PAGE
“UBIQUE”: THE ARMY AS A WHOLE 9
CHAPTER II
THE WAY OF THE RECRUIT 25
CHAPTER III
OFFICERS AND NON-COMS. 46
CHAPTER IV
INFANTRY 60
CHAPTER V
CAVALRY 76
CHAPTER VI
ARTILLERY AND ENGINEERS 92
CHAPTER VII
IN CAMP 106
CHAPTER VIII
MUSKETRY 120
CHAPTER IX
THE INTERNAL ECONOMY OF THE ARMY 136
CHAPTER X
THE NEW ARMY 158
CHAPTER XI
ACTIVE SERVICE 169
CHAPTER I
“UBIQUE”: THE ARMY AS A WHOLE
On the badges of the corps of Engineers, and also on those of the Royal
Artillery, will be found the word “Ubique,” but it is a word that might
just as well be used with regard to the whole of the British Army,
which serves everywhere, does everything, undergoes every kind of
climate, and gains contact with every class of people. In this respect,
the British soldier enjoys a distinct advantage over the soldiers of
continental armies; he has a chance of seeing the world. India, Africa,
Egypt, the West Indies, Mauritius, and the Mediterranean stations are
open to him, and by the time he leaves the service he has at least had
the opportunity of becoming cosmopolitan in his tastes and ways--of
becoming a man of larger ideas and better grasp on the problems of life
than were his at the time when he took the oath and passed the doctor.
Of that phase, more anon.
It is of little use, in the present state of the British Army, to
attempt to define its extent or composition, for it is in such a
state of flux that the numbers of battalions, regiments, and batteries
of a year ago are as obsolete as the Snider rifle. There used to
be 157 battalions of infantry, 31 regiments of cavalry, and about
180 batteries of horse and field artillery, together with about 100
companies and 9 mountain batteries of Royal Garrison Artillery, forming
the principal strength of the British Army. To these must be added the
Royal Engineers, the Army Service Corps, the Royal Ordnance Department,
the R.A.M.C., the Army Pay Corps, and other non-combatant units
necessary to the domestic and general internal working of an army.
To-day these various forces are increased to such an extent that no man
outside the War Office can tell the strength of infantry, cavalry, and
artillery; no man, either, can tell what will be the permanent strength
of the Army on a peace footing, when the present urgent need for men no
longer exists, and there is only to be considered the maintenance of a
force sufficient for the garrisoning of colonial and foreign stations
and for ordinary defensive needs at home.
Generally speaking, the soldier at home, no matter to what arm or
branch of the service he belongs, undergoes a continuous training. It
takes three years to make an infantryman fully efficient, five years
to make a cavalryman thoroughly conversant with his many duties, and
five years or more to teach a gunner his business. The raw material
from which the Army is recruited is mixed and sometimes uneducated
stuff, and, in addition to this, recruits are enlisted at an age when
they must be taught everything--they are past the age of the schoolboy
who absorbs tuition readily and with little trouble to his instructors,
and they have not attained to such an age as will permit them to take
their work really seriously. This, of course, does not apply to a time
of great national emergency, when the men coming to the colours are
actuated by the highest possible motives, eager to fit themselves for
the work in hand, and bent on getting fit for active service in the
shortest possible time. In times of peace, recruits join the colours
from many motives--pure patriotism is not a common one--and, in
consequence, the hard realities of soldiering in peace time disillusion
them to such an extent that they are difficult to teach, and thus need
the full term of training for full efficiency. Half the work of their
instructors consists in getting them into the proper frame of mind
and giving them that _esprit de corps_ which is essential to the war
fitness of a voluntary army.
