THE WAY OF THE RECRUIT
The way of the recruit, though still a hard one, is not so hard as
it used to be, for, especially in the cavalry and artillery, various
modifications have been introduced by which the youngster is broken in
gradually to his work. This is not all to the good, for under the new
way of working the training which precedes “dismissal” from recruit’s
training to the standing of a trained soldier takes longer, and,
submitting the recruit to a less strenuous form of life for the period
through which it lasts, does not produce quite so handy and quick a
man as the one who was kept at it from dawn till dark, with liberty at
the end of his official day’s work to clean up equipment for the next
day. Still, the annual training of the “dismissed” soldier is a more
strenuous business now than in old time, so probably the final result
is about the same.
The recruit’s first requirements, after he has interviewed the
recruiting sergeant on the subject of enlistment is to take the
oath--a very quick and simple matter--and then to pass the doctor,
which is not so simple. The recruit is stripped, sounded, tested for
full physical efficiency, and made to pass tests in eyesight and
breathing which, if he emerges satisfactorily, proclaim him as near
physical perfection as humanity can get without a course of physical
culture--and that course is administered during his first year of
service. Kept under the wing of the recruiting sergeant for a matter of
hours or days, as the case may be, the recruit is at last drafted off
to his depot, or direct to his unit, where his real training begins in
earnest.
We may take the case of a recruit who had enlisted from mixed motives,
arrived at a station whence he had to make his way to barracks in the
evening, in order to begin his new life; here are his impressions of
beginning life in the Army.
He went up a hill, and along a muddy lane, and, arriving at
the barracks, inquired, as he had been told to do, for the
quartermaster-sergeant of “C” Squadron. He was directed to the
quartermaster-sergeant’s office, and, on arrival there, was asked
his name and the nature of his business by a young corporal who took
life as a joke and regarded recruits as a special form of food for
amusement. Having ascertained the name of the recruit, the corporal,
who was a kindly fellow at heart, took him down to the regimental
coffee bar and provided him with a meal of cold meat, bread, and
coffee--at the squadron’s expense, of course, for the provision of the
meal was a matter of duty. The corporal then indicated the room in
which the recruit was to sleep, and left him.
The recruit opened the door of the room, and looked in. It was a long
room, with a row of narrow beds down each side, and in the middle two
tables on iron trestles, whereon were several basins. On almost every
bed sat a man, busily engaged in cleaning some article of clothing or
equipment; some were cleaning buttons, some were pipeclaying belts,
some were engaged with sword-hilts and brick-dust, some were cleaning
boots--all were cleaning up as if their lives depended on it, for
“lights out” would be sounded at a quarter-past ten, and it was already
past nine o’clock. When they saw the recruit, they gave him greeting.
“Here’s another one!” they cried. “Here’s another victim!” and other
phrases which led this particular recruit to think, quite erroneously,
that he had come to something very bad indeed. Two or three were
singing, with more noise than melody, a song which was very old when
Queen Anne died--it was one of the ditties of the regiment, sung by its
men on all possible and most impossible occasions. One man shouted to
the recruit that he had “better flap before he drew his issue,” and
that he could not understand at all. Translated into civilian language,
it meant that he had better desert before he exchanged his civilian
clothing for regimental attire, but this he learned later. They seemed
a jolly crowd, very fond of flavouring their language with words which,
in civilian estimation, were terms of abuse, but passed as common
currency here.
The recruit stood wondering--out of all these beds, there seemed to
be no bed for him. After a minute or two, however, the corporal in
charge of the room came up to him, and pointed out to him a bed in one
corner of the room; its usual occupant was on guard for twenty-four
hours, and the recruit was informed that he could occupy that bed for
the night. In the morning he could go to the quartermaster’s store and
draw blankets, sheets, a pillow, and “biscuits” for his own use. After
that, he would be allotted a bed-cot to himself. Biscuits, it must be
explained, are square mattresses of coir, of which three, placed end to
end, form a full-sized mattress for a military bed-cot.
