
-military circles, and the Engineers themselves have to reap their
-satisfaction out of the knowledge of work well done.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-IN CAMP
-
-
-In going to camp, transferring from the solid shelter of barracks to
-the more doubtful comfort of crowding under a canvas roof, the soldier
-feels that he is getting somewhere near the conditions under which he
-will be placed on active service. The pitching of camp, especially
-by an infantry battalion, is a parade movement, and as such is an
-interesting business. It begins with the laying out of the tents in
-their bags, and the tent poles beside them, near the positions which
-the erected tents will occupy. The bags are emptied of their contents;
-men are told off to poles, guy ropes, mallets and pegs; the tents are
-fully unfolded, and, at a given word of command, every tent goes up
-to be pegged into place in the shortest possible space of time. At
-the beginning of a given ten minutes there will be lying on otherwise
-unoccupied ground rows of bags and poles; at the end of that same ten
-minutes a canvas town is in being, and the men who are to occupy that
-town are thinking of fetching in their kits.
-
-Under ordinary circumstances, from four to eight men are told off
-to occupy each tent, but on manœuvres and on active service these
-numbers are exceeded more often than not. During the South African
-war the present writer once had the doubtful pleasure of being the
-twenty-fourth man in an ordinary military bell-tent. The next night
-and thereafter, wet or fine, half the men allotted to that tent made a
-point of sleeping in the open air. It was preferable.
-
-Life in camp is an enjoyable business so long as the weather continues
-fine and not too boisterous; discipline is relaxed to a certain extent
-while under canvas, open-air life renders the appetite keener, and
-one’s enjoyment of life is more thorough than is the case in barracks.
-Wet weather, however, changes all this. The luxury of floor-boards is a
-rare one even in a standing camp, and, no matter what one may do in the
-way of digging trenches round the tent and draining off surplus water
-by all possible means, a moist unpleasantness renders life a burden and
-causes equipment and arms to need about twice as much cleaning as under
-normal circumstances.
-
-Camp life breeds yarns unending, and in wet weather, or in the hours
-after dark, men sit and tell hirsute chestnuts to each other for lack
-of better occupation. If the weather is fine there are plenty of
-varieties of sport, including the ubiquitous football to occupy spare
-minutes, but yarns and tobacco form the principal solace of hours which
-cannot be filled in more active ways. There is one yarn which, like all
-yarns, has the merit of being perfectly true, but, unlike most, is not
-nearly so well known as it ought to be. It concerns a cavalry regiment
-which settled down for a brief space at Potchefstroom after the signing
-of peace in South Africa.
-
-Some months previous to the signing of peace, a certain lieutenant of
-this regiment, known to his men and his fellow officers as “Bulgy,”
-became possessed of a young baboon, which grew and throve exceedingly
-at the end of a stout chain that secured the captive to one of the
-transport wagons of the regiment. Bulgy’s servant was entrusted with
-the care of the monkey, which, after the manner of baboons, was a
-competent thief from infancy, and inclined to be savage if thwarted.
-On one occasion, in particular, Bulgy’s monkey got loose, and got at
-the officers’ mess wagon; it had a good feed of biscuits and other
-delicacies, and retired at length, followed by the mess caterer, who
-expostulated violently both with Bulgy’s servant and with Bulgy’s
-monkey, until a tin of ox-tongues skilfully aimed by the monkey caught
-him below the belt and winded him. After that, as Bret Harte says, the
-subsequent proceedings interested him no more.
-
-Well, the regiment arrived at Potchefstroom and settled down under
-canvas, with an average of eight men to a tent and the horse lines of
-each troop placed at right-angles to the lines of tents. Bulgy’s monkey
-was given a place away on the outside of the lines, with the other
-end of his chain attached to a tree-stump, and there, for a time, he
-rested, fed sparingly and abused plentifully by Bulgy’s servant. In the
-regiment itself money was plentiful at the time, and it was the custom
-in the tents which housed drinking men for the eight tent-mates to get
-in a can of beer before the canteen closed. Over the beer they would
-sit and yarn and play cards until “lights out” sounded.
-
-One night, eight men sat round their can of beer in a tent of “A”
-Squadron, to which, by the way, Bulgy belonged. These eight had nearly
-reached the bottom of the can. They had blown out all the candles in
-the tent save one, which would remain for illumination until “lights
-out” sounded. The last man to unroll his blankets and get to bed
-had just finished, and was sitting up in order to blow out the last
-remaining candle, when the flap of the tent was raised from the back,
-and a hairy, grinning, evil face, which might have been that of the
-devil himself, looked in on the sleepy warriors. They, for their part,
-were too startled to investigate the occurrence, and the sight of that
-face prevented them from stopping to unfasten the tent flap in order
-to get out. They simply went out, under the flies, anyhow; one man
-tried to climb the tent pole, possibly with a vague idea of getting
-out through the ventilating holes at the top, but he finally went out
-under the fly of the tent like the rest, taking with him the sting of
-a vicious whack which the hairy devil aimed at him with a chain that
-it carried. While these eight men were fleeing through the night, the
-devil with the chain came out from the tent, and, seeing a line of
-startled horses before it, leaped upon the back of the nearest horse,
-gave the animal a thundering blow with its chain, and hopped lightly
-on to the back of the next horse in the row, repeating the performance
-there. In almost as little time as it takes to tell, a squadron of
-stampeding horses followed the eight men of the tent on their journey
-toward the skyline, and in the black and windy dark the remaining
-men of “A” Squadron turned out to fetch their terrified horses back
-to camp, and, when they knew the cause of the disturbance, to curse
-Bulgy’s monkey even more fervently than Bulgy’s servant had cursed it.
-The end of it all was that eight men of “A” Squadron signed the pledge,
-and Bulgy left off keeping the monkey; it was too expensive a form of
-amusement.
-
-This is a typical camp yarn, and a military camp is full of yarns, some
-better than this, and some worse.
-
-In camp, more than anywhere else, the soldier learns to be handy. The
-South African war taught men to kill and cut up their own meat, to
-make a cooking fire out of nothing, to cook for themselves, to wash
-up--though most of them had learned this in barracks--to wash their own
-underclothing, darn their own socks, and do all necessary mending to
-their clothes. It taught cavalrymen the value of a horse, in addition
-to giving them an insight to the foregoing list of accomplishments. It
-was, for the first year or so, a strenuous business of fighting, but
-the last twelve months of the war consisted for many men far more of
-marching and camp experience than actual war service. It was an ideal
-training school and gave an insight into camp life under the best
-possible circumstances; its lessons were invaluable, and much of the
-practice of the Army of to-day is derived from experience obtained
-during that campaign.
-
-One failing to which men--and especially young soldiers--are liable
-in camp life consists in that when they return to camp, thoroughly
-tired after a long day’s manœuvring or marching, they will not take
-the trouble to cook and get ready for themselves the food without
-which they ought not to be allowed to retire to rest. In the French
-Army, officers make a point of urging their men to prepare food for
-themselves immediately on their return to camp, but in the English Army
-this matter is left to the discretion of the men themselves, with the
-result that some of them frequently go to bed for the night without
-being properly fed. This course, if persisted in, almost invariably
-leads to illness, and it is important that men under canvas should be
-properly fed at the end of the day as well as at the beginning and
-during the course of their work.
-
-When under canvas in time of peace, the authorities of most units
-reduce their demands on their men in comparison with barrack
-life. It is generally understood that a man cannot turn out in
-review order, or in “burnish and fake,” with the restrictions of
-a canvas town about him. In some units, however, this point is
-not sufficiently considered, and as much is asked of men as when
-they have the conveniences of barracks all about them. The result
-of this is sullenness and bad working on the part of the men; the
-short-sightedness of officers leads them to press their demands
-while men are in the bad temper caused by too much being put upon
-them, and the final result is what is known technically in the Army
-as an excess of “crime.” A string of men far in excess of the usual
-number is wheeled up in front of the company or commanding officer
-to be “weighed off,” and the number of men on defaulters’ parade, or
-undergoing punishment fatigues, steadily increases. Although in theory
-the soldier has the right of complaint, if he feels himself aggrieved,
-to successive officers, even up to the general officer commanding
-the brigade or division in which he is serving, in practice he finds
-these complaints of so little real use to him that he expresses his
-discontent by means of incurring “crime,” or, in other words, by
-getting into trouble in some way. There is no accounting for this
-habit; it is the way of the soldier, and no further explanation can
-be given. Squadrons of cavalry have been known to cut all their
-saddlery to pieces, and companies of infantry to render their belts and
-equipment useless, by way of expressing their discontent or disgust
-at undue harshness. The relaxation of discipline and the absence of
-barrack-room soldiering when under canvas is a privilege which the
-soldier values highly, and it ought not to be curtailed in any way.
-
-A pleasant form of camping which many units on home service enjoy is
-the annual musketry camp. It happens often that there is no musketry
-range within convenient marching distance of the place in which a
-unit is stationed, and, in that case, the unit sends its men, one
-or two companies or squadrons at a time, to camp in the vicinity of
-the musketry range allotted to their use. The firing of the actual
-musketry course is in itself an interesting business, and it brings
-out a pleasant spirit of emulation among the men concerned. Keenness
-is always displayed in the attempt to attain the coveted score which
-entitles a man to wear crossed guns on his sleeve for the ensuing
-twelve months, and proclaims him a “marksman.” In addition to this
-there is the pleasant sense of freedom engendered by life under canvas,
-and the access of health induced thereby. The soldier, in common with
-most healthy men, enjoys roughing it up to a point, and life in a
-musketry camp seldom takes him beyond the point at which enjoyment
-ceases.
