The British army from within

THE BRITISH ARMY
FROM WITHIN

BY

ONE WHO HAS SERVED IN IT

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THE BRITISH ARMY FROM WITHIN

THE BRITISH ARMY
FROM WITHIN

BY

E. CHARLES VIVIAN

AUTHOR OF
'PASSION rRUIT," "DIVIDED WAYS," ETC.

HODDER AND STOUGHTON

LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO

MCMXIV

u\

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 ^^

CHAPTER V
Cavalry '^^

CHAPTER VI

Artillery and Engineers .... 92

7

8 CONTENTS

CHAPTER VII

PAGE

In Camp ^ ^Qg

CHAPTER VIII
Musketry j2o

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

/^N 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 every-
thing, 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

10 " UBIQUE "

coijdposition, for it. is in such a state of flux that
the numbers of battahons, regiments, and batteries
of a year ago are as obsolete as the Snider rifle.
There used to be 157 battahons 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 out-
side 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

" UBIQUE " 11

efficient, five years to make a cavalryman tho-
roughly 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 patriot-
ism 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.

12 " UBIQUE "

At the best, there is much in the work that a
soldier is called on to do which is beyond his under-
standing, 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.

"UBIQUE" 13

The main station in England is Aldershot, head-
quarters of the first Army Corps. Theoretically,
in all cases of national emergency, the Aldershot
Command is first to move, and the units com-
posing 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,

14 " UBIQUE "

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 manoeuvres 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 obtain-
ing 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 under-
gone 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

"UBIQUE" 15

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, con-
struction 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

16 " UBIQUE "

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

" UBIQUE " 17

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 bat-
talions 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 com-

18 " UBIQUE "

position of the whole army render it unsafe to quote
any standard as definite. A normal division, cer-
tainly, 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 approxi-
mate 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

" UBIQUE " 19

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
18|-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

20 " UBIQUE "

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 demoli-
tion, 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

" UBIQUE " 21

between the British Army as a whole and any Con-
tinental army as a whole. In the case of the Con-
tinental 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 dis-
cipline 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 distaste-
ful 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 pro-
fession 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

22 " UBIQUE "

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 demon-
strated 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 require-
ments he votes in an understanding way, while the
British voter, with the exception of the small per-
centage 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

" UBIQUE " 28

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 under-
standing 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

24 " UBIQUE "

life of the unit which he commands ; again, apart
from the influence exercised by the personaHty of
the commanding officer, that of the company or
squadron officer is a very potent factor in the hves
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 strenu-
ous 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

25

26 THE WAY OF THE RECRUIT

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 per-
fection 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 en-
listed 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

THE WAY OF THE RECRUIT 27

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 pro-
vision 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.

28 THE WAY OF THE RECRUIT

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 esti-
mation, 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 mat-
tresses 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

THE WAY OF THE RECRUIT 29

men, theif 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

30 THE WAY OF THE RECRUIT

gained by the majority of those who enHst : that
first gHmpse of mihtary Ufe 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 con-
tains 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 tooth-
brush and a comb. As a rule, he omits the cere-
mony 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

THE WAY OF THE RECRUIT 31

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

32 THE WAY OF THE RECRUIT

commissioned officers. Sometimes the soldier finds
a nickname for a comrade out of a personal pecu-
liarity, 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 promo-
tion. 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

THE WAY OF THE RECRUIT 33

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

84 THE WAY OF THE RECRUIT

to the victim. Many a man has gone to the
armom^er 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 dis-
likes 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

THE WAY OF THE RECRUIT 35

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 im-
prisonment, 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

36 THE WAY OF THE RECRUIT

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 character-
istics 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 mitiga-
tion 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 con-
fined to barracks," the case is beyond the jurisdic-
tion 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 "

THE WAY OF THE RECRUIT 37

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 in-
justice, 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, practi-

88 THE WAY OF THE RECRUIT

cally corresponding to the imprisonment with hard
labom* to which a civihan misdemeanant is sub-
jected. It involves also total loss of pay from the
time of arrest to the end of the period of punish-
ment, 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 through-
out 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

THE WAY OF THE RECRUIT 39

take the average day of a recruit in, say, a cavalry
regiment, and follow him from reveille to " lights
out," it will be seen that he is kept quite sufficiently
busy.

