IN CAMP
In going to camp, transferring from the solid shelter of barracks to
the more doubtful comfort of crowding under a canvas roof, the soldier
feels that he is getting somewhere near the conditions under which he
will be placed on active service. The pitching of camp, especially
by an infantry battalion, is a parade movement, and as such is an
interesting business. It begins with the laying out of the tents in
their bags, and the tent poles beside them, near the positions which
the erected tents will occupy. The bags are emptied of their contents;
men are told off to poles, guy ropes, mallets and pegs; the tents are
fully unfolded, and, at a given word of command, every tent goes up
to be pegged into place in the shortest possible space of time. At
the beginning of a given ten minutes there will be lying on otherwise
unoccupied ground rows of bags and poles; at the end of that same ten
minutes a canvas town is in being, and the men who are to occupy that
town are thinking of fetching in their kits.
Under ordinary circumstances, from four to eight men are told off
to occupy each tent, but on manœuvres and on active service these
numbers are exceeded more often than not. During the South African
war the present writer once had the doubtful pleasure of being the
twenty-fourth man in an ordinary military bell-tent. The next night
and thereafter, wet or fine, half the men allotted to that tent made a
point of sleeping in the open air. It was preferable.
Life in camp is an enjoyable business so long as the weather continues
fine and not too boisterous; discipline is relaxed to a certain extent
while under canvas, open-air life renders the appetite keener, and
one’s enjoyment of life is more thorough than is the case in barracks.
Wet weather, however, changes all this. The luxury of floor-boards is a
rare one even in a standing camp, and, no matter what one may do in the
way of digging trenches round the tent and draining off surplus water
by all possible means, a moist unpleasantness renders life a burden and
causes equipment and arms to need about twice as much cleaning as under
normal circumstances.
Camp life breeds yarns unending, and in wet weather, or in the hours
after dark, men sit and tell hirsute chestnuts to each other for lack
of better occupation. If the weather is fine there are plenty of
varieties of sport, including the ubiquitous football to occupy spare
minutes, but yarns and tobacco form the principal solace of hours which
cannot be filled in more active ways. There is one yarn which, like all
yarns, has the merit of being perfectly true, but, unlike most, is not
nearly so well known as it ought to be. It concerns a cavalry regiment
which settled down for a brief space at Potchefstroom after the signing
of peace in South Africa.
Some months previous to the signing of peace, a certain lieutenant of
this regiment, known to his men and his fellow officers as “Bulgy,”
became possessed of a young baboon, which grew and throve exceedingly
at the end of a stout chain that secured the captive to one of the
transport wagons of the regiment. Bulgy’s servant was entrusted with
the care of the monkey, which, after the manner of baboons, was a
competent thief from infancy, and inclined to be savage if thwarted.
On one occasion, in particular, Bulgy’s monkey got loose, and got at
the officers’ mess wagon; it had a good feed of biscuits and other
delicacies, and retired at length, followed by the mess caterer, who
expostulated violently both with Bulgy’s servant and with Bulgy’s
monkey, until a tin of ox-tongues skilfully aimed by the monkey caught
him below the belt and winded him. After that, as Bret Harte says, the
subsequent proceedings interested him no more.
Well, the regiment arrived at Potchefstroom and settled down under
canvas, with an average of eight men to a tent and the horse lines of
each troop placed at right-angles to the lines of tents. Bulgy’s monkey
was given a place away on the outside of the lines, with the other
end of his chain attached to a tree-stump, and there, for a time, he
rested, fed sparingly and abused plentifully by Bulgy’s servant. In the
regiment itself money was plentiful at the time, and it was the custom
in the tents which housed drinking men for the eight tent-mates to get
in a can of beer before the canteen closed. Over the beer they would
sit and yarn and play cards until “lights out” sounded.
One night, eight men sat round their can of beer in a tent of “A”
Squadron, to which, by the way, Bulgy belonged. These eight had nearly
reached the bottom of the can. They had blown out all the candles in
the tent save one, which would remain for illumination until “lights
out” sounded. The last man to unroll his blankets and get to bed
had just finished, and was sitting up in order to blow out the last
remaining candle, when the flap of the tent was raised from the back,
and a hairy, grinning, evil face, which might have been that of the
devil himself, looked in on the sleepy warriors. They, for their part,
were too startled to investigate the occurrence, and the sight of that
face prevented them from stopping to unfasten the tent flap in order
to get out. They simply went out, under the flies, anyhow; one man
tried to climb the tent pole, possibly with a vague idea of getting
out through the ventilating holes at the top, but he finally went out
under the fly of the tent like the rest, taking with him the sting of
a vicious whack which the hairy devil aimed at him with a chain that
it carried. While these eight men were fleeing through the night, the
devil with the chain came out from the tent, and, seeing a line of
startled horses before it, leaped upon the back of the nearest horse,
gave the animal a thundering blow with its chain, and hopped lightly
on to the back of the next horse in the row, repeating the performance
there. In almost as little time as it takes to tell, a squadron of
stampeding horses followed the eight men of the tent on their journey
toward the skyline, and in the black and windy dark the remaining
men of “A” Squadron turned out to fetch their terrified horses back
to camp, and, when they knew the cause of the disturbance, to curse
Bulgy’s monkey even more fervently than Bulgy’s servant had cursed it.