-
-Infantry units serving in foreign and colonial stations are frequently
-split up into detachments consisting of one or more companies, and
-serving each at a different place. This detachment duty, as it is
-called, as often as not involves life under canvas, and it may be
-understood that life under the tropical or sub-tropical conditions
-of foreign and colonial stations can be a very pleasant thing. Here,
-as in home stations, sufficient work is provided to keep the soldier
-from overmuch meditation. Time is allowed, however, for sport and
-recreation, and, even when thrown entirely on their own resources for
-amusement, troops are capable of making the time pass quickly and
-easily.
-
-While on the subject of camping there is one more yarn of South Africa
-and the war which merits telling, although it only concerns a bad case
-of “nerves.” It happened during the last year of the war that a column
-crossed the Modder River from south to north, going in the direction of
-Brandfort, and camp was pitched for the night just to the north of the
-Glen Drift. At this point in its course the Modder runs between steep,
-cliff-like banks, from which a belt of mimosa scrub stretches out for
-nearly a quarter of a mile on each side of the river. After camp had
-been pitched for the night, the sentries round about the camp were
-finally posted with a special view to guarding the drift, the northward
-front of the column, and its flanks. Only two or three sentries,
-however, were considered necessary to protect the rear, which rested on
-the impenetrable belt of mimosa scrub along the river bank.
-
-One of these sentries along the scrub came on duty at midnight, just
-after the moon had gone down. He “took over” from the sentry who
-preceded him on the post, and started to keep watch according to
-orders, though in his particular position there was little enough to
-watch. Quite suddenly he grew terribly afraid, not with a natural
-kind of fear, but with the nightmarish kind of terror that children
-are known to experience in the dark. His reason told him that in the
-position that he occupied there was nothing which could possibly
-harm him, for behind him was the bush, through which a man could not
-even crawl, while before him and to either side was the chain of
-sentries, of which he formed a part, surrounding his sleeping comrades.
-His imagination, however, or possibly his instinct, insisted that
-something uncanny and evil was watching him from the darkness of the
-tangled mimosa bushes, and was waiting a chance to strike at him
-in some horrible fashion. He tried to shake off this childish fear,
-to assure himself that it could not possibly be other than a trick
-of “nerves” brought on by darkness and the need for keeping watch,
-when--crash!--something struck him with tremendous force in the back
-and sent him forward on his face.
-
-Half stunned, he picked himself up from the ground, and the pain in his
-back was sufficient to assure him that he had not merely fallen asleep
-and imagined the whole business. With his loaded rifle at the ready
-he searched the edge of the mimosa bush as closely as he was able,
-but could discover nothing; he had an idea of communicating with the
-sentry next in the line to himself, but, since there was no further
-disturbance, and nothing to show, he decided to say nothing, but simply
-to stick to his post until the next relief came round.
-
-Suddenly the uncanny sense of terror returned to him, intensified. He
-felt certain this time that the evil thing which had struck him before
-would strike again, and he felt certain that he was being watched by
-unseen eyes. He was new to the country; as an irregular he was new
-to military ways, and he promised himself that if ever he got safely
-home he would not volunteer for active service again. The sense of
-something unseen and watching him grew, and with it grew also the
-nightmarish terror, until he was actually afraid to move. Then, by
-means of the same mysterious agency, he was struck again to the ground,
-and this time he lay only partially conscious and quite helpless until
-the reliefs came round. The sergeant in charge of the reliefs had an
-idea at first of making the man a close prisoner for lying down and
-sleeping at his post, but after a little investigation he changed his
-mind and sent one of his men for the doctor instead.
-
-The doctor announced, after examination, that if the blow which felled
-the man had struck him a few inches higher up in the back he would not
-have been alive to remember it, and the man himself was taken into
-hospital for a few days to recover from the injuries so mysteriously
-inflicted. In the morning the column moved off on its way, and no
-satisfactory reason could be adduced for the midnight occurrence.
-
-But residents in that district will tell you, unto this day, that one
-who has the patience to keep quiet and watch in the moonlight can see
-baboons come up from the mimosa scrub and amuse themselves by throwing
-clods of earth and rocks at each other.
-
-It is a good camp story, and I tell it as it was told to me, without
-vouching for its truth. Any man who cares to go into a military
-camp--by permission of the officer commanding, of course--and has the
-tact and patience to win the confidence of the soldiers in the camp,
-can hear stories equally good, and plenty of them. For, as previously
-remarked, camp life breeds yarns.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-MUSKETRY
-
-
-Although the musket of old time became obsolete before the memory
-of living man, the term “musketry” survives yet, and probably will
-always survive for laconic description of the art and practice of
-military rifle-shooting. Musketry is the primary business of the
-infantry soldier, and it also enters largely into the training of the
-cavalryman, who is expected to be able to dismount and hold a desired
-position until infantry arrive to relieve him.
-
-So far as the recruit is concerned, by far the greater part of the
-necessary instruction in musketry takes place not on the rifle range,
-but on the regimental or battalion drill-ground, where the beginner is
-taught the correct positions for shooting while standing, kneeling,
-and lying. He is taught the various parts of his weapon and their
-peculiar uses; he is taught that when a wind gauge is adjusted one
-division to either side, it makes a lateral difference of a foot for
-every hundred yards in the ultimate destination of the bullet. He is
-taught the business of fine adjustment of sights, taught with clips of
-dummy cartridges how to charge the magazine of his rifle. The extreme
-effectiveness of the weapon is impressed on him, and the instructor not
-only tells him that he must not point a loaded rifle at a pal, but also
-explains the reason for this, and usually draws attention to accidents
-that have occurred through disregard of elementary rules of caution.
-For long experience has demonstrated that the unpractised man is liable
-to be careless in the way in which he handles a rifle, and the recruit,
-being at a careless age, and often coming from a careless class, is
-especially prone to make mistakes unless the need for caution is well
-hammered home.
-
-At first glance, a rifle is an extremely simple thing. You pull back
-the bolt, insert a cartridge, and close the bolt. Then you put the
-rifle to your shoulder and pull the trigger--and the trick is done. But
-first impressions are misleading, and the recruit has to be trained
-in the use of the rifle until he understands that he has been given
-charge of a very delicate and complex piece of mechanism, of which the
-parts are so finely adjusted that it will send its bullet accurately
-for a distance of 2800 yards--considerably over a mile and a half.
-In order to maintain the accuracy of the instrument the recruit is
-taught by means of a series of lessons, which seem to him insufferably
-long and tedious, how to clean, care for, and handle his rifle. An
-immense amount of time and care is given to the business of teaching
-him exactly how to press the trigger, for on the method of pressing the
-quality of the shot depends very largely. The musketry instructor gives
-individual instruction to each man in this, and the man is made to
-undergo “snapping practice”--that is, repeatedly pressing the trigger
-of the empty rifle until he has gained sufficient experience to have
-some idea of what will happen when the trigger is pressed with a live
-cartridge in front of the bolt.
-
-When the recruit has been well grounded in the theory of using a
-rifle, he is taken to the rifle range for actual practice with real
-ammunition. He starts off at the 200 yards’ range with a large target
-before him, and, in all probability, the first shot that he fires
-scores a bull’s-eye. He feels at once that he knows a good bit more
-about the use of a rifle than the man who is instructing him, and
-at the given word he aims and fires again. This time he is lucky if
-he scores an outer; more often than not the bullet either strikes
-the ground half-way up the range, or goes sailing over the back of
-the butts, and the recruit, with a nasty painful feeling about his
-shoulder, has an idea that rifle-shooting is a tricky business,
-after all. The fact was that, with his experience of “snapping,” he
-had learned to pull the trigger--or rather, to press it--without
-experiencing the kick of the rifle; that kick, felt with the first real
-firing, caused an instinctive recoil on his part in firing the second
-time. Later on he learns to stand the kick, and to mitigate its effects
-by holding the rifle firmly in to his shoulder, and from that time
-onward he begins to improve in the art of rifle-shooting and to make
-consistent practice.
-
-For the recruits’ course, the targets are naturally larger and the
-conditions easier than when the trained man fires. At the conclusion of
-the recruits’ course, the men are graded into “marksmen,” who are the
-best shots of all, first-class, second-class, and third-class shots,
-and they have to qualify in each annual “duty-man’s” course of firing
-in order to retain or improve their positions as shots. Before the new
-regulations, which made pay dependent on proficiency on the range, came
-into force, there was a good deal of juggling with scores in the butts;
-one company or squadron of a unit would provide “markers” for another,
-and since the men at the firing point shot in regular order, it was a
-comparatively easy matter to “square the marker” and get him to mark
-up a better score than was actually obtained. Under the present rules
-governing proficiency pay, however, a man’s rate of pay is dependent on
-his musketry, and third-class shots suffer to the extent of twopence
-per day for failing to make the requisite number of points for second
-class. In consequence of this, supervision in the butts is much more
-severe, and there is little opportunity of putting on a score that is
-not actually obtained. A case occurred two or three years ago, the
-5th Dragoon Guards being the regiment concerned, in which the men of
-a whole squadron made such an abnormally good score as a whole that,
-when the returns came to be inspected, it was suspected that the
-markers had had a hand in compiling what was practically a record. The
-squadron in question was ordered to fire its course over again, and the
-markers were carefully chosen with a view to the prevention of fraud
-in the butts. After two or three days of firing, however, the repeat
-course was stopped, for the men of the squadron were making even better
-scores than before. The incident goes to show that there is little
-likelihood of frauds occurring at the butts under the present system of
-supervision, and incidentally demonstrates the shooting capabilities
-of that particular squadron of men.
