INFANTRY
Since the training of the French soldier lasts but two years, it is of
little use making a distinction between recruits and others, for two
years is a very brief period into which to compress all that a soldier
must learn in order to become efficient. It may be noted that, in the
British service, three years is considered the shortest period in which
an infantry soldier can be turned out as fully efficient. Again, it
must always be borne in mind, in considering the French Army, that
_all_ must be taught their work. There is as great a percentage of
stupid people in France as in any other country; a voluntary army is at
liberty to reject fools as undesirable, but the nation with a conscript
system must train the fools as well as the wise ones, for, admitting
the principle that strength consists in numbers of trained men, then
every rifle counts so long as its holder is capable of firing.
The conscript, coming to the colours on the first of October, is
usually given the choice of the arm of service in which he will do
his two years' training. The subject of this chapter has elected to
serve in the infantry of the line. He may have just completed an
expensive education, or he may have come from Montmartre, the slums of
a provincial town, the _landes_ of Brittany, or a village of French
Lorraine; in civilian life he may have been a peasant, a street arab,
a student of philosophy, a future president of the Republic--it is all
the same on that first of October, for now he is simply a conscript
with two years' military training before him, and a halfpenny a day for
his pay, together with a periodical allowance of tobacco, which is one
of the luxuries that the French Army allows to its soldiers.
Arrived at his station the conscript finds his room, and is allotted a
bed therein. He finds himself placed under a corporal who will teach
him all about his rifle, manifest an interest in the cleanliness of his
linen, see that he gets his hair cut, instruct him in drill, turn him
out of bed in the morning, and see that he is in, or accounted for,
when the roll is called at night. The first business of the conscript
is to get fitted out from the store in which the battalion keeps
clothes for its men. Here he gets his boots, his parade uniform, and
his fatigue outfit. His captain, with the assistance of the master
tailor, passes the outfit as complete and correct, and the conscript
says good-bye to civilian attire for a period of two years. There was
one youngster, a Breton youth, who mourned for a week or two after
coming to the colours, because the cow at home would not take its food
from other people as it would from him; there are many who remember how
they used to milk the goats, and these make humorous little tragedies
for a time, for their fellow conscripts.
Like the British infantryman, the conscript is concerned principally
in learning to march and shoot, and use his bayonet. In the matter of
marching, to which reference has already been made, the training of the
conscript is a complicated business. No walking that he has ever done
as a civilian bears any relation to this curious half-shuffling trot,
unless by chance he is a native of the Vosges country, and in that case
he may recall a rapid climb up some steep hill, to which this business
of the march is more nearly akin than to anything else. Perhaps he does
not take kindly to his work at first, but, in addition to the corporal
under whose charge he is placed, there are the men who sleep on either
side of him to inculcate in him the first principles of discipline, for
there is nothing on earth half so comforting to the man placed under a
system as to be able to give advice to a new-comer to the system and
its disabilities.
Thus, with the assistance of the corporal and of his comrades, the new
conscript settles to his work. Within a couple of months he has begun
to understand the principle of this marching business, and, in common
with all youngsters, he takes a pride in his new accomplishment. It
is a tiring business, _certainement_, but then, what would you? A man
must be taught, and, after all, it is only for two years, at the end of
which one may go back to the cow or the goats, or the kerbstone, or the
life of one who sits above these things--and Pierre, who occupies the
corner bed, is an amusing rascal; it is not so bad, this military life,
after all, but one would there were a little more money and a little
more time. However....
The conscript must be taught to shoot. First of all, and not
infrequently as a matter of necessity, he is taught the difference
between the butt and the muzzle of a rifle. He is taught how to hold
the thing, how to clean it, how to press its trigger, how to load it,
and how to adjust its sights. He is made familiar with the weapon
in the fullest sense of the word "familiar," for shooting is not
altogether a matter of blazing away ammunition; the good shot is the
man who has a thorough knowledge of the various parts of his weapon,
and who has been taught to nurse it and care for it just as the Breton
lad nursed and cared for his cow. The equivalent of the British Morris
tube is requisitioned to instruct the conscript in the first elements
of firing a rifle. Across a large white target a thin black line is
drawn horizontally, and the conscript is set to firing at this target
until he can make reasonably consistent practice on the black line.
His corporal is at hand to correct defects, and his sergeant is there
too, to instruct and ever to instruct. By and by the conscript begins
to feel with regard to his shooting as he feels about the marching. One
must learn, and rifle shooting is not an unpleasant business, though
the cleaning of the rifle is another matter, and they are wonderfully
particular about the way in which it is done. That corporal and that
sergeant must have eyes behind them.
Instruction in the use of the bayonet is very largely a similar sort of
business, a matter of perpetual care on the part of the instructors and
of gradually increasing efficiency on the part of the conscript. Then
there is the gymnastic class, by means of which limbs are made supple,
and muscles strengthened--it is only by continuous training that the
marvellous efficiency to which the French conscript attains in the
short space of two years is compassed. There is no "furlough season" as
British troops know it; the conscript goes up to work all the time, and
in that period of work he is transformed from hobbledehoy to man.
Marching, the use of rifle and bayonet, and gymnastic classes, do not
by any means exhaust the schedule of conscript training. There is all
the business of barrack room life, the cleaning of equipment in which
the corporal is ever at hand to instruct, and men in their second
year are also at hand to advise and give hints; there are fatigues,
white-washing, trench-digging, and all sorts of things of which in
pre-military days, probably, the conscript never dreamed. There are
route marches with the battalion, the commanding officer and band at
the head. There is always something to do, always something waiting
to be done, and in looking forward there is an endless succession of
very busy days to contemplate. One goes to bed tired--very healthily
tired--and one wakens to work. The work is not always pleasant, but it
has the charm--if such it can be called--of never-ending variety. A
monotonous variety it may be, but then, one has little time to think,
and then there is always the canteen, and Jean, who sleeps in the
corner opposite Pierre, has just received his allowance from home.
There is yet ten minutes before parade--we will go with Jean to the
canteen....