The Amateur Army Part 3

CHAPTER IV

OFFICERS AND RIFLES

As I have said, I have learned among other things to obey my officers and depend upon my rifle. At first the junior officers appeared to me only as immaculate young men in tailor-made tunics and well-creased trousers, wearing swords and wrist-watches, and full of a healthy belief in their own importance. My mates are apt to consider them as being somewhat vain, and no Tommy dares fail to salute the young commissioned officers when he meets them out with their young ladies on the public streets. For myself, I have a great respect for them and their work; day and night they are at their toil; when parade comes to an end, and the battalion is dismissed for the day, the officers, who have done ten or twelve hours' of field exercise, turn to their desks and company accounts, and time and again the Last Post sees them busy over ledgers, pamphlets, and plans.

Accurate and precise in every detail, they know the outs and ins of platoon and company drill, and can handle scores and hundreds of men with the ease and despatch of artists born to their work. Where have these officers, fresh youngsters with budding moustaches and white, delicate hands, learned all about frontage, file, flank, and formation, alignment, echelon, incline, and interval? Words of direction and command come so readily from their lips that I was almost tempted to believe that they had learned as easily as they taught, that their skill in giving orders could only be equalled by the ease with which I supposed they had mastered the details of their work. Later I came to know of the difficulty that confronts the young men, raw from the Officers' Training Corps, when they take up their preliminary duties as commanders of trained soldiers. No "rooky" fresh to the ranks is the b.u.t.t of so many jokes and such biting sarcasm as the young officer is subjected to when he takes his place as a leader of men.

Soon after my arrival in our town a score of young lieutenants came to our parade ground, accompanied by two commanders, a keen-eyed adjutant, brisk as a bell, and a white-haired colonel with very thin legs, and putties which seemed to have been glued on to his shins. The young gentlemen were destined for various regiments, and most of them were fresh and spotless in their new uniforms. Some wore Glengarry bonnets, kilts, and sporrans, some the black ribbons of Wales; one, whose hat-badge proclaimed the Dublin Fusilier, was conspicuous by the eyegla.s.s he wore, and others were still arrayed in civilian garb, the uniform of city and office life. Several units of my battalion were taken off to drill in company with the strange officers. I was one of the chosen.

The young men took us in hand, acting in turn as corporals, platoon sergeants, and company commanders. The gentleman with the eyegla.s.s had charge of my platoon, and from the start he cast surrept.i.tious glances at a little red brochure which he held in his hand, and mumbled words as if trying to commit something to memory.

"Get to your places," the adjutant yelled to the officers. "Hurry up!

Don't stand there gaping as if you're going to snap at flies. We've got to do some work. There's no hay for those who don't work. Come on, Weary, and drill your men; you with the eyegla.s.s, I mean! I want you to put the company through some close column movements."

The man with the eyegla.s.s took up his position, and issued some order, but his voice was so low that the men nearest him could not hear the command.

"Shout!" yelled the adjutant. "Don't mumble like a flapper who has just got her first kiss. It's not allowed on parade."

The order was repeated, and the voice raised a little.

"Louder, louder!" yelled the adjutant. Then with fine irony: "These men are very interested in what you've got to tell them.... I don't think."

Eyegla.s.s essayed another attempt, but stopped in the midst of his words, frozen into mute helplessness by the look of the adjutant.

"For heaven's sake, try and speak up," the adjutant said. "If you don't talk like a man, these fellows won't salute you when they meet you in the street with your young lady. On second thoughts, you had better go back and take up the job of platoon sergeant. Come on, Glengarry, and try and trumpet an order."

Glengarry, so-called from his bonnet, a st.u.r.dy youth with sloping shoulders, took up his post nervously.

"A close column forming column of fours," he cried in a shrill treble, quoting the cautionary part of his command. "Advance in fours from the right; form fours--right!"

"Form fours--where?" roared the adjutant.

"Left," came the answer.

"Left, your grandmother! You were right at first. Did you not know that you were right?... Where's Eyegla.s.s, the platoon sergeant, now?

Who's pinched him?"

This unfortunate officer had dropped his eyegla.s.s, and was now groping for it on the muddy ground, one of my mates helping him in the search.

Other officers took up the job of company commander in turn, and all suffered. One, who was a dapper little fellow, speedily earned the nickname of "Tailor's Dummy;" another, when giving a platoon the wrong direction in dressing, was told to be careful, and not shove the regiment over. A third, a Welshman, with the black ribbons, got angry with a section for some slight mistake made by two of its number, and was told to be careful and not annoy the men. He had only got them on appro'.

Spick and span in their new uniforms, they came to drill daily on our parade ground. Slowly the change took place. They were "rookies" no longer, and the adjutant's sarcasm was a thing of the past. Commands were p.r.o.nounced distinctly and firmly; the officers were trained men, ready to lead a company of soldiers anywhere and to do anything.

No man who has trained with the new armies can be lacking in respect for the indefatigable N.C.O., upon whom the brunt of the work has fallen. With picturesque scorn and sarcasm he has formed huge armies out of the rawest of raw material, and all in a s.p.a.ce of less than half a year. His methods are sometimes strange and his temper short; yet he achieves his end in the shortest time possible. He is for ever correcting the same mistakes and rebuking the same stupidity, and the wonder is, not that he loses his temper, but that he should ever be able to preserve it. He understands men, and approaches them in an idiom that is likely to produce the best results.