-
-Bad shots are the trial of instructors, who are held more or less
-responsible for the musketry standard of their units--certainly more,
-if there are too many bad shots in any particular unit. The bad shot
-is usually a nervous man, who cannot keep himself and his rifle steady
-at the moment of firing, though drink--too much of it--plays a large
-part in the reduction of musketry scores. At any rifle range used by
-regular troops, during the carrying out of the annual course, one may
-see the musketry instructor lying beside some man at the firing point,
-instructing him where to aim, pointing out the error of the last shot,
-and telling the soldier how to correct his aim for the next--generally
-helping to keep up the average of the regiment or battalion. As a rule,
-there is no man more keen on his work than the musketry instructor,
-who is usually a very good shot himself, as well as being capable of
-imparting the art of shooting to others.
-
-The great musketry school of the British Army, so far as home service
-goes, is at Hythe, where all instructors have to attend a class to
-qualify for instructorship. Here the theory and practice of shooting
-are fully taught; a man at Hythe thinks shooting, dreams shooting,
-talks shooting, and shoots, all the time of his course. He is initiated
-into the mysteries of trajectory and wind pressure, taught all about
-muzzle velocity and danger zone, while the depth of grooving in a rifle
-barrel is mere child’s play to him. He is taught the minutiæ of the
-rifle, and comes back to his unit knowing exactly why men shoot well
-and why they shoot badly. He is then expected to impart his knowledge,
-or some of it, to the recruits of the unit, and to supervise the
-shooting of the trained men as well. In course of time, constantly
-living in an atmosphere of rifle-shooting, and spending more time and
-ammunition on the range than any other man of his unit, he becomes one
-of the best shots, though seldom the very best. For rifle-shooting
-is largely a matter of aptitude, and some men, after their recruits’
-training and a duty-man’s course on the range, can very nearly equal
-the scores compiled by the musketry instructor.
-
-Since shooting is a matter of aptitude to a great extent, it follows
-that the present system, punishing men for bad shooting by deprivation
-of pay and in other ways, is not a good one. It has not increased the
-standard of shooting to any appreciable extent; men do not shoot better
-because they know their rate of pay depends on it, for they were
-shooting as well as they could before. Certainly the man who can shoot
-well is of greater value in the firing line than the one who shoots
-badly, but, apart from this, all men are called on to do the same duty,
-and the third-class shot, if normally treated, has as much to do, does
-it just as well, and is entitled to as much pay for it as the marksman.
-There can be no objection to a system which rewards good shooting, but
-that is an entirely different matter from penalising bad shooting, as
-is done at present.
-
-The penalties do not always stop at deprivation of pay. In some
-infantry units a third-class shot is regarded as little better than a
-defaulter; he has extra drill piled on him--drill which has nothing
-at all to do with the business of learning to shoot; he is liable for
-fatigues from which other men are excused, and altogether is regarded
-to a certain extent as incompetent in other things beside marksmanship.
-This, naturally, does not improve his shooting capabilities; he gets
-disgusted with things as they are, knows that, since his commanding
-officer has determined things shall be no better for him, it is no use
-hoping for a change, and with a feeling of disgust resolves that, since
-in his next annual course he cannot possibly put up a better score, he
-will put up a worse. It is the way in which the soldier reasons, and
-there is no altering it; the way in which men are disciplined makes
-them reason so, and the determination to make a worse score since a
-better is impossible is on a par with the action of a cavalry squadron
-in cutting its saddlery to pieces because the men are disgusted with
-the ways of an officer or non-commissioned officer. Thus, in the case
-of unduly severe action on the part of commanding officers, the pay
-regulations, which make musketry a factor in the rate of pay, have done
-little good to shooting among the men.
-
-When actually at the firing point, a soldier is taught that he must
-“keep his rifle pointing up the range,” for accidents happen easily,
-and, in spite of the extreme caution of officers and instructors,
-hardly a year goes by without some accidental shooting to record. The
-wonder is not that this sort of thing happens, but that it does not
-happen more often, for, until a soldier has undergone active service
-and seen how easily fatal results are produced with a rifle, it seems
-impossible to make him understand the danger attaching to careless use
-of the weapon. One may find a man, so long as he is not being watched,
-calmly loading a rifle and closing the bolt with the muzzle pointed at
-the ear of a comrade; it is not a frequent occurrence, but it happens,
-all the same. And, in consequence, accidents happen.
-
-The range and the annual course are productive of a good deal of
-amusement, at times. There is a story of an officer who pointed out
-to a man that every shot he was firing was going three feet to the
-right of the target, and who, after having pointed this out several
-times, at last ordered the man to stop firing while he telephoned up
-to the butts and ordered that that particular target should be moved
-three feet to the right. Whether the result justified the change is
-not recorded. Cases are not uncommon in which a man fires on the wrong
-target by mistake, especially at the long ranges, and there is at least
-one well-authenticated case of a man who put all his seven shots on to
-the next man’s target, and of course scored nothing for himself. For
-the law of the range is that if a man plants a shot on another man’s
-target, the other man gets the benefit of the points scored by that
-shot. The markers in the butts must mark up what they see, for if they
-were compelled to go by instructions from the firing point and had to
-disregard the evidence of the targets, a musketry course would be an
-extremely complicated business, and would last for ever.
-
-One oft-told story is that of the recruit who sent shot after shot
-over the back of the butts, in spite of the repeated instructions of
-the musketry instructor to take a lower aim. At last, probably being
-tired of being told to aim low, the recruit dropped his rifle muzzle to
-such an extent that the bullet struck the ground about half-way up the
-range and went on its course as a whizzing ricochet. “Missed again!”
-said the instructor in disgust.
-
-“Yes,” said the recruit, “but I reckon the target felt a draught that
-time, anyhow.”
-
-The recruits’ course of musketry ends on the short ranges, but when
-the duty-man comes to fire for the year he is taken back, a hundred
-yards at a time, until he is distant 1000 yards from the target. This
-distance, 1000 yards, is considered the limit of effective rifle fire,
-though a good shot can do a considerable amount of damage at 2000
-yards, and the limit of range of the Lee-Enfield magazine rifle, the
-one in use in the British Army, extends to 2800 yards. The weight of
-the bullet is so small, however, that at the long distances atmospheric
-conditions, and especially wind, have a great influence on the course
-of its flight, while the power of human sight is also a factor in
-limiting the effective range. Even at 1000 yards a man looks a very
-small thing, while at 2000 yards he is a mere dot, and it is impossible
-to take more than a general aim. More might be accomplished with more
-delicately adjusted sights and wind-gauges, but those at present in
-use are quite sufficiently delicate for purposes of campaigning, and
-telescopic sights, or appliances of a delicate nature for bettering
-shooting, are quite out of the question for use by the rank and file.
-Most of the shooting of the Army is done at ranges between 500 and 1000
-yards, and, whatever weapon science may produce for the use of the
-soldier, it is unlikely that these distances will be greatly increased,
-since even science cannot overcome the limitations to which humanity is
-subject.
-
-Up to a few years ago, the old-fashioned “bull’s-eye” targets were
-employed at all ranges and for all purposes, but they have been
-practically discarded now in favour of targets which reproduce, as
-accurately as possible, the actual targets at which men have to aim
-in war. The modern target is made up of a white portion representing
-the sky, and a shot on this portion counts for nothing at all; the
-lower part of the target is dull mud-coloured, and in the middle,
-projecting a little way into the white portion, is a black area
-corresponding roughly in shape and size to the head and shoulders of
-a man. Shots on this black portion, which may be considered as a man
-looking over a bank of earth, count as “bull’s-eyes,” and shots on the
-mud-coloured portion of the target have also a certain value, for it is
-considered that if a shot goes sufficiently near the figure of the man
-to penetrate the earth that the target represents, such a shot under
-actual conditions would possibly ricochet and kill the man, and in any
-case would fling up such a cloud of dust or shower of mud and stones
-as to wound him in some way, or at least put him out of action for a
-few minutes. Further, rapid individual fire plays a far greater part in
-modern rifle-shooting than it did a few years ago. The “volleys,” which
-used to be so tremendously effective in the days of muzzle loading
-and slow fire at short ranges, are little considered under present
-conditions; with the development of initiative, and the introduction of
-open order in the firing line, men are taught to fire rapidly by means
-of exposing the targets for a second or two at a time, two shots or
-more to be got on the target at each exposure. In the musketry course
-of ten years ago there was very little rapid firing, but now it takes
-up more than half of the total of exercises on the range.
-
-Apart from the annual course of musketry which men are compelled to
-undergo, they are encouraged to practise shooting throughout the
-year by means of competitions, financed out of regimental funds,
-and offering prizes to be won in open competition. Competitors are
-graded into the respective classes in which their last course left
-them, and prizes are offered in each class, though why silver spoons
-should be offered to such an extent as they are is one of the mysteries
-that no man can explain. Certain it is that in nearly every shooting
-competition held, silver spoons are offered as prizes--and a soldier
-has little use for an ordinary teaspoon, silver or otherwise.
-
-The scores put on by men of the Army, taken in the average, go to
-prove that British soldiers have little to learn from those of other
-nations in the matter of shooting. The “marksman,” in order to win
-the right to wear crossed guns on his sleeve, has to put up a score
-which even a Bisley crack shot would not despise, and yet the number
-of men to be seen walking out with crossed guns on their sleeves is no
-inconsiderable one, while first-class shots are plentiful in all units
-of the cavalry and infantry. Artillerymen, of course, know little about
-the rifle and its use; their weapon both of offence and defence is the
-big gun, and in the matter of rifle-shooting they trust to their escort
-of cavalry or infantry--usually the latter, except in the case of Horse
-Artillery. Taken in the mass, the British soldier has every reason to
-congratulate himself on the way in which he uses his rifle, and the
-present Continental war has proved that he is every whit as good at
-using the rifle in the field as he is on the range, though, in shooting
-on active service, the range of the object has to be found, while in
-all shooting practice in time of peace it is known and the sights
-correctly adjusted before the man begins to fire.
