The British Army from Within

by Evelyn Charles Vivian

The spirit of the British infantryman, with very few exceptions, consists mainly in his belief that he is a member of the best company in the very best battalion of infantry in the service. As for his particular arm of the service, he points with pride to the fact that he comes in from a march and gets to his food while the poor cavalryman is still fretting about in the horse lines, and he has no two sets of harness to bother about after a field day. He slings his equipment on the shelf and goes off to his meal when the field day is over, while the poor gunner is busy with an oil rag, keeping the rust from eating into his gun and its fittings until the time comes to clean it. Thus the infantryman on his advantages, and with some justice, too.

But in the barrack-room the cavalryman and artilleryman have the advantage. They can make down their beds and snooze when work is done, secure from interruption until “stables” shall sound and turn them out to care for their “long-faced chums.” The infantryman, on the other hand, has to prepare for barrack-room and kit inspections at all times; he has to wet-scrub and dry-scrub the floors, blacklead the table trestles and legs of forms, whitewash himself tired on articles which, to the civilian eye, appear already sufficiently coated with whitewash, pick grass off the drill ground, and carry out a host of orders which seem designed for his especial irritation, though in reality they are designed to keep him at work and prevent him from being utterly idle. In certain hours, the infantryman must be made to work to keep him in condition, and if the work of a necessary nature is not sufficient to keep him employed, then work is made for him. It must be said that, owing to the existence of undiscerning commanding and other officers, a lot of this work, although undoubtedly it fulfils its purpose, is irritating to the last degree, and might with advantage be exchanged for tasks which would exercise the intelligence of the men instead of rousing their disgust. Grass-picking is an especially detested form of labour which is common in some battalions of the infantry. In most units, however, men are put to useful occupations; in some stations where available ground admits, gardens are allotted to the men, who cultivate creditable supplies of vegetables for the use of their messes and flowers for decorative purposes.

Another favourite form of exercise, in which the infantryman is indulged with what appears to him unnecessary frequency, is kit inspection. At first sight, it would seem that the circumstance of an officer inspecting the kit and equipment of his men is not one which would cause an undue amount of trouble, but the reverse of this is the case in practice. Each man has to lay down his kit to a regulation pattern; at the head of the bed, on which the clothing and equipment is laid out, the reds and blues and khaki-coloured squares represent much time spent by the man in folding each article of clothing to the last half-inch of size and form, prescribed by the regulation affecting the way in which kit must be laid down for inspection. Then come the underclothing, knife and fork, razor, Prayer Book and Bible, brushes, and other odds and ends with which every man must be provided. If any article is deficient from the official list, the man is promptly “put down” for a new article to replace the deficiency—and for this he has to pay. The upkeep of a full kit is most strictly enforced, and, in addition to the completeness of the kit, the amount of polish on the various articles calls for much attention on the part of the inspecting officer. A knife or fork not sufficiently bright, boots not quite as well cleaned and polished as they might be, or brass buttons displaying a suspicion of dullness, lead at the least to an order to show again at a stated hour—not the single article, but the whole kit—while repeated deficiencies, either in the quantity of the articles or in the evident amount of care bestowed on them, will lead to defaulters’ drill or even cells.

Kit inspection counts as a “parade,” and not as a “fatigue.” The latter term is used to imply all kinds of actual work in connection with the maintenance of order in the battalion, and varies from washing up in the sergeants’ mess to carrying coals for the barrack-room or married quarters. To each unit, as a rule, there is a coal-yard attached, and from this a certain amount of coal is issued free each week for cooking purposes, while in the winter months a further amount is allotted to the men to burn in the barrack-room stoves. If the allowance is exceeded—and since it is a small one it is usually exceeded—the men club round among themselves to purchase more, at the rate of a penny or twopence a man. The fetching of this extra coal does not count as a “fatigue” in the official sense.

A roll is kept of all men liable for fatigue duty, and each man takes his turn in alphabetical order in the performance of the various tasks that have to be done. As these tasks differ considerably in nature and extent, it follows that the alphabetical way of ordering the roll is as fair as any, though artful dodgers, getting wind of a stiff fatigue ahead, will get out of doing it by exchanging their turns with those men who would otherwise get an easier task. As a rule, sergeants’ mess fatigue is one of the least liked, except on Sunday mornings, when it releases the man who does it from church parade—of which more later.