Reveille 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 in-
viting 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 in-
volves 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 h^% of relaxa-

40 THE WAY OF THE RECRUIT

tion 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 dis-
mounted. This lasts an hour or thereabouts, and
is followed by a return to the barrack-room and
another change of clothing, this time into gymna-
sium 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

THE WAY OF THE RECRUIT 41

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

42 THE WAY OF THE RECRUIT

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 gynmasium, 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 tact nior§

THE WAY OF THE RECRUIT 43

than anything else in barrack-room Hfe. 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

44 THE WAY OF THE RECRUIT

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 occur-
ring 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

THE WAY OF THE RECRUIT 45

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.

rilHE higher ranks of officers have very Httle
-^ to do with the daily Hfe of the soldier. Two
or three times a year the general officer command-
ing 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 con-
versant 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 '*

46

OFFICERS AND NON-COMS. 47

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 con-
cerned 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, some-

48 OFFICERS AND NON-COMS.

where between commissioned and non-commis-
sioned 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 imit 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

OFFICERS AND NON-COMS. 49

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 incom-
petency. 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 reason-
able being ; the subaltern, fresh from Sandhurst
or Woolwich, and oppressed by the weight of
his own importance, is occasionally " too big for his

D

50 OFFICERS AND NON-COMS.

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 judg-
ment 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 equiva-
lents.

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
batterv and of a section of men in an infantry

i

OFFICERS AND NON-COMS. 51

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 train-
ing. 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 quarter-

52 OFFICERS AND NON-COMS.

master, 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

OFFICERS AND NON-COMS. 58

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 advan-
tages 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

54 OFFICERS AND NON-COMS.

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 per-
force 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, especi-
ally in the case of lance-corporals, diminishes

OFFICERS AND NON-COMS. 55

authority, but at the same time it renders easier
the maintenance of barrack -room discipHne 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 under-
studies 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

56 OFFICERS AND NON-COMS.

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 correspond-
ing 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 com-
posed of three officers of the unit concerned. A
district court martial, with wider powers, including

OFFICERS AND NON-COMS. 57

the reduction of a sergeant to the ranks, is com-
posed 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 pro-
ceedings 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

58 OFFICERS AND NON-COMS.

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, degrad-
ing 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 in-
frequent 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 recrea-
tion, and the man who takes his profession
seriously may now hope to attain to higher rank.
Promotions to commissions from the ranks have.

OFFICERS AND NON-COMS. 59

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

rpHE 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

60

INFANTRY 61

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 day.

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,

62 INFANTRY

or it keeps alive a tradition of the service as a whole.
To the outsider, these may appear useless for-
malities, but they are not so in reality ; the soldier
is intensely proud of these things, which make for
esyrit 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 note-
worthy 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 infantry-
man, 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

INFANTRY 63

these two or more portions of the same regiment
meet each other, for, in the case of a two-battahon
regiment, one battaUon 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

64 INFANTRY

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 possi-
bility.

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 sim-
plicity 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 com-
pensation, the infantryman is made to give more

INFANTRY 65

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 bat-
talions, 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 arrange-
ments. There is a standard of bugle calls for the
whole Army, but practically every infantry bat-
talion 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

66 INFANTRY

the way in which a man of the King's Own York-
shire 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 vary-
ing 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 fret-
ting 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.