-
-An adjunct to the course of musketry is that of judging distance, in
-which men are taken out and asked to estimate distances of various
-objects. Even for this there is a system of training, and men are
-instructed to consider how many times a hundred yards will fit into the
-space between them and the given object. They are taught how conditions
-of light and shade affect the apparent distance; how, with the sun
-shining from behind the observer on to the object, the distance appears
-less than when the sun is shining from behind the object on to the
-observer. They are taught at first to estimate short distances, and the
-range of objects chosen for experiment is gradually increased. In this,
-again, aptitude plays a considerable part; some men can judge distance
-from observation only with marvellous accuracy, while others never get
-the habit of making correct estimates.
-
-An interesting method practised in order to ascertain distance consists
-in taking the estimates of a number of men, and then striking an
-average. With any number of men over ten from whom to obtain the
-average, a correct estimate of the distance is usually obtained.
-Another method consists in observing how much of an object of known
-dimensions can be seen when looking through a rifle barrel, after the
-bolt of the rifle has been withdrawn for the purpose. Since, however,
-the object of training in judging distance is to enable a man to make
-an individual estimate, neither of these methods is permitted to be
-used in the judging when points are awarded. The award of points,
-by the way, counts toward the total number of points in the annual
-musketry course.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-THE INTERNAL ECONOMY OF THE ARMY
-
-
-Given such a conscript army as can be seen in working in any
-Continental nation, there is a very good reason for keeping the rate
-of pay for the rank and file down to as low a standard as possible,
-for the State concerned in the upkeep of a conscript army puts all,
-or in any case the greater part, of its male citizens through the
-mill of military service, and not only puts them through, but compels
-them to go through. It thus stands to reason that, as the men serve
-by compulsion, there is no need to offer good rates of pay as an
-inducement to serve; further, it is to the interest of the State
-concerned to keep down the expense attendant on the maintenance of its
-army as much as possible, and for these two reasons, if for no other,
-the rate of pay in Continental armies is remarkably small.
-
-With a volunteer army, however, the matter must be looked at in a
-different light. It is in the interest of the State, of course,
-that expenses in connection with its army should be kept as low as
-possible, but there the analogy between conscript and volunteer rates
-of pay ends. If the right class of man is to be induced to volunteer
-for service, he must be offered a sufficient rate of pay to make
-military service worth his while--in time of peace, at any rate. The
-ideal rate of pay would be attained if the State would consider itself,
-so far as its army is in question, in competition with all other
-employers of labour, and would offer a rate of pay commensurate with
-the services demanded of its employees. By that method the right class
-of man would be persuaded to come forward in sufficient numbers, and
-the Army could be maintained at strength without trouble.
-
-The British Army is the only voluntary one among the armies of the
-Western world, and for some time past it has experienced difficulty
-in obtaining a sufficiency of recruits to keep it up to strength, as
-was evidenced by the series of recruiting advertisements in nearly
-all daily papers of the kingdom with which the year 1914 opened.
-Statistics go to prove that recruiting is not altogether a matter of
-arousing patriotism, but is dependent on the state of the labour market
-to a very great extent. In the years following on the South African
-war, there was a larger percentage of unemployed in the kingdom than
-at normal times, and consequently recruiting flourished; men of the
-stamp that the Army wants, finding nothing better to do, and often
-being uncertain where the next meal was to come from, enlisted, and
-the Army had no trouble in maintaining itself at strength, although
-the rate of pay that it offered was lower than that earned, in many
-cases, by the ordinary unskilled labourer. Gradually, however,
-commercial conditions began to improve, and for the past year or two,
-in consequence of a very small percentage of unemployment among the
-labouring classes, recruiting has suffered--the Army does not offer as
-much as the ordinary civilian employer, either in wages or conditions
-of life, and consequently men will not enlist as long as they can get
-something to do in a regular way. Hence the War Office advertisements,
-which had very little effect on the recruiting statistics, and were
-wrongly conceived so far as appealing to the right class of man was in
-question. It was not till Lord Kitchener had assumed control of the War
-Office that the advertisements emanating from that establishment made
-a real personal appeal to the recruit; the two events may have been
-coincidence, for the war has pushed up recruiting as a war always does;
-again, there may have been something in the fact that Kitchener, as
-well as being an ideal organiser of men, is a great psychologist.
-
-However this may be, the fact remains that, although the War Office
-by the mere fact of its advertising has entered the labour market
-as a competitor with civilian employers, it has not yet offered any
-inducement equal to that offered by civilian employers. The rate of
-pay for the rank and file is still under two shillings a day, with
-lodging and partial board, for in time of peace the rations issued to
-the soldier do not form a complete allowance of food, and even the
-messing allowance is in many cases insufficient to provide sufficient
-meals--the soldier has to supplement both rations and messing out of
-his pay. When all allowances and needs have been accounted for, the
-amount of pay that a private soldier can fairly call his own, to spend
-as he likes, is about a shilling a day--and civilian employment, as a
-rule, offers more than that. Moreover, modern methods of warfare call
-for a more intelligent and better educated man than was the case fifty
-years ago; the soldier of to-day, as has already been remarked, has
-not only to be able to obey, but also to exercise initiative; a better
-class of man is required, and though the factor of numbers is still
-the greatest factor in any action that may be fought between opposing
-armies, the factor of intelligence and elementary scientific knowledge
-is one that grows in importance year by year. The mass of recruits, in
-time of peace, is drawn from among the unemployed unskilled labourers
-of the country; though, by the rate of pay given, the country effects
-a certain saving, this is more than balanced by the difficulty of
-educating and training these men--to say nothing of the expense of it.
-A higher rate of pay would attract a better class of man and provide
-a more intelligent army, one of greater value to the State. And, even
-assuming that the class of man obtained at present is as good as need
-be, still the rate of pay is insufficient; the work men are called
-on to perform, the responsibilities that are entailed on them in the
-course of their work, deserve a higher rate of pay than these men
-obtain at present.
-
-An illustration of this will serve far better than mere statement
-of the fact. It is well known that for years past there has been
-some difficulty in obtaining a sufficiency of officers for cavalry
-regiments, but what is not so well known is that, when a troop of
-cavalry is short of a lieutenant to lead it at drill and assume
-responsibility for its working, the troop-sergeant takes command and
-control of the troop. At the best, the pay of the troop-sergeant
-cannot be reckoned at more than four shillings a day, and on that
-amount of salary--twenty-eight shillings a week--he is given charge
-and control of somewhere about thirty men, together with horses,
-saddlery, and other Government property to the value of not less than
-£1800. For the safety and good order of this amount of property he
-is almost entirely responsible, as well as being charged with the
-superintendence, instruction, and control of the thirty men or more who
-comprise the troop under his command.
-
-The fact is that the world has moved forward tremendously during the
-past thirty or forty years, while, except for small and inadequate
-changes in the rates of pay, the Army has stood still. Labour
-conditions have altered in every way, and the cost of living has
-increased, forcing up the wage rate. The Army has taken note of none
-of these things, but has gone on, as regards pay and allowances, in
-the way of forty years ago. The necessity for an advertising campaign
-proved that the old ways were beginning to fail, and efforts were being
-made to overcome the shortage of men without increasing the rates of
-pay--vain efforts, if statistics of the amount of recruiting done
-before and after the beginning of the advertising campaign count for
-anything.
-
-We may leave these larger considerations to come down to a view of
-the interior working of a unit, its pay, feeding, and general life.
-All arrangements as regards pay for infantrymen are managed by the
-colour-sergeants of the companies, while in the cavalry and artillery
-the squadron or battery quartermaster-sergeants have control of
-the pay-sheets. These non-commissioned officers are charged with
-the business of drawing weekly the amount of pay required by their
-respective companies, squadrons, or batteries, and paying out the same
-to the men under the supervision of the company, squadron, or battery
-officers. The presence of the officer at the pay-table is a nominal
-business in most cases, and the non-commissioned officer does all the
-work, while in every case he is held responsible for any errors that
-may occur. Each man is given a stated weekly rate of pay, and at the
-end of each month there is a general settling up, at which the accounts
-of each man are explained to him; he is told what debts he has incurred
-to the regimental tailor, the bootmaker, or for new clothing that he
-has been compelled to purchase to make good deficiencies; in every unit
-each man is charged two or three pence a month--and sometimes more--by
-way of barrack damages, which includes the repair of broken windows,
-etc., and altogether the compulsory stoppages from pay generally
-amount to not less than two shillings per man per month.
-
-The system of pay is a complicated one. As a bed-rock minimum there
-is a regular rate of pay of a shilling and a penny a day for an
-infantryman, and a penny or twopence a day more for the other arms of
-the service. On to this is added the messing allowance of threepence a
-day, which is spent for the men in supplementing their ration allowance
-of food, and never reaches them in coin at all; there is a clothing
-allowance, which goes to defray the expense attendant on the renewal
-of articles of attire; there is yet another allowance for the upkeep
-of clothing and kit; there is the proficiency pay to which each man
-becomes entitled after a certain amount of service, and which consists
-of varying grades according to the musketry standard and character
-of the man; this ranges from fourpence to sixpence a day; and then
-there is badge pay, which adds a penny or twopence a day to old
-soldiers’ pay so long as they behave themselves. The colour-sergeant
-or quartermaster-sergeant has to keep account of all these small
-items, and it is small matter for wonder that many a worried officer
-or non-com., puzzling his brains over the intricacies of a pay-sheet,
-expresses an earnest wish that the whole complicated system may be
-swept away, and a straightforward rate of pay for each man substituted.