Sitting on the borrowed bed-cot, the recruit was able to take a good
look round. The ways of these men, their quickness in cleaning and
polishing articles of equipment, were worth watching, he decided. They
joked and chaffed each other, they sang scraps of songs, allegedly
pathetic and allegedly humorous; they shouted from one end of the room
to the other in order to carry on conversations; they called the Army
names, they called each other names, and they called individuals who
were evidently absent yet more names, none of them complimentary. They
made a lot of noise, and in that noise one of them, having finished his
cleaning, slept; when he snored, one of his comrades threw a boot at
him, and, since the boot hit him, he woke up and looked round, but in
vain. Therefore he calmly went to sleep again, but this time he did not
snore. The recruit, who had come out of an ordinary civilian home, and
hitherto had had only the vaguest of notions as to what the Army was
really like, wondered if he were dreaming, and then realised that he
himself was one of these men, since he had voluntarily given up certain
years of his life to their business. With that reflection he undressed
and got into bed. After “lights-out” had sounded and been promptly
obeyed, he went to sleep....
His impressions are typical, and his introduction to the barrack-room
may serve to record the view gained by the majority of those who
enlist: that first glimpse of military life is something utterly
strange and incomprehensible, and the recruit sleeps his first
night in barracks--or stays awake--bewildered by the novelty of his
surroundings, and a little afraid.
In a few days the recruit begins to feel a little more at home in his
new surroundings. One of his first ordeals is that of being fitted with
clothing, and with few exceptions, all his clothing is ready-made,
for the quartermaster’s store of a unit contains a variety of sizes
and fittings of every article required, and from among these a man
must be fitted out from head to foot. The regimental master-tailor
attends at the clothes’ fitting, and makes notes of alterations
required--shortening or lengthening sleeves, letting out here, and
taking in there. When clothes and boots have been fitted, the recruit
is issued a “small kit,” consisting of brushes and cleaning materials
for himself and his clothes and equipment, even unto a toothbrush and
a comb. As a rule, he omits the ceremony of locking these things away
in his box when he returns to the barrack-room, with the result that
most of them are missing when he looks on the shelf or in the box where
he placed them. For, in a barrack-room, although all things are not
common, the property of the recruit is fair game, and he catches who
can.
Gradually, as the recruit learns the need for taking care of such
property as he wishes to retain, he also learns barrack-room slang and
phrasing. In the Army, one is never late: one is “pushed.” One does
not eat, but one “scoffs.” A man who dodges work is said to “swing
the lead,” and there is no such thing as work, for it is “graft,” or
“kom.” Practically every man, too, has his nickname: all Clarkes are
“Nobby,” all Palmers are “Pedlar,” all Welshmen in other than Welsh
regiments are “Taffy,” all Robinsons are “Jack,” and every surname in
like fashion has its regular nickname. But, contrary to the belief
entertained by the average civilian, the soldier does not readily take
to nicknames for his superiors. For his own officers he sometimes finds
equivalents to their names through their personal peculiarities, but
if one spoke to a soldier of “K. of K.,” the soldier would request an
explanation, while “Bobs” for Lord Roberts might be understood, but
would not be appreciated. The general officer and the superior worthy
of respect gets his full title from the soldier at all times, and
nicknames, except for comrades of the same company or squadron, form a
mark of contempt, especially when applied to commissioned officers.
Sometimes the soldier finds a nickname for a comrade out of a personal
peculiarity, as when one is particularly mean he gets the name of
“Shonk,” or “Shonkie,” which is equivalent to “Jew,” with a reference
to usury and extortion.
If a regimental officer gets a nickname, it may be generally assumed
that he is not held in very great respect by his men. “Bulgy,” of whom
more anon, was a very fat young lieutenant with more bulk than brains;
“Duffer” was another lieutenant, and his title explains itself--it was
always used in conjunction with his surname; “Bouncer” was a major who
had attained his rank by accident, and left the service because he
knew it was hopeless to anticipate further promotion. The officer who
commands the respect of his men does not get nicknamed, and the recruit
very soon learns to call his superiors by their proper names when he
has occasion to mention superior officers in course of conversation
with his comrades.
