The British Army from Within

by Evelyn Charles Vivian

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 mattresses 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 men, their 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 gained by the majority of those who enlist: that first glimpse of military life 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 contains 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 toothbrush and a comb. As a rule, he omits the ceremony 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 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 commissioned officers. Sometimes the soldier finds a nickname for a comrade out of a personal peculiarity, 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 promotion. 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 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 to the victim. Many a man has gone to the armourer 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 dislikes 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 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 imprisonment, 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 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 characteristics 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 mitigation 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 confined to barracks,” the case is beyond the jurisdiction 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” 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 injustice, 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.