-
-The Army Pay Corps, a non-combatant branch of the service, is charged
-with the business of auditing and keeping accounts straight, and this
-corps forms the final court of appeal for all matters connected with
-the pay of the soldier. The Royal Warrant for Pay, a bulky volume
-published annually, is the manual by which the Pay Corps is guided
-to its decisions, and from which the harassed colour-sergeant or
-quartermaster-sergeant derives inspiration for his work.
-
-In all units serving at home, and in most of those serving abroad,
-a system of messing is established regimentally to supplement the
-ration allowance. Rations for the soldier, by the way, consist in
-England of one pound of bread and three-quarters of a pound of meat
-with bone per day, and all else must be bought out of pay and messing
-allowance. In colonial stations the ration allowance is enlarged to
-include certain vegetables, and in India the scale is still more
-liberal, but it is obvious that the English ration of bread and meat
-is not sufficient for the needs of the soldier, nor will the official
-messing allowance of threepence per day per man altogether compensate
-for ration deficiencies. Beyond doubt, however, the provision of
-necessaries has been brought to a very fine art in the Army, and, with
-an efficient cook-sergeant in charge of the regimental cookhouses, and
-capable caterers to supervise purchases for the messing account, with
-an allowance of fourpence a day per man the rank and file can have a
-sufficiency of plain, wholesome food.
-
-The sergeant-cook in charge of the cookhouses of each unit must have
-passed through a course at the Aldershot school of cookery before
-he can undertake the duties of his post, but he is the only trained
-cook in each unit. Men are chosen as company cooks or squadron cooks
-haphazard, and often with too little regard to their fitness for their
-posts. In spite of all disadvantages, though, the average of cooking
-in the Army is good, especially when one considers the unpromising
-material with which the cooks have to deal. The contract price for Army
-meat is not half that paid per pound by the civilian buyers; it is, of
-course, all foreign meat that is supplied in normal times.
-
-While the single men of the Army draw their meat supplies daily,
-married quarters’ rations are drawn on stated days, and, as the
-majority of the occupants of the married quarters are non-commissioned
-officers and their wives, it follows naturally that, in getting their
-exact ration with regard to weight, they are given every consideration
-with regard to the quality of meat cut off from the lump. On married
-quarters’ days the troops get a surprisingly small allowance of
-meat and a surprisingly large allowance of bone, for the regulation
-governing supply enacts that “three-quarters of a pound of meat _with
-bone_” shall be allowed for each soldier. That “with bone” may mean
-that two-thirds of the allowance or more is bone, though the soldier
-has in this matter as well as in others the right of complaint if he
-considers that he is being subjected to injustice in any way. The
-quality of meat supplied, and its correct quantity, is supposed to
-constitute one of the cares of the orderly officer of the day, for the
-orderly officer, together with the quartermaster or the representative
-of the latter, is supposed to attend at the issue of rations of both
-bread and meat.
-
-In this connection a word regarding the duties of the orderly
-officer will not be out of place. These duties are undertaken by the
-lieutenants and second lieutenants of each unit, who take turns of
-a day apiece as “orderly officer of the day.” It has already been
-remarked that an officer does not really begin to count in the life
-of a unit until he has attained to the rank of captain and to the
-experience gained by such length of service as makes him eligible for
-captaincy. In no one thing does this fact become so clear as the way
-in which the duty of orderly officer of the day is performed in the
-majority of units. It happens as a rule that a lieutenant performs
-his turn of orderly conscientiously and well; at times, however, it
-happens that a subaltern, impatient at the fiddling duties involved
-in the turn of orderly, regards complaints on the part of the men as
-trivial and annoying, neglects to see that real causes of grievance are
-properly remedied, and lays the foundations of deep dislike for himself
-on the part of the men of the unit. One of the duties falling to the
-orderly officer is that of visiting the dining-rooms of the regiment or
-battalion and inquiring in each room if the men have any complaints to
-make with regard to the quality or quantity of the food supplied. If
-any complaint is made, it should be at once investigated, and, if found
-justifiable, remedied.
-
-But the subaltern doing orderly duty far too often does not
-know--because he has not troubled to learn--the way to set about
-remedying a just complaint; a very common form of reply to a complaint
-by the men is, “I will see about it,” and that is all that the men
-ever hear, while they are careful never to make a complaint to that
-particular officer again, since they know he is not to be depended on.
-The attitude of some junior officers towards the men making a complaint
-is at times one of suspicion; the officer seems to imagine that the
-man is doing it for amusement, and not until he has grown a little,
-and incidentally passed out from the rank in which he takes his turn
-as orderly officer, does he come to understand that men only make
-complaints to their officers about things which are absolutely beyond
-their own power to remedy. Frivolous or unjustifiable complaints, when
-proved to be such, are very heavily punished, and consequently men
-abstain as a rule from making them.
-
-The orderly officer is not concerned alone with the food of the men;
-he is supposed to visit the barrack-rooms and see that everything is
-correct there; he has to visit the guard of his unit once by day and
-once by night, and see that the guard is correct and the articles in
-charge of the guard are complete according to the inventory on the
-guard-board; he is supposed to visit all the regimental artificers’
-establishments once during the day to see that work is being carried on
-properly, and he is even concerned with the quality and issue of beer
-in the canteen, while at the end of his day’s duty he has to fill in
-and sign a report to the effect that he has performed all his duties
-effectively--whether he has or no. His work, correctly carried through,
-is no sinecure business.
-
-Mention of the canteen takes us on to another point of military
-economy, that of supplies of varying kinds apart from the actual ration
-bread and meat. In each unit serving at home, a canteen is established
-for the supply to the troops of articles of the best possible quality
-at the lowest possible price “without limiting the right of the men
-to purchase” in other markets, according to King’s Regulations on the
-subject. In effect, however, the tenancy of a regimental canteen by a
-contractor is a virtual monopoly, and, unfortunately for the troops
-concerned, the monopoly is often made a rigid one. There is a “dry
-bar,” or grocery establishment, at which men can purchase cleaning
-materials for their kits and all articles of food that they require;
-there is a “coffee bar,” where suppers are sold to the men and cooked
-food generally is sold; and there is the “wet canteen,” whose sales are
-limited to beer alone, and where the boozers of the unit congregate
-nightly to drink and yarn. In old time the wet canteen used to be a
-fruitful source of crime--as crime goes in the Army--and general
-trouble, but moderation is the rule of to-day, and excessive drinking
-is rare in comparison with the ways of twenty years or so ago. The wet
-canteen of to-day is a cheerful place where men get their pints and
-sit over them, forming “schools,” as the various groups of chums are
-called, and drinking not so much as they talk, for they seek company
-rather than alcohol.
-
-For the teetotallers of each unit, the society known as the Royal Army
-Temperance Association has established a “room” in practically every
-unit of the service; at a cost of fourpence a month a man is given the
-freedom of this room, and at the same time invited to sign the pledge,
-which he generally does. In any case, if an A.T.A. man is caught
-drinking to excess, he forfeits his membership of the Association and
-the right to use its room. In the room itself a bar is set up at which
-all kinds of temperance drinks are sold, together with buns and light
-eatables. In the Army, a man refraining from the use of intoxicants
-is said to be “on the tack,” and is known as a “tack-wallah.” Members
-of the R.A.T.A. are designated “wad-wallahs,” or “bun-scramblers,” by
-the frequenters of the canteen, who are known as “canteen-wallahs.”
-The word “wallah” is a Hindustani one which has passed into currency
-in the Army, its original meaning being the follower of any branch of
-trade or employment. In the same way, numbers of Hindustani terms are
-in general use; “roti” is almost invariably used in place of “bread,”
-“char” for “tea,” and “pani” for “water,” all being correct Hindustani
-equivalents. “Kampti,” meaning small, and “bus,” equivalent to “enough”
-or “stop,” come from the same language, while “scoff” in place of “eat”
-is derived from South Africa, where it is common currency even among
-civilian white folks.
-
-Married “on the strength” in the Army carries with it a number of
-advantages for the married man. It is a little galling, in the
-first place, to have to satisfy one’s commanding officer as to the
-respectability of the intended wife before marriage, but it is not so
-many years ago that there was good reason for this. Once married, the
-soldier is granted free quarters for himself and wife, and the wife is
-allowed fuel and light up to a certain amount, together with rations,
-and an additional allowance is made in the event of children being
-born. Curiously enough, however, the size of the quarters allotted to
-the married men and their families is not determined by the number of
-children in the family, but by the rank of the married man; not many
-private soldiers venture to marry, for their rate of pay is so low as
-to make the experiment an extremely risky one, although the wife of the
-soldier gets--if she wishes it--a certain amount of the single men’s
-washing to do, by way of supplementing her husband’s pay.
-
-Married “off the strength”--that is, without the permission of the
-officer commanding the unit--is doubly risky, for the wife of the man
-who marries thus gets no official recognition; her husband has to
-occupy a place in the barrack-room, for no separate quarters can be
-allotted to him; he has at the same time to find lodgings somewhere
-among the civilian inhabitants of the station for his wife--and
-children, if there are any--and, if he is a good character, he may be
-granted a sleeping-out pass, which confers on him the privilege of
-sleeping out of barracks--and this is a privilege that he must beg, not
-a right that he can claim. As the married establishment of a regiment
-or battalion is necessarily small, men frequently get married “off
-the strength,” though how they manage to exist and at the same time
-provide for their wives on military pay is a mystery. The most common
-explanation is that the wife, whatever work she has been engaged in
-before her marriage, continues it after; the hardest part of the
-business is that neither wife nor husband, in these circumstances, can
-count on the possession of a home as those married “on the strength”
-understand it.
