In the following chapters, showing as far as possible the inner life of the Army from the point of view of the soldier, an attempt has been made to show the average of life in each branch of the service. Exceptions occur: the quality of the commanding officer makes all the difference in the life of the unit which he commands; again, apart from the influence exercised by the personality of the commanding officer, that of the company or squadron officer is a very potent factor in the lives of the men under his command. The British Army, fine fighting machine though it is, is not perfect, and there are instances of bad commanding officers, bad squadron and company officers, just as there are instances of superlatively good ones. Between these is the influence exerted by the mass on the mass, from which an average picture may be drawn.
That picture is the portrait of the British soldier, second to none.
CHAPTER II
THE WAY OF THE RECRUIT
The way of the recruit, though still a hard one, is not so hard as it used to be, for, especially in the cavalry and artillery, various modifications have been introduced by which the youngster is broken in gradually to his work. This is not all to the good, for under the new way of working the training which precedes “dismissal” from recruit’s training to the standing of a trained soldier takes longer, and, submitting the recruit to a less strenuous form of life for the period through which it lasts, does not produce quite so handy and quick a man as the one who was kept at it from dawn till dark, with liberty at the end of his official day’s work to clean up equipment for the next day. Still, the annual training of the “dismissed” soldier is a more strenuous business now than in old time, so probably the final result is about the same.
The recruit’s first requirements, after he has interviewed the recruiting sergeant on the subject of enlistment is to take the oath—a very quick and simple matter—and then to pass the doctor, which is not so simple. The recruit is stripped, sounded, tested for full physical efficiency, and made to pass tests in eyesight and breathing which, if he emerges satisfactorily, proclaim him as near physical perfection as humanity can get without a course of physical culture—and that course is administered during his first year of service. Kept under the wing of the recruiting sergeant for a matter of hours or days, as the case may be, the recruit is at last drafted off to his depot, or direct to his unit, where his real training begins in earnest.
We may take the case of a recruit who had enlisted from mixed motives, arrived at a station whence he had to make his way to barracks in the evening, in order to begin his new life; here are his impressions of beginning life in the Army.
He went up a hill, and along a muddy lane, and, arriving at the barracks, inquired, as he had been told to do, for the quartermaster-sergeant of “C” Squadron. He was directed to the quartermaster-sergeant’s office, and, on arrival there, was asked his name and the nature of his business by a young corporal who took life as a joke and regarded recruits as a special form of food for amusement. Having ascertained the name of the recruit, the corporal, who was a kindly fellow at heart, took him down to the regimental coffee bar and provided him with a meal of cold meat, bread, and coffee—at the squadron’s expense, of course, for the provision of the meal was a matter of duty. The corporal then indicated the room in which the recruit was to sleep, and left him.
The recruit opened the door of the room, and looked in. It was a long room, with a row of narrow beds down each side, and in the middle two tables on iron trestles, whereon were several basins. On almost every bed sat a man, busily engaged in cleaning some article of clothing or equipment; some were cleaning buttons, some were pipeclaying belts, some were engaged with sword-hilts and brick-dust, some were cleaning boots—all were cleaning up as if their lives depended on it, for “lights out” would be sounded at a quarter-past ten, and it was already past nine o’clock. When they saw the recruit, they gave him greeting. “Here’s another one!” they cried. “Here’s another victim!” and other phrases which led this particular recruit to think, quite erroneously, that he had come to something very bad indeed. Two or three were singing, with more noise than melody, a song which was very old when Queen Anne died—it was one of the ditties of the regiment, sung by its men on all possible and most impossible occasions. One man shouted to the recruit that he had “better flap before he drew his issue,” and that he could not understand at all. Translated into civilian language, it meant that he had better desert before he exchanged his civilian clothing for regimental attire, but this he learned later. They seemed a jolly crowd, very fond of flavouring their language with words which, in civilian estimation, were terms of abuse, but passed as common currency here.