As a rule, the recruit is subjected to one or more practical jokes by
his comrades in his early days as a soldier. In cavalry regiments, a
favourite form of joke is to get the recruit to go to the farrier-major
for his “shoeing-money,” a mythical allowance which, it is alleged,
every recruit receives at the beginning of his service. The pretext
might appear a bit thin if only one man were concerned in the
deception, but the recruit is assured by a whole barrack-roomful of
soldiers that “it’s a fact, and no hank,” and in about five cases out
of ten he goes to the farrier-major, who, entering into the spirit of
the thing, sends the victim in to the orderly-room sergeant or the
provost-sergeant, and from here the recruit goes to the next official
chosen, until he finds out the hoax. If a non-commissioned officer can
be found with the same sense of humour as induced the shoeing-money
hoax, he--usually a lance-corporal--orders the recruit to go to the
sergeant-major or some other highly placed non-com. for “the key of
the square.” As a rule, this request from the recruit provokes the
sergeant-major to wrath, and the poor recruit gets a hot time. There
is a legend of a recruit having been sent to the quartermaster’s store
to get his mouth measured for a spoon, but it may be regarded as
legend pure and simple, for there are limits to the credulity, even,
of recruits, though authenticated instances of hoaxes which have been
practised show that much may be done by means of an earnest manner and
the thorough preservation of gravity in giving recommendations to the
victim. Many a man has gone to the armourer to get his spurs fitted,
and probably more will go yet.
If a civilian takes a thorough dislike to his work, he has always the
opportunity of quitting it; if he fails to satisfy his employers, he
is either warned or dismissed. In the Army, the man who dislikes his
work has to pocket the dislike and go on with the work, while if his
employers, the regimental authorities, have any fault to find with him,
they do not express it by dismissal until various forms and quantities
of punishment for slackness have been resorted to. The recruit gets
far more punishments than the old soldier, for the latter has learned
what to do and what to avoid, in order to make life simple for himself;
his punishments usually arise out of looking on the beer when it is
brown to an extent incompatible with the fulfilment of his duties, and,
when sober, he generally manages to evade “office” and its results.
But the recruit finds that the corporal in charge of his room, the
drill instructor in charge of him at drill, the sergeant in charge
of his section or troop, the non-commissioned officer under whose
supervision he does his fatigues, and a host of other superiors, are
all capable of either placing him in the guard-room to await trial or
of informing him that he is under open arrest, and equally liable for
trial--and this for offences which would not count as such in civilian
life, for three-quarters of the military “crimes” are not crimes at all
in the civil code. Being late on parade, a dirty button--that is, a
button not sufficiently brilliant in its polish--the need of a shave,
a hasty word to one in authority, and half a hundred other apparent
trivialities, form grounds for “wheeling a man up” or “running him in.”
And the guard-room to which he retires is the “clink,” while, if he
is so persistent in the commission of offences as to merit detention,
the military form of imprisonment, he is said to go to the “glass
house”--that is, he is sent to the detention barracks for the term to
which he is sentenced--and his punishment is spoken of as “cells,”
and never anything else. A minor form of punishment, “confined to
barracks,” or “defaulters’,” involves the doing of the regiment’s dirty
work in the few hours usually devoted to relaxation, with drill in full
marching order for an hour every night, and answering one’s name at the
guard-room at stated intervals throughout the afternoon and evening, in
order to prevent the delinquent from leaving barracks. This the soldier
calls “doing jankers,” and the bugle or trumpet call which orders him
out on the defaulters’ parade is known as “Paddy Doyle”--heaven only
knows for what reason, unless one Paddy Doyle was a notorious offender
against military discipline in far-back times, and his reputation has
survived his personal characteristics in the memory of the soldier.
The accused, whoever he may be, is paraded first before his company,
squadron, or battery officer, and the charge against him is read out.
First evidence is taken from the superior officer who makes the charge,
and second evidence from anyone who may have been witness to the
occurrence which has caused the trouble. Then the accused is asked what
he has to say in mitigation of his offence, and if he is wise, unless
the accusation is very unjust indeed, he answers--“Nothing, sir.” Then,
if the case is a minor one, the company or squadron or battery officer
delivers sentence. If, however, the crime is one meriting a punishment
exceeding “seven days confined to barracks,” the case is beyond the
jurisdiction of the junior officer, and must be sent to the officer
commanding the regiment or battalion or artillery brigade for trial. In
that case, the offender is paraded with an escort of a non-commissioned
officer and man, and marched on to the verandah of the regimental
orderly room when “office” sounds--almost always at eleven o’clock
in the morning. When the colonel commanding the unit--or, in case of
his absence, his deputy--decrees, the offender is marched into the
presence of his judge; the adjutant of the regiment reads the charge,
the evidence is stated as in the case of trial by a company or squadron
officer, and the colonel pronounces his verdict.