-
-The private soldier married “on the strength” usually has entered on
-his second period of service--that is, he has finished the twelve years
-for which he first contracted to serve, and has re-enlisted to complete
-twenty-one years with a view to a pension. Generally he manages to get
-a staff job of some sort, from employment on the regimental police to
-barrack sweeper, or anything else that will get him out of attending
-early morning parades as a rule--though all staff men have to attend
-early parades when the orders of the day say “strong as possible.”
-The rule in most units is that the staff jobs are distributed among
-the older soldiers, for these are supposed, and with justice, to be
-better able to dispense with perpetual training than the younger
-men. As a rule, the appointment of any young soldier to a staff
-appointment--except such posts as that of orderly-room clerk, for which
-special aptitude counts before length of service--is the cause of
-considerable bitterness among the older soldiers who are still at duty,
-and is usually attributed to rank favouritism, whether it is due to
-that or no.
-
-In cavalry regiments especially, the ordinary duty-men look for
-amusement when the staff men are “dug out” to undergo the ordinary
-routine of duty, either by way of annual training or on the occasion
-of a “strong as possible” parade. The duty-man has his horse every
-day, and horse and man get to know each other, but the staff-man,
-attending stables only on the occasion of his being warned to attend a
-duty parade, has as a rule to take any horse that is “going spare,” as
-they call it, and usually the horse that nobody else has taken up for
-riding is not a pleasant beast. And the staff-man may be a bit rusty
-as regards drill and riding, so that the two things combined produce
-the effect of involuntary dismounting in the field or at riding school
-occasionally--or, as the soldier would say, “dismounting by order from
-hind-quarters.” Taken on the whole, the staff-man’s day at duty is
-not a pleasant one, while, if he ventures to complain to his comrades
-or grumble in any way, he gets more ridicule than sympathy. Usually
-the duty-man affects to consider the staff-man an encumbrance, and in
-the cavalry even signallers, during the time that they are excused
-riding and attending stables, are told that it is “easy enough to wag a
-little bit of stick about--why don’t you come down to stables and do a
-bit?” The reply generally makes up in forcibility for a deficiency in
-elegance, for the trooper is capable of maintaining his reputation as
-regards the use of language--of sorts.
-
-A form of staff employment which calls for a particular class of man
-is the post of officer’s servant; it amounts to the regular work of a
-valet for “first servant,” and that of a groom for “second servant,”
-and is not always an enviable post, especially if the officer in
-question is short-tempered or “bad to get on with.” Officers’ servants
-occupy quarters away from the duty-men, and in the vicinity of the
-officers’ mess in the case of single officers; married officers’
-servants are provided with quarters in their masters’ houses. In
-addition to the officers’ servants, there is in each unit a regular
-staff of mess waiters both for officers’ and sergeants’ messes, while
-all non-commissioned officers from the rank of sergeant upward are
-permitted to employ a “bâtman” from among the men serving under them.
-The sergeant’s bâtman, though, is not excused from duty as is the
-officer’s servant, but has to get through all his own work, and then
-clean the sergeant’s equipment, keep his bunk in order, groom his
-horse, and clean his saddle (in cavalry and artillery units), as well
-as attend all parades from which the sergeant has no power to excuse
-him. Every staff job carries with it a certain amount of extra-duty
-pay, and this, in addition to the fact of being excused from at least
-some of the ordinary parades of the duty soldier, causes a post on
-the staff to be sought after by most men. There are some, though,
-who prefer to be at ordinary duty, and the man who is going in for
-promotion usually avoids staff employ, for the two do not go together.
-
-Among non-commissioned officers as well as among the rank and file
-there is a certain amount of staff employment, but it is a smaller
-amount, and a good deal of it is unenviable business. The post of
-provost-sergeant, for instance, although it carries extra-duty pay, is
-naturally not a popular business, for having control of the regimental
-police and being responsible for the punishments of delinquents on
-defaulters’ drill and punishment fatigues does not tend to increase the
-popularity of a non-commissioned officer. The business of postman in
-a regiment is usually entrusted to a corporal; as a rule, the oldest
-corporal is chosen to fill this berth, and one just concluding his term
-of military service is practically certain to get it as soon as it
-falls vacant. But staff jobs for non-coms. are far fewer, relatively,
-than for the rank and file, and, outside the artificers’ shops, the
-regimental orderly room and quartermaster’s store, practically every
-non-com. is at duty.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-THE NEW ARMY
-
-
-In the course of these pages the remark has already been made that the
-British Army is in a state of flux; this is true mainly as regards
-numbers and organisation, but with regard to discipline and training
-no very great changes are possible. Methods of training may alter, and
-do alter for the better from time to time, but the basic principles
-remain, since an army can be trained only in one way: by the use of
-strict discipline and of means calculated to impart to men the greatest
-possible amount of instruction in the shortest space of time. The more
-quickly a man absorbs the main points of his training, the better for
-him and for the army whose effectiveness he is intended to increase.
-
-In the new army of to-day, from which it is intended to draft effective
-men into the firing line at the earliest possible moment, rapidity of
-training is a prime essential. At the outset, owing to the enormous
-numbers of men who flocked to the colours, training was no easy
-matter, and for some time to come instructors will be scarce when
-compared with the multitude of men who require training. In order
-to combat this, instructors have been asked to re-enlist from among
-ex-soldiers who, past fighting age themselves, are yet quite capable
-of drilling the new men. A minor drawback arises here, however, in
-that such of the instructors as left the colours before a certain date
-are out of touch as regards modern weapons and drill. For instance,
-the field gun at present in use in the British Army was not generally
-adopted until after the conclusion of the South African campaign; in
-the case of the cavalry, again, important modifications have been
-brought about in drill and formations during the last ten years,
-while the charger loading rifle with wind gauge is comparatively an
-innovation both as regards cavalry and infantry. It is not intended
-to imply that drill instructors who finished their colour service ten
-or twelve years ago are of no use, for, in the matters of imparting
-elementary drill and the first principles of discipline to the
-recruits, they are invaluable and far too few. But, in more advanced
-matters, it must be conceded that the sooner the new army can instruct
-itself the better, for the proverb about an old dog and new tricks
-may be applied to re-enlisted instructors and the new army, which is a
-whole bag of new tricks.
-
-It is essential that the new army should train itself at the earliest
-possible moment, and for this reason there are endless opportunities
-for the man with brains who enlists at the present time. The
-re-enlisted drill instructor will not accompany the men of the new army
-into the field, and, as an army increases, a relative increase must
-be made in the number of its non-commissioned officers, while there
-are also vacancies by the hundred for commissioned officers. For the
-average man, however, it is useless at the present time to depend on
-influence and back-door methods for promotion. Worth is all that will
-count, and an ounce of enlistment to-day is worth a ton of influence
-that might have been exercised yesterday. It is as true of the new
-army as of any other profession that there is plenty of room at the
-top. The way to get there is by enlistment to-day and hard and patient
-application to one’s work for a matter of weeks or months.
-
-No man can tell how long the new army will last, or what will be the
-conditions of service and strength of the army after the proclamation
-of peace. One thing, however, is certain. Not while a first-class
-power remains on the continent of Europe will conscription cease
-altogether between the Urals and the Atlantic, or between Archangel and
-Brindisi. It is quite probable that when peace comes again, universal
-conscription will cease, for there will no longer be an embodied threat
-in central Europe--the Powers will have no more of that, and the
-burden of armaments on the old scale must cease. On the other hand,
-however, nations will maintain sufficient forces to enable them to
-insist on international justice; the threat of the sword will always
-form the final court of appeal from the decisions of any arbitration
-body, and, while this is so, a British army must always be maintained.
-The existence of primal human instinct is fatal to the idea of total
-disarmament; war may not come again, for that is a contingency with
-regard to which none can prophesy, but the fact remains that the best
-provision for peace is ample preparation against the chances of war.
-
-Thus the man who looks for a career out of the British Army need not
-look in vain, for there will always be sufficient of an army, if only
-for colonial and foreign service, to furnish capable men with all the
-careers that they may desire. The other reason for enlistment, less
-selfish and more vital, has been expressed by many voices and by
-means of many pens; the country has called, and there are ugly names
-for those who, without sufficient claims of kin to form cause for
-exemption, refuse to answer the call.
-
-With regard to the composition of the new army it may be said that
-the standing of the men has altered materially since the outbreak
-of hostilities, though this is in keeping with the trend of thought
-and feeling that has been evident since the end of the South African
-campaign. Up to the end of the nineteenth century there still remained
-obscure provincial centres in which it was supposed that only wastrels
-would enlist, with a view to getting an easy means of livelihood;
-farther back, this conception of the Army was a very common one. It
-is hard to say at what period of British history such an idea gained
-currency, unless the employment of mercenaries previous to the time
-of the French Revolution may have given it birth. For, long before
-Waterloo, the British soldier gave ample proof of the stuff of which
-he is made, and there is not a battlefield of history from which there
-has not come some instance of self-denial or devotion to a comrade
-which attests among the ranks of the British Army the existence of the
-highest principles by which humanity is actuated.
-
-But, up to the end of the nineteenth century, civilians could not
-understand the Army. Kipling taught them a little, but Kipling’s
-soldiers are all hard drinkers with a tendency to the slaughter of
-aspirates, and various other linguistic eccentricities. As character
-studies, Kipling’s soldiers are masterly works, but they bear little
-relation to the soldier of to-day, who, even as an infantryman, is
-required to be an educated man in certain directions, since he lives in
-a welter of wind gauges and trajectory, decimal points and mathematical
-calculations with regard to the accomplishment of his duties. The
-public as a whole has been waking up to these facts slowly--very
-slowly--but it has taken the world-catastrophe of a general European
-war to shake the public entirely from its apathy, and cause it to
-realise that the Army is an agglomeration of men in the highest sense
-of that little three-lettered word. There is to-day among all ranks
-and classes a realisation of the good that is, and always has been in
-the Army; there is a new interest in soldiers, in military movements,
-and in all that pertains to the theory and practice of war, and this
-augurs well for the future of members of the new army, both on duty and
-among their friends. Counting from the day that the nation wakened to
-the good that is in the Army, and the possibility of soldiers being
-at root like other men, military uniform has become a matter for pride
-to its wearer, and respect from those who from any cause are unable
-to assume the uniform. As this war has knit together motherland and
-colonies, so, by means of this war, the soldier has come to his own.