For the actual housemaid work of the barrack-room, a roll is usually kept in each room, and the men of the room take turns at “orderly man,” as it is called. This involves the final sweeping out of the room after each man has swept under his own bed and round the little bit of floor which is his own particular territory. It involves the care of and responsibility for all the kits in the room while the remainder of the men are out at drill, and also the fetching of all meals and washing up of the plates and basins after each meal. The orderly man of the day is not supposed to leave the room during parade hours, except to fetch meals for the rest; it is his duty, after all have gone out, to put the boxes at the foot of the beds in an exact line, that there may be nothing to disturb the symmetry of things when the orderly officer or the colour-sergeant comes round on a morning visit of inspection. In a home station, as far as infantry is concerned, practically all barrack-room inspections take place before one o’clock in the day, and in the afternoons such men as are in the barrack-room have it to themselves. It is the rule in some battalions, however, that no beds may be “made down” before six o’clock—a harsh rule, and one which serves no useful purpose, unless it be considered useful to keep a man from lying down to rest.

While guard duty is kept as light as possible in mounted branches of the service, it is allowed to assume large proportions in the infantry. In a cavalry regiment, the “main guard,” which mounts duty for twenty-four hours and has charge of the regimental guard-room and prisoners confined therein, is composed at the most of a corporal and three men, but in the infantry the main guard of a battalion consists of a sergeant, a corporal or lance-corporal, and six men, providing three reliefs of two sentries apiece. Guard duty is done in “review order.” That is to say, the men dress up in their best clothes, with the last possible polish on metal-work and the best possible pipeclay on all belts and equipment that permit of it; and the inspection to which the guard is submitted before taking over its duties is the most searching form of inspection which the soldier has to undergo after he has been dismissed from recruits’ training. The men of the guard do turns of two hours sentry-go apiece, and then get four hours’ rest, except in very inclement weather, when the periods are reduced to one hour of duty and two hours of rest. Experience has placed it beyond doubt that the “two hours on and four hours off” is the best way of doing duty in reliefs; it imposes less strain on the men, who have to keep up their duty for a day and a night, than any other form in which it could be arranged.

Certain men in infantry units—and in fact in all units—are excused from the regular routine of duty in order to fill special posts. Noteworthy among these are the “flag-waggers” or regimental signallers, a body of men maintained at a certain strength for the purpose of signalling messages with flags, heliograph, or lamps, by means of the Morse telegraphic code, and also with flags at short distances by semaphore. Bearing in mind the average education among the rank and file, it is remarkable with what facility men learn the use of the Morse code. Against this must be set the fact that only selected men are employed as signallers; these are taught the alphabet, and the various signs employed for special purposes, by being grouped in squads, and, after their preliminary instruction is completed, they are sent out to various points from which they send messages to each other, under conditions approximating as nearly as possible to those which obtain on active service.

In order to maintain the signallers of a unit in full practice and efficiency, the men are excused from all ordinary parades for a certain part of the year; during manœuvres they are attached to the headquarters staff of their unit and carry on their work as signallers, not as ordinary duty-men. The wagging of flags is only a part of their duty, for they have to learn the mechanism and use of the heliograph, since, when sunlight permits of its use, this instrument can be employed for the transmission of messages to a far greater distance than is possible even with large flags. Lamps for signalling by night are operated by a button which alternately obscures and exhibits the light of a lamp placed behind a concentrating lens. The practised signaller is as efficient in the use of flags, lamps, and heliograph as is the post-office operator in the use of the ordinary telegraph instrument, though the exigencies of field service render military signalling a considerably slower business than ordinary wire telegraphy.

Another course of instruction which carries with it a certain amount of exemption from duty in the infantry is that of scout. The practised scout is capable of plotting a way across country at night, marching by the compass or by the stars, making a watch serve as a compass, military map-reading—which is not as simple a matter as might be supposed—and of making sketches in conventional military signs of areas of ground, natural defensive positions, and all points likely to be of interest and advantage from a military point of view. The work of the signaller has been going on for many years, but the training of scouts is a movement which has come about and developed almost entirely during the last twelve years, which, as the Army reckons time, is but a very short period. It may be anticipated that the practice of scouting and the training of scouts will develop considerably as time goes on.