"Every man of you has friends of some sort," said the musketry instructor, as we formed up in front of him on the parade ground, gripping with nervous eagerness the rifles which had just been served out from the quartermaster's stores. We were recruits, raw "rookies,"

green to the grind, and chafing under discipline. "And some sort of friends it would be as well as if you never met them," the instructor continued. "They'd play you false the minute they'd get your back turned. But you've a friend now that will always stand by you and play you fair. Just give him a chance, and he'll maybe see you out of many a tight corner. Now, who is this friend I'm talking about?" he asked, turning to a youth who was leaning on his rifle. "Come, Weary, and tell me."

"The rifle," was the answer.

"The crutch?"

"No, the rifle."

"I see that, boy, I see that! But, d.a.m.n it, don't make a crutch of it.

You're a soldier now, my man, and not a crippled one yet."

Thus was the rifle introduced to us. We had long waited for its coming, and dreamt of cross-guns, the insignia of a crack shot's proficiency, while we waited. And with the rifle came romance, and the element of responsibility. We were henceforward fighting men, numbered units, it was true, with numbered weapons, but for all that, fighters--men trained to the trade and licensed to the profession.

Our new friend was rather a troublesome individual to begin with. In rising to the slope he had the trick of breaking free and falling on the muddy barrack square. A muddy rifle gets rusty, and brings its owner into trouble, and a severe penalty is considered meet for the man who comes on parade with a rusty rifle. Bringing the friend from the slope to the order was a difficult process for us recruits at the start the back-sight tore at the fingers, and bleeding hands often testified to the unnatural instinct of the rebellious weapon. But the unkindest kick of all was given when the slack novice fired the first shot, and the heel of the b.u.t.t slipped upwards and struck the jaw.

Then was learnt the first real lesson. The rifle kicks with the heel and aims for the jaw. Control your friend, humour him; keep him well in hand and beware his fling.

I was unlucky in my first rifle practice on the miniature range, and out of my first five shots I did not hit the target once. The instructor lay by my side on the waterproof ground-sheet (the day was a wet one, and the range was muddy) and lectured me between misses on the peculiarities of my weapon and the cultivation of a steady eye.

"Keep the beggar under control," he said. "You've got to coax him, and not use force. Pull the trigger easily, as though you loved it, and hold the b.u.t.t affectionate-like against the shoulder. It's an easy matter to shoot as you're shooting now. There's shooting and shooting, and you've got to shoot straight. If you don't you're no dashed good!

Give me the rifle, you're not aiming at the bull, man, you're aiming at the locality where the bull is grazing."

He took my rifle, slid a cartridge into the breech, and coaxed the trigger lovingly towards him. Three times he fired, then we went together to look at the target. Not a bullet fired by him had struck it. The instructor glared down the barrel of the gun, made some nasty remarks about deflection, and went back to yell at an orderly corporal.

"What the d.i.c.kens did you take this here for?" he cried. "It's a blooming wash-out,[1] and was never any good. Old as an unpaid bill and worn bell-mouth it is, and n.o.body can fire with it."

[Footnote 1: "Wash-out" is a term used by the men when their firing is so wide of the mark that it fails to hit any spot on the card. The men apply it indiscriminately to anything in the nature of a failure.]

On a new rifle being obtained I pa.s.sed the preliminary test, and a rather repentant instructor remarked that it might be possible to make a soldier of me some day.

Since then my fellow-soldiers and I have had almost unlimited rifle practice, on miniature and open ranges, at bull and disappearing targets, in field firing at distances from 100 to 600 yards. On a field exceeding 600 yards it is almost impossible to hit a point the size of an ordinary bull; fire then must be directed towards a position. Field or volley firing is very interesting. Once my company took train to Dunstable and advanced on an imaginary enemy that occupied the wastes of the Chiltern Hills. Practice commenced by firing at little squares of iron standing upright in a row about 200 yards off in front of our line. These represented heads and shoulders of men rising over the trenches to take aim at us as we advanced. In extended order we came to our position, 200 yards distant from the front trenches. At the sound of the officer's whistle, we sank to the ground, facing our front, fixed our sights, and loaded. A second whistle was blown; we fired "three rounds rapid" at the foe. The aiming was very accurate; little spurts of earth danced up and around the targets, and every iron disc fell. The "searching ground," the locality struck by bullets, scarcely measured a dozen paces from front to rear, thus showing that there was very little erratic firing.

"That's some shooting!" my Jersey friend remarked. "If the discs were Germans!"

"They might shoot back," someone said, "and then we mightn't take as cool an aim."

We are trained to the rifle; it is always with us, on parade, on march, on bivouac, and recently, when going through a dental examination, we carried our weapons of war into the medical officer's room. As befits units of a rifle regiment, we have got accustomed to our gun, and now, as fully trained men, we have established the necessary unity between hand and eye, and can load and unload our weapon with b.u.t.t-plate stiff to shoulder and eye steady on target while the operation is in progress. In fact, our rifle comes to hand as easy as a walking-stick. We shall be sorry to lose it when the war is over, and no doubt we shall feel lonely without it.

CHAPTER V

THE COFFEE-SHOP AND w.a.n.kIN

What the pump is to the villager, so the coffee-shop is to the soldier of the New Army. Here the men crowd nightly and live over again the incidents of the day. Our particular coffee-shop is situated in our corner of the town; our men patronise it; there are three a.s.sistants, plump, merry girls, and three of our men have fallen in love with them; in short, it is our very own restaurant, opened when we came here, and adapted to our needs; the waitresses wear our hat-badges, sing our songs, and make us welcome when we cross the door to take up our usual chairs and yarn over the cosy tables. The Jersey youth with the blue eyes, the Oxford man, who speaks of things that humble waitresses do not understand, the company drummer, the platoon sergeants, and the c.o.c.kney who vows that water is spoilt in making every cup of coffee he drinks, all come here, and all love the place.

I have come to like the place and do most of my writing there, catching s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversation and reminiscence as they float across to me.