FIGURE 13:
Simple loophole made of steel plate and let into parapet.
FIGURE 14:
Ordinary hand bomb with fuse lighted automatically as lever is released.
When an army has to live in tents, a certain amount of dampness is almost certainly inevitable. But if proper drains are dug around them, and every advantage taken of the sunlight, much can be done to avoid what frequently ends in rheumatism or pneumonia. It pays to construct good cinder roads in all the camp lines and to see to it that the approaches to the individual tents are prepared in the same way. When we were first dumped down in a field of clay in the Midlands of England and told to prepare it for the horse lines to accommodate the sixteen hundred horses that were due in a few days, we were faced with a colossal task. We were all turned into navvies, and long before we even had shelter for the horses they had arrived. It was a most tedious business to construct lines for them in December in England, and we had to cart many hundreds of tons of cinders and rock to make the place possible. For weeks we worked at it, and there were complaints from the men that they had not joined the army to be navvies. They had joined it to fight, so they said. But when the stables were finished and they could approach the lines over nice smooth dry roads they realised that their labour had not been in vain. There is usually a fitting return in health from all the labour invested in the preparation of a good camp.
Another place in which officers and non-commissioned officers must be on the alert for filth, is the cook house. This is true in winter as well as in summer time. It has been my experience that the laziest and dirtiest men volunteer for the task of cook. The reason is that they are able to get the choicest portions for themselves, be free from the bore of attending drills and parades, and get a little higher pay, besides what they can get from the soldiers on the side for little favours. In an army such as was formed in England at the beginning of the war it was impossible to get enough trained cooks for the work, and all sorts of men were run in for the job. Many of them were thoroughly lazy and incompetent. There was, of course, a rooted objection to calling in the aid of women—though few of us ever think of employing men to do our cooking in private life—and when we suggested it for the purpose of improving the grade of our food in the Officers' Mess, we were met with the reply that it had never been done. That was the reason for keeping out a good many reforms in Dear Old England. But by strategy on our part, and by the eventual demands of the stomachs concerned that some change be made, we were able to introduce a woman manager for the mess kitchen. She reformed everything, including the costs of the food. Our mess bills were considerably reduced, the food was better cooked, and we got a variety that had never seemed to occur to the late robbers that we had employed. When England began to feel the want of fighting men, it entered the brains of some of the Brass Hat officials that this was a sphere in which the women could well supplant the men—and woman came into her own again, at least in part. That was a job that women could do well, but it was a long time before we would agree to let them.
FIGURE 15:
Above is trench bomb gun firing bomb with stem; below is trench mortar firing large bomb.
But whether men or women are in charge of this important department of an army, the duty will still devolve upon the officers to see that the cookhouses are kept clean and that the food is up to the proper standard. One case occurred in a camp near London where they were following the principle of allowing outside caterers to supply the food, in which the Orderly Officer of the day just managed to stop in time, the service to the men of meat that was diseased. The desire to make a little additional profit had blinded these unpatriotic people to the welfare of the troops, and they were punished with a fine and with the loss of their catering contract. That is mild punishment. Grafters of every kind, from those who put bad powder into shells or bad leather into boots, to those who risk an outbreak of sickness through supplying improper food, should all be treated the same way that certain other enemies of their country are treated—a Court-martial and a firing party. No condemnation is too severe for them. Officers will not always find it an easy task to detect these thieves, but they must be very much on their job for this purpose.
Then again good food sometimes is allowed to become bad food through the careless handling by the cooks and their assistants. Covers are left off dishes that contain meat, butter, cheese, etc., and they are ruined by dust or flies. Contaminated food is allowed to remain in close proximity to the food that is to be offered to the troops; cooks either use unclean utensils themselves or allow the orderlies from the various units to return dirty utensils to them; or they handle the refuse and then the food without ever a thought to washing their hands. One very knowing old rascal of a cook we had used to have his place in excellent condition at eleven in the morning when the Orderly Officer used to make his rounds, and one day when I came upon him suddenly it was to find that he was using one of the bread bags as a receptacle for his change of clothes—a filthy collection of shirts, socks, etc. He was fired, and cursed me for many a day as he carried his great weight of avoirdupois round the training field with a rifle over his shoulder like any other infantryman.