At the best, there is much in the work that a soldier is called on
to do which is beyond his understanding, in the first years of his
service. One consequence of this is that he learns to do things without
questioning their meaning, and thus acquires a habit of obeying;
this, up to a few years ago, was the object of military training--to
instil into the soldier unquestioning obedience to orders, and the
sentence--“obedience is the first duty of the soldier,” gained currency
and labelled the soldier as a mere cog in a great machine, one whose
duty lay in obeying as did that Roman sentinel at Pompeii. One of
the chief lessons of the South African war, however, was that such
obedience was no longer the first duty of the soldier; he must obey,
no less than before, but scientific warfare demands an understanding
obedience, and not the unquestioning, die-at-his-post fidelity of old
time. The recruit of to-day must be taught not only to obey, but to
understand, and by that fact the work of his instructors, and his own
work as well, are largely increased. “Obedience” was the watchword of
yesterday. “Obedience and initiative” is the phrase of to-day.
To come down to concrete facts as regards the actual composition
and general duties of the Army. The main station in England is
Aldershot, headquarters of the first Army Corps. Theoretically, in
all cases of national emergency, the Aldershot Command is first to
move, and the units composing it are expected to be able to mobilise
for active service at twenty-four hours’ notice. Next in importance
are Colchester, Shorncliffe, York, and Bulford--the centre of the
Salisbury Plain area under military control. In Ireland the principal
stations are Dublin and the Curragh. In these stations, under normal
circumstances, the furlough season begins at Christmas time and lasts
up to the following March; for this period men are granted leave in
batches, and drill and training for those who remain in barracks while
the others take their holidays is somewhat relaxed. Serious training
begins in March, when the corporals, sergeants, and troop and section
officers begin to lick their squads, sections, and troops into shape.
Following on this comes company training for the infantry, squadron
training for the cavalry, and battery training for the artillery,
and this in turn is followed by battalion training for infantry,
regimental training for cavalry, and brigade training for artillery.
Somewhere during the period taken up before the beginning of regimental
and battalion training, musketry has to be fitted in, and, as the
ranges cannot accommodate all the men at once, this has to be done
by squadrons and companies, while those not engaged in perfecting
their shooting continue with their other training. At the conclusion
of the training of units--regiments, battalions, and brigades of
artillery--brigade and divisional training is begun, and then manœuvres
follow, in which the troops are given opportunities of learning the
working of an army corps, as well as getting practical experience of
camp life under conditions as near those obtaining on active service as
circumstances will admit. By the time all this has been completed, the
furlough season starts again, and the round begins once more with a few
more recruits to train, a few old soldiers missing from the ranks.
In addition to the regular course of training that lasts through the
year and goes on from year to year, there are various “courses” to be
undergone in order to keep the departmental staff of each unit up to
strength. Thus, in the infantry, signallers must be specially trained,
and pioneers, who do all the sanitary work of their units, must be
taught their duties, while musketry instructors and drill instructors
have to be selected and taught their duties. Each unit, except as
regards medical service and a few things totally out of its range
of activity, is self-contained and self-supporting, and thus it is
necessary that it should train its own instructors and its own special
men for special work, together with understudies to take their places
in case of casualties. The cavalry trains its own signallers, scouts,
shoeing smiths, cooks, pioneers, and to a certain extent medical
orderlies. The artillery does likewise, and in addition keeps up a
staff of artificers to attend to minor needs of the guns--men capable
of repairing breakages in the field, as far as this is possible.
Wherever horses are concerned, too, saddlers must be trained to keep
leather work in repair.
The Engineers, a body of men who seldom get the recognition their work
deserves, have to train in telegraphy, bridge-building, construction
and demolition of all things, from a regular defensive fortification
to a field kitchen, and many other things incidental to the smooth
working of an army in the field. Departmental corps, such as the Army
Service, Army Ordnance, and R.A.M.C., not only train but exercise their
functions in a practical way, for in peace time an army must be fed,
equipped, and doctored, just the same as in war--except that in the
latter case its requirements are more strenuous. The ancient belief
entertained by civilians to the effect that the Army is a profession
of laziness is thoroughly exploded as soon as one passes through the
barrack gates, for the Army as a whole works as hard as, if not harder
than the average man in equivalent stations of civilian life.