Acquittals are rare; not that there is any injustice, but it is
assumed, and usually with good reason, that if a man is “wheeled up”
he has been doing something he ought not to have done. Then, too, the
soldier’s explanations of how he came to get into trouble are far too
plausible; officers with experience of the soldier and his ways come
to understand that he can explain away anything and find an excuse
for everything. It is safe, in the majority of cases, to take a harsh
view. However, the punishments inflicted are, in the majority of
cases, light: “jankers,” though uncomfortable, is not degrading to any
great extent, and the man who has had a taste or two of this wholesome
corrective will usually be a more careful if not a better soldier in
future.
“Cells” is a different matter. Not that it lowers a man to any extent
in the estimation of his comrades, but it is a painful experience,
practically corresponding to the imprisonment with hard labour to
which a civilian misdemeanant is subjected. It involves also total loss
of pay from the time of arrest to the end of the period of punishment,
while confinement to barracks involves only the actual punishment, and,
unless the crime is “absence,” there is no loss of pay. Drunkenness
is punished by an officially graded system of fines, as well as by
“jankers” or “cells.”
The average man, however, performs work of average quality, avoids
drunkenness, and keeps to time, the result being that he does not
undergo punishment. Barrack-room life, for the recruit, is a fairly
simple matter. He makes his own bed, and sweeps the floor round it.
He folds his blankets and sheets to the prescribed pattern; the way
in which he folds his kit and clothing, also, is regulated for him by
the company or squadron authorities, and, for the rest, he is kept too
busy throughout the day at drill, and too busy throughout the evening
in preparing for the next day’s drill, to get into mischief to any
appreciable extent. The recruit who involves himself in “crime” is,
more often than not, looking for trouble.
It has already been stated that a full day’s work for the recruit is a
strenuous business. If we take the average day of a recruit in, say, a
cavalry regiment, and follow him from réveillé to “lights out,” it will
be seen that he is kept quite sufficiently busy.
Réveillé sounds anywhere between 4.30 and 6.30 a.m., according to the
season of the year, and, before the sound of the trumpet has ceased
the corporal in charge of the room will be heard inviting his men to
“Show a leg, there!” The invitation is promptly complied with, for in
a space of fifteen minutes all the men in the room have to dress, wash
if they feel inclined to, and get out on early morning stable parade to
answer their names. They are then marched down to stables, where they
turn out the stable bedding and groom their horses for about an hour.
The horses are then taken out to water, returned to stables, and fed,
and the men file back to their rooms to get breakfast and prepare for
the morning’s drill. This latter involves a complete change of clothing
from the rough canvas stable outfit to clean service dress and putties
for riding-school use. The riding-school lesson is usually over by
half-past ten, and after this the recruit takes his horse back to the
stables, off-saddles, and returns to the barrack-room to change into
canvas clothing once more, and enjoy the ten minutes, more or less, of
relaxation that falls to him before the trumpeter sounds “stables.”
Going to stables again, the men groom their horses, and when these
have been passed as clean by the troop sergeant or troop officer the
troopers set to work and clean steel work and leather. The way in which
this is done in the Army may be judged from the fact that, after a
morning’s parade, it takes a full hour to clean saddle and head dress
and render them fit for inspection. It is one o’clock before midday
stables is finished with, and then of course it is time for dinner.
For this principal meal of the day one hour is allowed; but that hour
includes the getting ready for the afternoon parade for foot drill,
in which the cavalry recruit is taught the use of the sword and all
movements that he will have to perform dismounted. This lasts an
hour or thereabouts, and is followed by a return to the barrack-room
and another change of clothing, this time into gymnasium outfit. The
recruit is then marched to the gymnasium, where, for the space of
another hour, the gymnastic instructor has his turn at licking the raw
material into shape. Marched back to the barrack-room once more, the
recruit is free to devote what remains to him of the minutes before
five o’clock to cleaning the spurs, sword, etc., which have become
soiled by the morning’s riding-school work. At five “stables” sounds
again; the orders for the day are read out on parade, and the men march
to stables to groom, bed down, water, and feed their horses, a business
to which an hour is devoted. Tea follows, and then, unless the recruit
has been warned for night guard, he is free to complete the preparation
of his equipment for the next day’s work, and use what little spare
time is left in such relaxation as may please him.