INFANTRY 67

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 neces-
sary 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 command-
ing 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

68 INFANTRY

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 inspec-
tion. 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 equip-
ment 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 under-
clothing, 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,

INFANTRY 69

in addition to the completeness of the kit, the
amount of poHsh 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 dull-
ness, 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 quan-
tity 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 main-
tenance 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

70 INFANTRY

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

INFANTRY 71

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 inspec-
tions 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 con-
sidered 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

72 INFANTRY

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

INFANTRY 73

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 pre-
liminary instruction is completed, they are sent
out to various points from which they send
messages to each other, under conditions approxi-
mating 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 manoeuvres 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 trans-
mission of messages to a far greater distance than
is possible even with large flags. Lamps for signal-
ling by night are operated by a button which altern-
ately 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,

74 INFANTRY

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

INFANTRY 75

parades, and such men as the regimental shoe-
maker, 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 pro-
motion, is to get on the staff.

CHAPTER V

CAVALRY

PRACTICALLY any man of the twenty-eight
cavalry regiments of the Hne 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 pre-
cedence over Hussars, but in actual practice the
two classes of cavalry are about equal. Dragoon
Guards and Dragoons rank as heavy cavalry ;

76

CAVALRY 77

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

78 CAVALRY

cavalry ride. Each section of the cavalry has its
own particular prides and prejudices. The House-
hold 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

CAVALRY 79

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 re veill6, while the band was ordered
to play before reveille 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 reveille 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 regi-
ment 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

80 CAVALRY

and overalls, and this privilege, like the Carabi-
niers' 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

CAVALRY 81

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 in-
terval 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 per-

Si CAVALRY

fection 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 multi-
plicity 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 sus-
tained attack, as their organisation and equipment
render them unfit for prolonged defensive opera-
tions. They are used, generally on the flanks of
a field force, for making flank attacks and pursuing
retreating enemies ; they are also used in smal

CAVALRY 83

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 informa-
tion 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 infantry-
men 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
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 in-
dividual, 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.

84 CAVALRY

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 regi-
ment is a meticulous business ; the writer has
personal knowledge of and acquaintance with a
troop officer who used to make his morning inspec-
tion of the troop horses with white kid gloves on,

CAVALRY 85

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 manoeuvres 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 found-
ing of this regiment its men have been proud of
their greys, and the order necessitating their dis-

86 CAVALRY

appearance caused a certain amount of outcry, in
spite of the fact that modern mihtary 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 con-
forming 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 attach-
ing 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.

CAVALRY 87

It has never yet come within the writer's know-
ledge 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.

88 CAVALRY

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

CAVALRY 89

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 connec-
tion, the barrack-room life of the cavalryman is
easier than that of the infantryman. Kit inspec-
tions 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 num-
ber 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 neces-

90 CAVALRY

sary 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

CAVALRY 91

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

npHE Royal Artillery of the British Army is
-■- divided into three branches, known re-
spectively 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

92

ARTILLERY AND ENGINEERS 93

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
18i-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 manoeuvres
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 sup-
ported 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

94 ARTILLERY AND ENGINEERS

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
manoeuvre 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 com-
pulsion.

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

ARTILLERY AND ENGINEERS 95

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 appoint-
ments, 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

96 ARTILLERY AND ENGINEERS

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-com-
missioned 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

ARTILLERY AND ENGINEERS 97

of gun in use has changed for the better, the pro-
jectile 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 resist-
ance, 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.

98 ARTILLERY AND ENGINEERS

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
18 1 -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 surpris-
ing 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

ARTILLERY AND ENGINEERS 99

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 com-
manders 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 "

100 ARTILLERY AND ENGINEERS

is synonymous with unending work in the stables.
It is the fetish of smartness, a misdirected en-
thusiasm, which brings things Hke 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 sub-
stantial 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 deteriora-
tion of the leather-work in harness. For all leather-
work 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

ARTILLERY ANP ENGINEERS lOl

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 quick-
ness 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,

102 ARTIIXERY AND ENGINEERS

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 quahty of their work, one has only to get per-
mission 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

ARTILLERY AND ENGINEERS 103

the British Army. In these batteries the guns are
carried in sections on pack animals ; Kipling has
immortaHsed 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 sufiRcient 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

104 ARTILLERY AND ENGINEERS

the garrison gunners, balloon sections and tele-
graph 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 con-
veying siege-guns. There is no end to their
activities, and no end to their enterprise, and in
the opinion of many the Engineers, oSicers 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 entangle-
ments 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^

ARTILLERY AND ENGINEERS 105

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 up-
setting 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 know-
ledofe of work well done.

