We have our little worries, of course.
Last week we were all vaccinated, and we did not like it. Most of
us have "taken" very severely, which is a sign that we badly needed
vaccinating, but makes the discomfort no easier to endure. It is
no joke handling a rifle when your left arm is swelled to the full
compass of your sleeve; and the personal contact of your neighbour in
the ranks is sheer agony. However, officers are considerate, and the
work is made as light as possible. The faint-hearted report themselves
sick; but the Medical Officer, an unsentimental man of coarse mental
fibre, who was on a panel before he heard his country calling, merely
recommends them to get well as soon as possible, as they are going to
be inoculated for enteric next week. So we grouse--and bear it.
There are other rifts within the military lute. At home we are persons
of some consequence, with very definite notions about the dignity of
labour. We have employers who tremble at our frown; we have Trades
Union officials who are at constant pains to impress upon us our own
omnipotence in the industrial world in which we live. We have at our
beck and call a Radical M.P. who, in return for our vote and suffrage,
informs us that we are the backbone of the nation, and that we must
on no account permit ourselves to be trampled upon by the effete
and tyrannical upper classes. Finally, we are Scotsmen, with all a
Scotsman's curious reserve and contempt for social airs and graces.
But in the Army we appear to be nobody. We are expected to stand
stiffly at attention when addressed by an officer; even to call him
"sir"--an honour to which our previous employer has been a stranger.
At home, if we happened to meet the head of the firm in the street,
and none of our colleagues was looking, we touched a cap, furtively.
Now, we have no option in the matter. We are expected to degrade
ourselves by meaningless and humiliating gestures. The N.C.O.'s are
almost as bad. If you answer a sergeant as you would a foreman, you
are impertinent; if you argue with him, as all good Scotsmen must, you
are insubordinate; if you endeavour to drive a collective bargain with
him, you are mutinous; and you are reminded that upon active service
mutiny is punishable by death. It is all very unusual and upsetting.
You may not spit; neither may you smoke a cigarette in the ranks, nor
keep the residue thereof behind your ear. You may not take beer to
bed with you. You may not postpone your shave till Saturday: you must
shave every day. You must keep your buttons, accoutrements, and rifle
speckless, and have your hair cut in a style which is not becoming to
your particular type of beauty. Even your feet are not your own. Every
Sunday morning a young officer, whose leave has been specially stopped
for the purpose, comes round the barrack-rooms after church and
inspects your extremities, revelling in blackened nails and gloating
over hammer-toes. For all practical purposes, decides Private
Mucklewame, you might as well be in Siberia.
Still, one can get used to anything. Our lot is mitigated, too, by the
knowledge that we are all in the same boat. The most olympian N.C.O.
stands like a ramrod when addressing an officer, while lieutenants
make obeisance to a company commander as humbly as any private. Even
the Colonel was seen one day to salute an old gentleman who rode on to
the parade-ground during morning drill, wearing a red band round his
hat. Noting this, we realise that the Army is not, after all, as we
first suspected, divided into two classes--oppressors and oppressed.
We all have to "go through it."
Presently fresh air, hard training, and clean living begin to
weave their spell. Incredulous at first, we find ourselves slowly
recognising the fact that it is possible to treat an officer
deferentially, or carry out an order smartly, without losing one's
self-respect as a man and a Trades Unionist. The insidious habit of
cleanliness, once acquired, takes despotic possession of its victims:
we find ourselves looking askance at room-mates who have not yet
yielded to such predilections. The swimming-bath, where once we
flapped unwillingly and ingloriously at the shallow end, becomes quite
a desirable resort, and we look forward to our weekly visit with
something approaching eagerness. We begin, too, to take our profession
seriously. Formerly we regarded outpost exercises, advanced guards,
and the like, as a rather fatuous form of play-acting, designed to
amuse those officers who carry maps and notebooks. Now we begin to
consider these diversions on their merits, and seriously criticise
Second Lieutenant Little for having last night posted one of his
sentry groups upon the skyline. Thus is the soul of a soldier born.
We are getting less individualistic, too. We are beginning to think
more of our regiment and less of ourselves. At first this loyalty
takes the form of criticising other regiments, because their marching
is slovenly, or their accoutrements dirty, or--most significant sign
of all--their discipline is bad. We are especially critical of our own
Eighth Battalion, which is fully three weeks younger than we are, and
is not in the First Hundred Thousand at all. In their presence we are
war-worn veterans. We express it as our opinion that the officers of
some of these battalions must be a poor lot. From this it suddenly
comes home to us that our officers are a good lot, and we find
ourselves taking a queer pride in our company commander's homely
strictures and severe sentences the morning after pay-night. Here is
another step in the quickening life of the regiment. _Esprit de
corps_ is raising its head, class prejudice and dour "independence"
notwithstanding.
Again, a timely hint dropped by the Colonel on battalion parade this
morning has set us thinking. We begin to wonder how we shall compare
with the first-line regiments when we find ourselves "oot there."
Silently we resolve that when we, the first of the Service Battalions,
take our place in trench or firing line alongside the Old Regiment, no
one shall be found to draw unfavourable comparisons between parent and
offspring. We intend to show ourselves chips of the old block. No
one who knows the Old Regiment can ask more of a young battalion than
_that_.