-The new army is not a thing apart from the nation: it is the nation.
-
-The new army means an increase not in numbers alone, for we may accept
-as a principle that the best will rule in a mass composed of all
-sorts from best to worst--that is, if we grant relative equality in
-the numbers of best and worst, and of each intervening grade. Periods
-of commercial prosperity have left the Army dependent mainly on the
-unemployed for its recruits, with a corresponding loss in education and
-moral tone, but the new army is composed of men of all grades, actuated
-for the most part by the highest possible impulses, and asking only
-to be allowed to give of their best. Enlisting in this spirit, it is
-inevitable that these men should look upward, and thus the best will
-rule. For purposes of rule the Army needs the very best, for its own
-sake and that of the future of the nation’s manhood. In gaining the
-best and their influence, the Army will increase in social standing
-and moral tone as well as in numbers.
-
-No man comes out from the Army as he went in; there are many types, and
-with the enormous increase in numbers at the present time, the number
-of types will increase as well as the number of representatives of
-each type. Country youths, town dwellers, agricultural labourers--who
-often make the best and keenest soldiers--men who know nothing of
-what labour is like, skilled artisans, and men from the office--all
-come to the ranks of the Army, which, shaping them to compliance with
-discipline, still leaves the stamp of individuality. The soldiers of
-the new army will come back to their ordinary avocations bearing the
-stamp of military training, stronger physically, and different in many
-ways--mainly improved ways. But the metal on which the stamp of the
-Army is impressed will remain the same, for one is first a man and then
-a soldier. The instances of Prussian brutality evident to-day, and an
-eternal disgrace to the German nation, do not prove anything against
-the Prussian military system, but afford evidence that brutality is
-ingrained in the Prussian before he goes up as a conscript to begin
-his training. So, whatever the characteristics of a man may be, the
-Army cannot make a brave soldier out of a cowardly civilian, and it
-cannot make a good man into a bad one; it accentuates certain traits
-of character and drives others into the background, but it neither
-destroys nor creates. It is a training school which, taken in the
-right way, brings out all that is best in a man, stiffens him to face
-the battle of life as well as the battles of military service, and
-strengthens self-confidence and self-respect. The men who are seen
-to have suffered in character during their military training are by
-no means examples from which one can cite the result of discipline
-and army work, for it is not the training that is at fault, but the
-inherent weakness of the men themselves. The social standing of the
-majority of recruits joining the new army renders it ten times more
-true of the Army of to-day than of the Army of yesterday, that military
-training gives more than it demands, inculcates habits which, followed
-in after life, are invaluable, and makes a man--in the best sense of
-the word--of each one who joins its ranks.
-
-One thing that officers and men alike in the new army should be made to
-realise is that the possession of a good kit carries one half of the
-way on active service--the things that carry the other half of the way
-are not to be purchased. But the man who has undergone the rigours of
-active service understands the value of good boots, good field-glasses,
-well-fitting and suitable clothing, and really portable accessories to
-personal comfort. These things, and an intelligent choice of them, go
-far to make up the difference between the man successful at his work
-and the failure, for although a bad workman is said to quarrel with
-his tools a good workman cannot do good work with bad tools. In the
-peculiarly exacting conditions entailed on men by active service, kit
-and equipment should be of the best quality obtainable, and the choice
-of what to take and what to leave behind is evidence, to some extent,
-of the fitness of the man for his work. The most important item of all
-is boots, and in fitting boots for active service one should be careful
-to select a size that will admit of the wearer enjoying a night’s sleep
-without removing his footwear. Care of the feet, and retention of the
-ability to march, are quite as important as shooting abilities, for the
-man who cannot march with the rest will not be in it when the shooting
-begins. For the rest, it is wise to try, if not to follow, as often
-as possible the tips given, by men who have been on active service,
-with regard to the choice of kit and the little things that make for
-comfort--that is, as far as compliance with these “tips” is compatible
-with keeping the size of one’s outfit down. The seasoned man, when
-talking of such subjects as kit and comfort, usually speaks out of his
-own experience, and his advice is worth following. The golden rule in
-the choice of an outfit for service is simply “as little as possible,
-and that little good.”
-
-This rule, by the way, used to be applied to the British Army in
-another way: the new army, however, makes a difference in the matter of
-size.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-ACTIVE SERVICE
-
-
-The popular conception of active service is of a succession of
-encounters with the enemy. Desperate deeds of valour, brilliant charges
-by bodies of troops, men saving other men under fire, the storming
-of positions, and the flush of victory after strenuous action enter
-largely into the civilian conception of war.
-
-The reality is a sombre business of marching and watching, nights
-without sleep and days without food; retracing one’s steps in order to
-execute the plan of the brain to which a man is but one effective rifle
-out of many thousands, marching for days and days, seeing nothing more
-exciting than a burnt-out house and the marching men on either side and
-to front and rear--and then the contact with the enemy. A vicious crack
-from somewhere, or the solid boom of a piece of artillery; somewhere
-away to the front or flank is the enemy, and his pieces do damage in
-the ranks; there is a searching for cover, some orders are given,
-perhaps a comrade lies utterly still, and one knows that that man will
-not move any more; there is a desperate sense of ineffectiveness, of
-anger at this cowardly (as it seems) trick of hitting when one cannot
-hit back. There is the satisfaction of getting the range and firing,
-with results that may be guessed but cannot be known accurately by the
-man who fires; there is the curious thrill that comes when an angrily
-singing bullet passes near, and one realises that one is under fire
-from the enemy. In a normal action, there is the sense of disaster,
-even of defeat when one’s side may in reality be winning, for one sees
-men dying, wounded, lying dead--one knows the damage the enemy has
-inflicted, but has no idea of the damage ones own force has inflicted
-in return. Often, when it begins to be apparent that the enemy is
-nearly beaten, there comes the order to retire; one does not understand
-the order, but, with a sullen sense of resentment at it, retires,
-ducking at the whizzing of a shell, though not all the ducking in the
-world would avail if the shell were truly aimed at the one who ducks,
-or starting back to avoid a bullet that whizzed by--as if by starting
-back one could get out of the way of a bullet!
-
-After a day of action, or after the chance has come to rest for a
-while after days of action, one gets a sense of the horror of the whole
-business--the tragedy of lives laid down, in a good cause certainly,
-but the men are dead, and one questions almost with despair if it is
-worth while. So many good men with whom one has joked and worked and
-played in time of peace have gone under--and there are probably more
-battles yet to fight. It is not until a war has concluded, and men who
-have served are able to get some idea of the operations as a whole,
-that they are able to understand what has been done and why it has been
-done. Men who came back wounded from Mons and Charleroi, away from
-the magnificent three weeks’ retreat that was then in progress for
-the British and French armies, were, in many cases, fully convinced
-that they had been defeated--that their armies were beaten, and had
-to retreat to save themselves from destruction. The man in the ranks
-cannot understand the plan of the staff who control him, for he sees so
-very little of the whole; at the most, he knows what is happening to a
-division of men, while engaged in the retreat to the position of the
-Marne were, at the least, twenty divisions on the side of the Allies.
-Had one of these been utterly shattered in a set battle, the other
-nineteen might still have won a decisive victory, and, if news of
-that victory had not come through for a day or two, the survivors from
-the shattered division would have spread tidings of a defeat--which it
-would have been, to them. The man in the ranks sees so little of the
-whole.
-
-Here the war correspondent makes the most egregious mistakes, for,
-untrained in military service himself, he takes the word of the man
-in the ranks--the man on the staff of army headquarters is far too
-busy and far too discreet to talk to war correspondents--and out of
-what the man in the ranks has to say the war correspondent makes up
-his story. Though the man in the ranks may believe his own story to be
-true, though he may tell of the operations as he conceives them, he may
-be giving an utterly false impression of what is actually happening.
-The man in the ranks is one cog in a machine, and he cannot tell what
-all the machine is doing at any time, least of all when a battle is in
-progress.
-
-Every battle fought differs from all other battles, for no opposing
-forces ever meet under precisely identical conditions twice. Thus it
-is useless to speak of a typical battle except in the broadest general
-sense, and useless to attempt to describe a typical battle, or action
-of any kind. Usually, the artillery get into action after cavalry have
-reconnoitred the enemy’s position; the guns shell the enemy until he
-is considered sufficiently weakened to permit of infantry attack, and
-then the infantry go forward, even up to the rarely occurring bayonet
-charge. If their advance dislodges the enemy, the cavalry are set on
-to turn retreat into rout; if, on the other hand, the attacking force
-is compelled to retire, the cavalry cover the retreat, and, in order
-to make good in a retreat, a part of a force is taken back while
-the remainder hold the enemy in check. In modern actions, artillery
-fire their shells over the heads of their own infantry at the enemy,
-distance and trajectory permitting of this. By trajectory is meant the
-curve that a projectile describes in its flight; both rifles and big
-guns are so constructed and sighted that they throw their projectiles
-upward to counteract the pull of gravity, and the missile eventually
-drops down toward its object--it does not travel in a perfectly
-straight line. But it is bad for infantry to be in front of their
-own guns, with their own artillery shells passing over them, for too
-long--_morale_ suffers from this after a time, since a man cannot
-distinguish in such a case between his own artillery’s shells and those
-of the enemy. Whenever possible, the artillery in rear of an infantry
-force are posted slightly to either flank; circumstances, however, do
-not always admit of this.