CHAPTER VII

IN CAMP

XN 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 oft 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

106

IN CAMP 107

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
manoeuvres 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

108 IN CAMP

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 ubi-
quitous 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

IN CAMP 109

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

110 IN CAMP

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 per-
formance 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

IN CAMP 111

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 ;
m its lessons were invaluable, and much of the

112 IN CAMP

practice of the Army of to-day is derived from
experience obtained during that campaign.

One faiHng 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 manoeuvring 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 them-
selves, 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 au-
thorities 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

IN CAMP 113

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-sighted-
ness 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 in-
creases. 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

114 IN CAMP

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.

IN CAMP 115

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

116 IN CAMP

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 imagin-
ation, however, or possibly his instinct, in-
sisted that something uncanny and evil was
watching him from the darkness of the tangled
mimosa bushes, and was waiting a chance to

IN CAMP 117

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 1 — 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 com-
municating 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 liis 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

118 IN CAMP

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 investiga-
tion 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 big
baboons come up from the mimosa scrub and
amuse themselves by throwing clods of earth and
rocks at each other.

IN CAMP 119

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

A LTHOUGH 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. Mus-
ketry is the primary business of the infantry soldier,
and it also enters largely into the training of the
cavalryman, w^ho is expected to be able to dis-
mount 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 mus-
ketry 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

120

MUSKETRY 121

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

122 MUSKETRY

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

MUSKETRY 123

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 " marks-
men," 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

124 MUSKETRY

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, how-
ever, 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 requi-
site number of points for second class. In conse-
quence 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 demon-

MUSKETRY 125

strates the shooting capabiUties 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 instruc-
tor, who is usually a very good shot himself, as
well as being capable of imparting the art of shoot-
ing 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

126 MUSKETRY

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 minutiae 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 know-
ledge, 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 com-
piled by the musketry instructor.

Since shooting is a matter of aptitude to a great
extent, it follows that the present system, punish-
ing 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 appre-
ciable extent ; men do not shoot better because
they know their rate of pay depends on it, for they

MUSKETRY 127

were shooting as well as they could before. Cer-
tainly 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 marks-
manship. 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

128 MUSKETRY

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 instruc-
tors, 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 pro-
duced 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

MUSKETRY 129

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 un-
common 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 him-
self. 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 vip
what they see, for if they were compelled to go by
instructions from the firing point and had to dis-
regard 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

130 MUSKETRY

shot after shot over the back of the butts, in spite
of the repeated instructions of the musketry in-
structor 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 amoimt 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

MUSKETRY 181

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 tele-
scopic 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 dis-
carded 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 corre-
sponding 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

182 MUSKETRY

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

MUSKETRY 133

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. Cer-
tain 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
Jatter, except in the case of Horse Artillery. Taken

184 MUSKETRY

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 hun-
dred 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 esti-
mate 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.

MUSKETRY 185

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 dis-
tance is usually obtained. Another method con-
sists 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 judg-
ing 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 ARMV

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 com-
pulsion, 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

136

INTERNAL ECONOMY 137

connection with its army should be kept as low as
possible, but there the analogy between con-
script 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 recruit-
ing 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

188 INTERNAL ECONOMY

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

INTERNAL ECONOMY 139

something in the fact that Kitchener, as well as
being an ideal organiser of men, is a great psy-
chologist.

