It is a good camp story, and I tell it as it was told to me, without vouching for its truth. Any man who cares to go into a military camp—by permission of the officer commanding, of course—and has the tact and patience to win the confidence of the soldiers in the camp, can hear stories equally good, and plenty of them. For, as previously remarked, camp life breeds yarns.

CHAPTER VIII
MUSKETRY

Although the musket of old time became obsolete before the memory of living man, the term “musketry” survives yet, and probably will always survive for laconic description of the art and practice of military rifle-shooting. Musketry is the primary business of the infantry soldier, and it also enters largely into the training of the cavalryman, who is expected to be able to dismount and hold a desired position until infantry arrive to relieve him.

So far as the recruit is concerned, by far the greater part of the necessary instruction in musketry takes place not on the rifle range, but on the regimental or battalion drill-ground, where the beginner is taught the correct positions for shooting while standing, kneeling, and lying. He is taught the various parts of his weapon and their peculiar uses; he is taught that when a wind gauge is adjusted one division to either side, it makes a lateral difference of a foot for every hundred yards in the ultimate destination of the bullet. He is taught the business of fine adjustment of sights, taught with clips of dummy cartridges how to charge the magazine of his rifle. The extreme effectiveness of the weapon is impressed on him, and the instructor not only tells him that he must not point a loaded rifle at a pal, but also explains the reason for this, and usually draws attention to accidents that have occurred through disregard of elementary rules of caution. For long experience has demonstrated that the unpractised man is liable to be careless in the way in which he handles a rifle, and the recruit, being at a careless age, and often coming from a careless class, is especially prone to make mistakes unless the need for caution is well hammered home.

At first glance, a rifle is an extremely simple thing. You pull back the bolt, insert a cartridge, and close the bolt. Then you put the rifle to your shoulder and pull the trigger—and the trick is done. But first impressions are misleading, and the recruit has to be trained in the use of the rifle until he understands that he has been given charge of a very delicate and complex piece of mechanism, of which the parts are so finely adjusted that it will send its bullet accurately for a distance of 2800 yards—considerably over a mile and a half. In order to maintain the accuracy of the instrument the recruit is taught by means of a series of lessons, which seem to him insufferably long and tedious, how to clean, care for, and handle his rifle. An immense amount of time and care is given to the business of teaching him exactly how to press the trigger, for on the method of pressing the quality of the shot depends very largely. The musketry instructor gives individual instruction to each man in this, and the man is made to undergo “snapping practice”—that is, repeatedly pressing the trigger of the empty rifle until he has gained sufficient experience to have some idea of what will happen when the trigger is pressed with a live cartridge in front of the bolt.

When the recruit has been well grounded in the theory of using a rifle, he is taken to the rifle range for actual practice with real ammunition. He starts off at the 200 yards’ range with a large target before him, and, in all probability, the first shot that he fires scores a bull’s-eye. He feels at once that he knows a good bit more about the use of a rifle than the man who is instructing him, and at the given word he aims and fires again. This time he is lucky if he scores an outer; more often than not the bullet either strikes the ground half-way up the range, or goes sailing over the back of the butts, and the recruit, with a nasty painful feeling about his shoulder, has an idea that rifle-shooting is a tricky business, after all. The fact was that, with his experience of “snapping,” he had learned to pull the trigger—or rather, to press it—without experiencing the kick of the rifle; that kick, felt with the first real firing, caused an instinctive recoil on his part in firing the second time. Later on he learns to stand the kick, and to mitigate its effects by holding the rifle firmly in to his shoulder, and from that time onward he begins to improve in the art of rifle-shooting and to make consistent practice.

For the recruits’ course, the targets are naturally larger and the conditions easier than when the trained man fires. At the conclusion of the recruits’ course, the men are graded into “marksmen,” who are the best shots of all, first-class, second-class, and third-class shots, and they have to qualify in each annual “duty-man’s” course of firing in order to retain or improve their positions as shots. Before the new regulations, which made pay dependent on proficiency on the range, came into force, there was a good deal of juggling with scores in the butts; one company or squadron of a unit would provide “markers” for another, and since the men at the firing point shot in regular order, it was a comparatively easy matter to “square the marker” and get him to mark up a better score than was actually obtained. Under the present rules governing proficiency pay, however, a man’s rate of pay is dependent on his musketry, and third-class shots suffer to the extent of twopence per day for failing to make the requisite number of points for second class. In consequence of this, supervision in the butts is much more severe, and there is little opportunity of putting on a score that is not actually obtained. A case occurred two or three years ago, the 5th Dragoon Guards being the regiment concerned, in which the men of a whole squadron made such an abnormally good score as a whole that, when the returns came to be inspected, it was suspected that the markers had had a hand in compiling what was practically a record. The squadron in question was ordered to fire its course over again, and the markers were carefully chosen with a view to the prevention of fraud in the butts. After two or three days of firing, however, the repeat course was stopped, for the men of the squadron were making even better scores than before. The incident goes to show that there is little likelihood of frauds occurring at the butts under the present system of supervision, and incidentally demonstrates the shooting capabilities of that particular squadron of men.

Bad shots are the trial of instructors, who are held more or less responsible for the musketry standard of their units—certainly more, if there are too many bad shots in any particular unit. The bad shot is usually a nervous man, who cannot keep himself and his rifle steady at the moment of firing, though drink—too much of it—plays a large part in the reduction of musketry scores. At any rifle range used by regular troops, during the carrying out of the annual course, one may see the musketry instructor lying beside some man at the firing point, instructing him where to aim, pointing out the error of the last shot, and telling the soldier how to correct his aim for the next—generally helping to keep up the average of the regiment or battalion. As a rule, there is no man more keen on his work than the musketry instructor, who is usually a very good shot himself, as well as being capable of imparting the art of shooting to others.