CHAPTER III. SNARED
“CRIMED”
“Off with his head,” said the Queen.—Alice in Wonderland.
“Charge against 31963—
Failing to drink some oniony tea;
Ha! Ha!
What! What!
I can have you SHOT!
D'you realise that
I can have you lashed
To a wheel and smashed?
What?
Rot!
Yes—SHOT!
D'you realise this?
Right—turn!
DISMISS!”
Lemnos: October 1915.
Born and bred in a studio, and brought up among the cloud-swept mountains of Westmorland, amid the purple heather and the sunset in the peat-moss puddles, barrack-life soon became like penal servitude. I was like a caged wild animal. I knew now why the tigers and leopards pace up and down, up and down, behind their bars at the Zoo.
We only stayed a week in the great, gray, prison-like barracks at Tipperary. We looked about for the “sweetest girl” of the song—but the “colleens” were disappointing. My heart was not “right there.” We moved to Limerick; and in Limerick we stopped for seven solid months.
For seven months we did the same old squad-drill every day, at the same time, on the same old square, until at last we all began to be unbearably “fed up.” The sections became slack at drill because they were over-drilled and sickened by the awful monotony of it all.
During those seven dreary months, in that dismal slum-grown town, we learnt all the tricks of barrack-life. We knew how to “come the old soldier”; we knew how and when to “wangle out” of doing this or that fatigue; we practised the ancient art of “going sick” when we knew a long route march was coming off next day.
We knew how to “square” the guard if we came in late, and the others learnt how to dodge church parade.
“'E never goes to church parade.”