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 com-
plete 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

140 INTERNAL ECONOMY

factor in any action that may be fought between
opposing armies, the factor of intelligence and ele-
mentary 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

INTERNAL ECONOMY 141

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 he ses, saddlery, and other Govern-
ment property to the value of not less than £1800.
For the safety and good order of this amount of
propexr^' he is almost entirely responsible, as well
as beiilg charged with the superintendence, in-
struction, 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.

142 INTERNAL ECONOMY

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 arrange-
ments as regards pay for infantrymen are managed
by the colour-sergeants of the cofnpanies, 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.,

INTERNAL ECONOMY 143

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 ojfi&cer or non-com.,
puzzling his brains over the intricacies of a pay-

144 INTERNAL ECONOMY

sheet, expresses an earnest wish that the whole
complicated system may be swept away, and a
straightforward rate of pay for each man substi-
tuted.

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 th(
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 allow-
ance 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

INTERNAL ECONOMY 145

day per man altogether compensate for ration
deficiencies. Beyond doubt, however, the pro-
vision 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 four-
pence 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-com-

146 INTERNAL ECONOMY

missioned 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
sm^prisingly 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

I

INTERNAL ECONOMY 147

has attained to the rank of captain and to the
experience gained by such length of service as
makes him ehgible 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 com-
plaint by the men is, "I will see about it," and

148 INTERNAL ECONOMY

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 incident-
ally 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

INTERNAL ECONOMY 149

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, how-
ever, the tenancy of a regimental canteen by a
contractor is a virtual monopoly, and, unfortu-
nately 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

150 INTERNAL ECONOMY

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 member-
ship 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

INTERNAL ECONOMY 151

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
mian. 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

152 INTERNAL ECONOMY

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

INTERNAL ECONOMY 153

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.

154 INTERNAL ECONOMY

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 dis-
mounting in the field or at riding school occasion-
ally— 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

INTERNAL ECONOMY 155

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 " batman "
from among the men serving under them. The
sergeant's batman, 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

156 INTERNAL ECONOMY

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-

INTERNAL ECONOMY 157

corns, 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 effective-
ness 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

158

THE NEW ARMY 159

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, in-
structors 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

160 THE NEW ARMY

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 com-
missioned officers. For the average man, how-
ever, 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

THE NEW ARMY 161

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 arbitra-
tion 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.

162 THE NEW ARMY

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 employ-
ment 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.

THE NEW ARMY 163

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 eccentri-
cities. 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

164 THE NEW ARMY

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 pros-
perity have left the Army dependent mainly on
the unemployed for its recruits, with a corre-
sponding 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 in-
evitable 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

THE NEW ARMY 165

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 individu-
ality. 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 characteris-
tics of a man may be, the Army cannot make a

166 THE NEW ARMY

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 them-
selves. 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 pos-
session 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

THE NEW ARMY 167

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 com-
fort. 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 con-
ditions 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

168 THE NEW ARMY

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 oufit 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 SEKVICE

rilHE popular conception of active service is of
J- 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

169

170 ACTIVE SERVICE

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
one's 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

ACTIVE SERVICE 171

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 con-
vinced 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,

172 ACTIVE SERVICE

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

ACTIVE SERVICE 173

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 — moral 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

174 ACTIVE SERVICE

either flank ; circumstances, however, do not
always admit of this.

On mobiUsation for active service, the first
thing that happens in the British Army is the
calUng 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 maybe — 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.

ACTIVE SERVICE 175

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 am-
mimition 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

176 ACTIVE SERVICE

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 manoeuvres, 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

ACTIVE SERVICE 177

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 im-
pression 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

M

178 ACTIVE SERVICE

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."

ACTIVE SERVICE 179

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 un-

180 ACTIVE SERVICE

dreamed 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

ACTIVE SERVICE 181

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, what-
ever 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

182 ACTIVE SERVICE

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.

WII.LIAM BRBNOON AND SO^, LTD.
FRiNTKRS, PLYMOUTH

GENERAL LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA— BERKELEY

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