In the infantry the number of parades done during the day is about
the same; there is, of course, no “stables,” but the time which the
cavalryman devotes to this is taken up by musketry instruction, foot
drill, and fatigues. In the artillery there is more to learn than in
the cavalry, for a driver has to learn to drive the horse he rides,
and lead another one as well, while the gunner has plenty to keep him
busy in the mechanism of his gun, its cleaning, and the various duties
connected with it.
To the recruit the perpetual cleaning, polishing, burnishing, and
scouring are naturally somewhat irksome; and it is not until a man has
undergone the whole of his recruits’ training that he begins dimly to
understand the extreme delicacy and fineness of the instruments of
his trade--or profession. He comes gradually to realise that a rifle
is a very delicate piece of mechanism; a spot of rust on a sword may
impair the efficiency of the blade, if allowed to remain and eat in;
while a big gun is a complicated piece of machinery needing as much
care as a repeater watch, if it is to work efficiently, and a horse
is as helpless and needs as much care as a baby. At first sight there
seems no need for the eternal cleaning of buttons, polishing of spurs,
and other trivial items of work which enter into the daily life of a
soldier, but all these things are directed to the one end of making the
man careful of trifles and thoroughly efficient in every detail of his
work.
Old soldiers, having finished with foot drill (known in the
barrack-room as “square”) and with riding school (which is allowed
to keep its name), have a way of looking down on recruits; the chief
aim of the recruit, if he be a normal man, is to get “dismissed” from
riding school, square, and gymnasium, and the attitude of the old
soldier encourages this ambition. Usually a recruit is placed under
an old soldier for tuition in his work, and it depends very much on
the quality of the old hands in a barrack-room as to what quality of
trained man is turned out therefrom. Service counts more than personal
worth, and in fact more than anything else in barrack-room life. The
man with two years’ service will get into trouble sooner or later if
he ventures to dictate to the man of three years’ or more service,
whatever the relative mental qualifications of the two men concerned
may be. “Before you came up,” or “before you enlisted,” are the most
crushing phrases that can be applied to a fellow soldier, and no amount
of efficiency atones for lack of years to count toward transfer to the
Reserve or discharge from the service to pension.
So far as the infantry recruit is concerned, foot drill and musketry,
together with a certain amount of fatigues, comprise the day’s routine.
With foot drill may be bracketed bayonet drill, in which the recruit
is taught the various thrusts and parries which can be made with that
weapon for which the British infantryman has been famed since before
Wellington’s time. Both in the cavalry and infantry, every man has to
fire a musketry course once a year; the recruit’s course of musketry,
however, is a more detailed and, in a way, a more instructive business
than the course which the trained man has to undergo. The recruit has
to be taught that squeezing motion for the trigger which does not
disturb the aim of the rifle; he has to be taught, also, the extreme
care with which a rifle must be handled, cleaned, and kept. It may be
said that the recruits’ course is designed to lay the foundation on
which the trained man’s course of musketry is built, and at the end of
the recruits’ course the men who have undergone it are graded off into
first, second, and third class shots, while “marksmen” are super-firsts.
On the whole the first year of a man’s service is the hardest of any,
so far as peace soldiering is concerned. There is more reason in this
than appears on the surface. A recruit joins the army somewhere about
the age of twenty--the official limit is from eighteen to twenty-five;
it is evident that in his first year of service a man is at such a
stage of muscular and mental growth as to render him capable of being
moulded much more readily than in the later military years. It is best
that he should be shaped, as far as possible, while he is yet not quite
formed and set, and, though the process of shaping may involve what
looks like an undue amount of physical exertion, it is, in reality, not
beyond the capabilities of such men as doctors pass into the service.
It is true that the percentage of cases of heart disease occurring
in the British Army is rather a high one, but this is due not to the
strenuous training, but in many cases to excessive cigarette-smoking
and in others to the strained posture of “attention,” combined with
predisposition to the disease. The recruit has a hard time, certainly,
but many men work harder, and the years of service which follow on the
strenuous period of recruits’ training are more enjoyable by contrast.