The Aldershot Drills.
The Aldershot Summer Drills appear to have been instituted when the Autumn Manœuvres, held in 1872-3, were discontinued. The “Civil Service” first sent a detachment to Aldershot in 1875, and from that date, with but few exceptions, they have annually sent a Company. This Company has been almost always attached to the Provisional Battalion commanded by Colonel Du Plat Taylor, of the Post Office Volunteers. Of all the efforts taken to instil a military training into the Volunteer none perhaps have had so great an effect as the “Aldershot Week.” The complete change of life experienced by thus suddenly adopting the soldier’s daily routine and hard fare, the living with and fraternising with soldiers, the feeling that you are for the time being actually paid as a soldier, that you are watched by military police lest you should desert, that the Mutiny Act has been read over you, which says that if you disobey your officer you shall be shot—all this is calculated to make the most light-hearted Volunteer feel that he is in earnest at last. He enters into the spirit of the work, enjoys the novelty of the situation—knowing that it won’t last long—and generally comes home, grimy, sunburnt, and, in his own eyes at least, a soldier to the backbone. The stamp it puts on a man is never effaced. To say “he is an Aldershot-man” means that he is entitled to considerable respect as a good Volunteer.