In foreign and colonial stations, the work goes on just the same, as
far as limitations of climate will permit. In “plains” stations in
India, the heat of the summer months renders training during the day
impossible, and men get their work over, for the most part, in the
very early morning, or in the cool of the evening. Malta and Gibraltar
are subject to the same limitations in a lesser degree, as is South
Africa, while Mauritius and minor colonial stations have their own
ways. But, no matter where the unit concerned may be, it works--fitness
is dependent on work, and no unit is allowed to get rusty, while the
variety of work involved prevents men from getting stale.
At the same time, there is plenty of relaxation and sport as well as
work in the routine of military life. Set a battalion down in a new
station, and the chances are ten to one that on the evening of their
arrival the men will be kicking a football about. Each company and
squadron, and each battery of artillery as well, has its own sports
fund and sports club, which keeps going the national games in the unit
concerned. Men work hard and play hard, and their play is made to help
their work. Infantry units organise cross-country races which help
enormously in maintaining the men in fit marching condition; cavalry
units get up scouting competitions and other sporting fixtures based on
work--to say nothing of tent pegging, lemon cutting, and other forms of
military sport of which the Royal Military Tournament annually affords
examples, while shooting ranges form fields for weekly competitions at
such times as they are not in use for annual musketry courses.
The actual composition of the various units composing the British Army
differs from that of continental armies, the only units of strength
which are identical being those of the army corps, and the division,
which is half an army corps. The next unit in the scale is the
brigade, which is composed of three batteries of field or two of horse
artillery, three regiments of cavalry, or four battalions of infantry.
A division is made up of brigades, which vary in number and composition
according to the work which that particular division will be expected
to accomplish--there is a standard for the composition of the division,
but changes now in process of taking place in the composition of the
whole army render it unsafe to quote any standard as definite. A normal
division, certainly, is composed of cavalry, artillery, and infantry in
certain strengths, together with non-combatants and supply units making
up its total strength to anywhere between 20,000 and 30,000 men.
The unit of strength in which figures become definite is the brigade of
artillery, the regiment of cavalry, and the battalion of infantry. The
peace strength of each of these units may be regarded, as a rule, as
from 10 to 20 per cent. over the war strength, and the war strength is
as follows:
For cavalry, a regiment consists of about 620 officers and men of all
ranks; this body is divided into three service squadrons, each of an
approximate strength of 160 officers, non-commissioned officers, and
men, the remainder of the strength of the unit forming the “reserve
squadron,” devoted to the headquarters staff--the commanding officer
and administrative staff of the regiment, as well as the “pom-pom” or
one-pounder quick-firer, of which one is included in the establishment
of every cavalry regiment. In this connection it is probable that the
experiences of the present European war will lead to the adoption of
a greater number of these quick-firers, and in future each cavalry
regiment will probably have at least two “pom-poms” as part of its
regular equipment. The possession of these, of course, involves the
training of a gun crew for each weapon--a full complement of gunners
and drivers.
For artillery, a brigade is divided into three batteries, each of an
approximate strength of 150 men and six guns (the artillery battery
corresponds to the cavalry squadron and to the infantry company)
and, in addition, one ammunition column, together with transport
and auxiliary staff, making up a total of about 600 officers,
non-commissioned officers, and men. This refers to the field artillery,
which forms the bulk of the British artillery strength, and is armed
with 18½-pounder quick-firing guns. The Royal Horse Artillery is
armed with a lighter gun, and is used mainly as support to cavalry
in single batteries. It is so constituted as to be more mobile and
capable of rendering quicker service than the R.F.A. Horse artillery
is hardly ever constituted into brigades, as is the field artillery.
Horse artillery, again, has no counterpart in the armies of Continental
nations, so far as mobility and quality of armament are in question.
Infantry reckons its numbers by battalions, of which the war strength
is approximately 1010 officers, non-commissioned officers, and men
per battalion. Each battalion is divided into four double companies,
the “double-company system” having been adopted in order to compensate
for a certain shortage of officers. The double company may be reckoned
at 240 officers, non-commissioned officers, and men, roughly, and
the remainder of the total is taken up by two maxim-gun sections and
the headquarters staff of the unit. As in the case of the cavalry
“pom-pom,” it is more than likely that the number of maxims or
machine-guns per battalion will be increased, as a result of the
experiences gained in the present Continental war.
