[8] An old air, subsequently set to the song My Tocher’s the Jewel.
[9] Campaigning in Kaffirland, by Capt. W. R. King, 1853, p. 27.
THE NEW UBIQUE: SPIT AND POLISH.
BY JEFFERY E. JEFFERY.
‘Personally myself,’ said the Child, tilting back his chair until his head touched the wall behind him, and stretching out a lazy arm towards the cigarette-box—‘personally myself, I’ve enjoyed this trip no end—haven’t you?’
‘I have,’ I answered; ‘so much so, Child, that the thought of going back to gun-pits and trenches and O.P.s again fills me with gloom.’
It was our last night in a most comfortable billet near ——, where, on and off, we had spent rather more than a month of ease: on the morrow we were going into the line again. The trip to which the Child was referring, however, was an eight days’ course at a place vaguely known as ‘the —th Army Mobile Artillery Training School,’ from which our battery had but lately returned.
The circumstances were these. When, five weeks ago, the division moved (for the nth time!) to a different part of the line, it transpired that three batteries would be ‘out at rest,’ as there would be no room for them in action. It also so chanced that it was our colonel’s turn to be left without a ‘group’[10] to command. This being so, he suggested to higher authorities that the three batteries ‘out’ should be those of his own brigade, in order that he might have a chance ‘to tidy them up a bit,’ as he phrased it. Thus it was that we found ourselves, as I have said, in extremely comfortable billets—places, I mean, where they have sheets on the beds and china jugs and gas and drains—with every prospect of a pleasant loaf. But in this we were somewhat sanguine.
The colonel’s idea in having us ‘out’ for a while was not so much to rest us as to give us a variation of work. Being essentially a thorough man, he started—or rather ordered me to start—at the very beginning. The gunners paraded daily for marching drill, physical exercises, and ‘elementary standing gun drill by numbers.’ N.C.O.s and drivers were taken out and given hours of riding drill under the supervision of subalterns bursting with knowledge crammed up from the book the night before and under the personal direction of a brazen-voiced sergeant who, having passed through the ‘riding troop’ at Woolwich in his youth, knew his business. The strangest sight of all was the class of signallers—men who had spent months in the fœtid atmosphere of cellars and dug-outs, or creeping along telephone wires in ‘unhealthy’ spots—now waving flags at a word of command and going solemnly through the Morse alphabet letter by letter. Of the whole community this was perhaps the most scandalised portion. But in a few days, when everybody (not excluding myself and the other officers) had discovered how much had been forgotten during our long spell in action, a great spirit of emulation began to be displayed. Subsections vied with one another to produce the smartest gun detachment, the sleekest horses, the best turned-out ride, the cleanest harness, guns, and wagons.
The colonel, after the manner of his kind, came at the end of a week or so to inspect things. He is not the sort of man upon whom one can easily impose. A dozen of the shiniest saddles or bits in the battery placed so as to catch the light (and the eye) near the doorway of the harness-room do not necessarily satisfy him: nor is he content with the mere general and symmetrical effect of rows of superficially clean breast-collars, traces, and breechings. On the contrary, he is quite prepared to spend an hour or more over his inspection, examining every set of harness in minute detail, even down to the backs of the buckle tongues, the inside of the double-folded breast collars, and the oft-neglected underside of saddle flaps. It is the same thing with the guns and wagons. Burnished breech-rings and polished brasswork look very nice, and he approves of them, but he does not on that account omit to look closely at every oil-hole or to check the lists of ‘small stores’ and ‘spare parts.’