-
-On mobilisation for active service, the first thing that happens in
-the British Army is the calling up of the reserves. All men enlist, in
-the first case, for a certain number of years with the colours and a
-further period “on the reserve.” In this latter force, they are free
-to follow any civilian avocation, but on mobilisation must immediately
-report themselves at headquarters--wherever their headquarters may
-be--and take the place appointed to them in the mobilised army. Then
-comes the business of drawing war kit and equipment from stores. As a
-battleship clears for action, so the Army rids itself for the time of
-all things not absolutely necessary on active service, exchanges blank
-ammunition for ball, sharpens swords and bayonets, and in every way
-prepares for stern business. Each man is issued with a little aluminium
-plate which he is compelled to wear, and on which are inscribed such
-particulars as his name, regimental number, unit, etc., so that in case
-of his being killed on the field he can be identified and the news of
-his death transmitted to his next of kin. Each man, too, is issued
-with an “emergency ration,” which is a compressed supply of food amply
-sufficient for one day’s meals, so that in any tight corner, where
-provisions are not obtainable, he may be able to hold out for at least
-one day without being reduced to starvation. The opening and use of
-this ration, except by permission of an officer, counts as a crime in
-the Army, unless a man is placed in such a position that no officer
-is at hand to sanction the opening of the package, when the matter is
-perforce left to the man’s discretion.
-
-Marching on service is a different matter from marching in time of
-peace. Not only is there the strain of ever-possible attack, but there
-is also, for cavalry and infantry, the weight of service armament and
-equipment to be considered. Every man carries in his bandoliers 150
-rounds of ammunition for his rifle--not a bit too much, when the rate
-of fire possible with the modern rifle is taken into account. But 150
-rounds of ball cartridge is a serious matter when one has to carry
-it throughout the day, and, when active service opens, it is easy to
-understand why only really fit men are passed by doctors into the Army.
-So far as the rank and file are concerned, it is power to endure that
-makes the soldier on active service; bravery is needed, initiative is
-needed, but staying power is needed most of all.
-
-There may be days of solid marching without a sight of the enemy.
-One may form part of a flanking force whose business is to march from
-point to point, fighting but seldom, but always presenting a threat to
-the enemy or his lines of communication, and thus ever on the move,
-with very little time for sleep or eating; again, one may be placed
-with a force which has to march half a day to come in contact with the
-enemy, and to fight the other half of the day; or yet again, it may be
-necessary to march all night in order to take a position--or be shot
-in the attempt--at dawn. In time of peace and on manœuvres, officers
-take care that compensating time is allowed to men, so as to give them
-the normal amount of rest; on active service, the officer commanding
-a force spares his men as much as he can, and gives them all the rest
-possible, but he has to be guided by circumstances, or to rise superior
-to circumstances and cause himself and his men to undergo far more than
-normal exertions. War, as carried out to-day, requires all that every
-man has to give in the way of staying power, and now, as in the days of
-the battle-axe and long-bow, physical endurance is the greatest asset
-a man can have on active service. The hard drinker in time of peace
-and the man who has been looking for “soft jobs” all the time of his
-peace service soon “go sick” and become ineffective; they may be just
-as brave as the rest, but they lack the staying power requisite to the
-carrying on of war.
-
-Men’s impressions of being under fire vary so much that every account
-is of interest. “My principal impression was that I’d like to run away,
-but there was nowhere to run to, so I stuck on, and got used to it
-after a bit.” “I felt cold, and horribly thirsty--I never thought to be
-afraid till afterwards.” “It was interesting, till I saw the man next
-to me rolled over with a bullet in his head, and then I wanted to get
-up and go for the devils who had done that.” Thus spoke three men when
-asked how they felt about it. My own impression was chiefly a fear that
-I was going to be afraid--I did not want to disgrace myself, but to be
-as good as the rest.
-
-One man, who came back wounded after the day of Mons, described how
-he felt at first shooting a man and knowing that his bullet had taken
-effect--for in the majority of cases, with a whole body of men firing,
-it is difficult to tell which of the bullets take effect. This,
-however, was a clear case, and the man could not but know that he was
-responsible for the shot.
-
-“I had four men with me on rear-guard,” he said, “and we were holding
-the end of a village street to let our chaps get away as far as
-possible before we mounted and caught up with them. We could see German
-infantry coming on, masses of them, but they couldn’t tell whether the
-village street held five men or a couple of squadrons, so they held
-back a bit. At last I could see we were in danger of being outflanked,
-so I got my men to get mounted, and just as they were doing so a German
-officer put his head round the corner of the house at the end of the
-street--not ten yards away from me. I raised my rifle, shut both eyes,
-and pulled the trigger--it was point-blank range, and when I opened my
-eyes and looked it seemed as if I’d blown half his face away. I felt
-scared at what I had done--it seemed wrong to have shot a man like
-that, though he and his kind drive women and children in front of their
-firing lines. It seemed to make such a horrible mess, somehow. I got
-mounted, and just as I swung my leg over the horse, a fool of a German
-infantryman aimed a blow at me with the butt end of his rifle--I don’t
-know where he sprung from--and damaged my arm like this. If he’d had
-the sense he could have run me through with a bayonet or shot me, but
-I suppose he was too flurried. But that officer’s face after I’d shot
-him stuck to me, and I still dream of it, and shall for some time,
-probably.”
-
-He who told this story is a boy of twenty-two or three, and he has
-gone back to the front to rejoin his regiment, now--with three stripes
-on his arm, instead of the two that were his at the beginning of the
-campaign.
-
-On forced marches, and often on normal marches as well, all the things
-that one considers necessities--with the exception of sufficient
-food to keep one in condition--go by the board. One sleeps under the
-stars, with no other covering than a coat and blanket; one lies out
-to sleep in pouring rain, with no more covering; tents are out of the
-question, for there is no time to pitch and strike them. One goes for
-days without a wash, and for days, too, without undressing. There were
-two scamps in the South African campaign who promised each other, for
-some mysterious reason, that they would not take their boots off for
-a month, and they ran into such a series of marches and actions that,
-even if they had not made the compact, they would only have been able
-to remove their boots three times in the course of that month. The
-smart soldier of peace service goes unshaven, unwashed, careless of all
-except getting enough of food and sleep at times; and when a lull comes
-in the operations, so that he gets a day or even an hour or two to
-himself, a bath is a luxury undreamed of by the man who can have one
-every morning and consider it a mere usual thing.
-
-If in time of peace the soldier considers a rifle carelessly, and even
-resents having to carry it about with him, he looks on it differently
-on service, knowing as he does that his life may depend on the quality
-of the weapon and his ability to use it at almost any minute of the day
-or night. The confirmed “grouser” of peace time, who will make a fuss
-over having to put twenty rounds of blank ammunition in his bandolier
-to go out on a field-day, will swing his three bandoliers of ball
-cartridges on to his person without a word of complaint, for he knows
-that he may need every round. Values alter amazingly on service; the
-man with a box of matches, when one has been away from the base for
-a few days, is a person of importance, and a mere cigarette is worth
-far more than its weight in gold. In General Rundle’s column during
-the South African war, half a biscuit was something to fight for, and
-the men who thought it such had many a time thrown away the same sort
-of unpalatable biscuits and bought bread to eat instead. An ant-heap
-acquired a new significance, for it might be the means of saving a
-man’s life at any time, and among mounted men a “fresh” horse, which
-might give its rider some trouble at the time of mounting, was no
-longer to be avoided, for by its freshness it showed that it had plenty
-of spirit and go about it, spirit that might take a man out of rifle
-range at a critical moment, when the slower class of mount might come
-out of action without its rider.
-
-This reversal of the circumstances of ordinary life produces lasting
-effect on men; no man who has undergone the realities of active service
-comes back to the average of life unchanged. The difference in him may
-not be apparent at a casual glance, but it is there, for the rest of
-his life. He has looked on death at close quarters, and, whatever his
-intelligence may be--whether he be gutter-snipe or ’Varsity man, sage
-or fool--he has a clearer realisation of the ultimate values of things.
-One may count the Army in peace time as a great training school out of
-which men come moulded to a definite pattern, and yet retaining their
-individuality. But active service is a fire through which men pass,
-emerging on the far side purified of little aims to a greater or less
-extent, according to the material on which the fire has to work. For
-many--all honour to them and to those who mourn their loss--it is a
-destroying fire.
-
-So far as the limits of space will permit, there is set down in these
-pages a record of what military service amounts to for the rank and
-file, in peace and war. It is necessarily incomplete, for the story of
-the British Army of to-day, apart from its history of great yesterdays,
-is not to be told in any one book--there is too much of it for that.
-There are those who belittle the Army and its ways and influence on the
-men who serve, but one who has served, with the perspective of time to
-give him clearness of vision, can always look back on the Army and be
-glad that he has learned its lessons, accomplished its tasks; the men
-who would belittle it are themselves very little men, too little to be
-worthy of serious notice. The British Army is a gathering of brave men,
-fighting in this year of grace 1914 in a noble cause, and fighting, as
-the British Army has always fought, bravely and well.
-
-
-    WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD.
-    PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber’s Notes
-
-
-Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
-preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
-
-Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced
-quotation marks retained.
-
-Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained. Inconsistent
-hyphenation was not changed.
-
-Page 173: _morale_ was printed as _moral_; changed here.
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The British Army From Within, by 
-Evelyn Charles Vivian
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