Engineers and departmental units are divided into companies of varying
strengths, according to the part they are called on to play when the
division is constituted. Thus it is self-evident that an average
division will require more Engineers, who do all the field work of
construction and demolition, than it will Army Ordnance men, who attend
to the equipment of the division--fitting out with clothing, provision
of transport vehicles, etc. The number of men of departmental corps
allotted to each division in the field varies with the strength of the
division and with its distance from its base of supplies.
There is a permanent and outstanding difference between the British
Army as a whole and any Continental army as a whole. In the case of
the Continental army--no matter which one is chosen for purposes of
comparison, the conscript system renders it a part of the nation
concerned, identifies the army with the nation, and incidentally takes
out the element of freedom. A man in a conscript army is serving
because he must, and, no matter how patriotic he may be, there are
times when this is brought home to him very forcibly by the discipline
without which no army could exist. In the British Army, on the other
hand, the men serving are there by their own choice; this fact gives
them a sense that the discipline, no matter how distasteful it may be,
is a necessity to their training--by their enlistment they chose to
undergo it. But the British Army, until the present war linked it on
to the man in the street, was not a part of the nation, but a thing
distinct from the nation; it was a profession apart, and none too
enviable a profession, in the opinion of many, but something to be
avoided by men in equivalent walks of civilian life.
There are advantages as well as disadvantages in the voluntary system
by which our Army is raised and maintained. As an advantage may be
set first the spirit of the men; having enlisted voluntarily, and
ascertained by experience that they must make the best of it or be
considered utterly worthless, men in a voluntary army gain a spirit
that conscripts can never attain. They are soldiers of their own
free will, with regimental traditions to maintain, and practice has
demonstrated that they form the finest fighting body, as a whole, among
all the armies of the world. On the other hand, they have no political
significance, and are but little understood, as regards their needs
and the constitution of the force to which they belong. In France, for
instance, the rule is “every citizen a soldier,” and it is a rule which
is observed with but very few exceptions. The result is that every
citizen who has been a soldier is also a voter, and in the matter of
army requirements he votes in an understanding way, while the British
voter, with the exception of the small percentage who have served in
the Army, is as a rule unmoved by Army needs and questions. To this
extent the Army suffers from the voluntary system, though the quality
of the Army itself under present voluntary conditions may be held to
compensate for this. It is doubtful whether it does compensate.
Further, the voluntary system makes of life in the ranks a totally
different thing from civilian life. In conscript armies the discipline
to which men are subjected makes their life different from that of
their civilian days, but not to such an extent as in the voluntary
British Army. The civilian can never quite understand the soldier;
Kipling came nearer than any other civilian in his understanding, but
even he failed altogether to appreciate the soldier of to-day--perhaps
he had a better understanding of the soldier of the ’eighties and
’nineties, before the South African war had come to awaken the Army to
the need for individual training and the development of initiative.
However that may be, no man has yet written of the soldier as he really
is, because the task has been usually attempted by civilians, to whom
the soldier rarely shows his real self. Soldiers have themselves given
us glimpses of their real life, but usually they have specialised
on the dramatic and the picturesque. It is necessary, if one would
understand the soldier and his inner life, that one should have a
grasp of the monotony of soldiering, the drill and riding school, the
barrack-room routine, and all that makes up the daily life, as well as
the exceptional and picturesque.
In the following chapters, showing as far as possible the inner life
of the Army from the point of view of the soldier, an attempt has
been made to show the average of life in each branch of the service.
Exceptions occur: the quality of the commanding officer makes all the
difference in the life of the unit which he commands; again, apart
from the influence exercised by the personality of the commanding
officer, that of the company or squadron officer is a very potent
factor in the lives of the men under his command. The British Army,
fine fighting machine though it is, is not perfect, and there are
instances of bad commanding officers, bad squadron and company
officers, just as there are instances of superlatively good ones.
Between these is the influence exerted by the mass on the mass, from
which an average picture may be drawn.
That picture is the portrait of the British soldier, second to none.