The end of it all was that eight men of “A” Squadron signed the pledge,
and Bulgy left off keeping the monkey; it was too expensive a form of
amusement.
This is a typical camp yarn, and a military camp is full of yarns, some
better than this, and some worse.
In camp, more than anywhere else, the soldier learns to be handy. The
South African war taught men to kill and cut up their own meat, to
make a cooking fire out of nothing, to cook for themselves, to wash
up--though most of them had learned this in barracks--to wash their own
underclothing, darn their own socks, and do all necessary mending to
their clothes. It taught cavalrymen the value of a horse, in addition
to giving them an insight to the foregoing list of accomplishments. It
was, for the first year or so, a strenuous business of fighting, but
the last twelve months of the war consisted for many men far more of
marching and camp experience than actual war service. It was an ideal
training school and gave an insight into camp life under the best
possible circumstances; its lessons were invaluable, and much of the
practice of the Army of to-day is derived from experience obtained
during that campaign.
One failing to which men--and especially young soldiers--are liable
in camp life consists in that when they return to camp, thoroughly
tired after a long day’s manœuvring or marching, they will not take
the trouble to cook and get ready for themselves the food without
which they ought not to be allowed to retire to rest. In the French
Army, officers make a point of urging their men to prepare food for
themselves immediately on their return to camp, but in the English Army
this matter is left to the discretion of the men themselves, with the
result that some of them frequently go to bed for the night without
being properly fed. This course, if persisted in, almost invariably
leads to illness, and it is important that men under canvas should be
properly fed at the end of the day as well as at the beginning and
during the course of their work.
When under canvas in time of peace, the authorities of most units
reduce their demands on their men in comparison with barrack
life. It is generally understood that a man cannot turn out in
review order, or in “burnish and fake,” with the restrictions of
a canvas town about him. In some units, however, this point is
not sufficiently considered, and as much is asked of men as when
they have the conveniences of barracks all about them. The result
of this is sullenness and bad working on the part of the men; the
short-sightedness of officers leads them to press their demands
while men are in the bad temper caused by too much being put upon
them, and the final result is what is known technically in the Army
as an excess of “crime.” A string of men far in excess of the usual
number is wheeled up in front of the company or commanding officer
to be “weighed off,” and the number of men on defaulters’ parade, or
undergoing punishment fatigues, steadily increases. Although in theory
the soldier has the right of complaint, if he feels himself aggrieved,
to successive officers, even up to the general officer commanding
the brigade or division in which he is serving, in practice he finds
these complaints of so little real use to him that he expresses his
discontent by means of incurring “crime,” or, in other words, by
getting into trouble in some way. There is no accounting for this
habit; it is the way of the soldier, and no further explanation can
be given. Squadrons of cavalry have been known to cut all their
saddlery to pieces, and companies of infantry to render their belts and
equipment useless, by way of expressing their discontent or disgust
at undue harshness. The relaxation of discipline and the absence of
barrack-room soldiering when under canvas is a privilege which the
soldier values highly, and it ought not to be curtailed in any way.
A pleasant form of camping which many units on home service enjoy is
the annual musketry camp. It happens often that there is no musketry
range within convenient marching distance of the place in which a
unit is stationed, and, in that case, the unit sends its men, one
or two companies or squadrons at a time, to camp in the vicinity of
the musketry range allotted to their use. The firing of the actual
musketry course is in itself an interesting business, and it brings
out a pleasant spirit of emulation among the men concerned. Keenness
is always displayed in the attempt to attain the coveted score which
entitles a man to wear crossed guns on his sleeve for the ensuing
twelve months, and proclaims him a “marksman.” In addition to this
there is the pleasant sense of freedom engendered by life under canvas,
and the access of health induced thereby. The soldier, in common with
most healthy men, enjoys roughing it up to a point, and life in a
musketry camp seldom takes him beyond the point at which enjoyment
ceases.
Infantry units serving in foreign and colonial stations are frequently
split up into detachments consisting of one or more companies, and
serving each at a different place. This detachment duty, as it is
called, as often as not involves life under canvas, and it may be
understood that life under the tropical or sub-tropical conditions
of foreign and colonial stations can be a very pleasant thing. Here,
as in home stations, sufficient work is provided to keep the soldier
from overmuch meditation. Time is allowed, however, for sport and
recreation, and, even when thrown entirely on their own resources for
amusement, troops are capable of making the time pass quickly and
easily.
While on the subject of camping there is one more yarn of South Africa
and the war which merits telling, although it only concerns a bad case
of “nerves.” It happened during the last year of the war that a column
crossed the Modder River from south to north, going in the direction of
Brandfort, and camp was pitched for the night just to the north of the
Glen Drift. At this point in its course the Modder runs between steep,
cliff-like banks, from which a belt of mimosa scrub stretches out for
nearly a quarter of a mile on each side of the river. After camp had
been pitched for the night, the sentries round about the camp were
finally posted with a special view to guarding the drift, the northward
front of the column, and its flanks. Only two or three sentries,
however, were considered necessary to protect the rear, which rested on
the impenetrable belt of mimosa scrub along the river bank.
One of these sentries along the scrub came on duty at midnight, just
after the moon had gone down. He “took over” from the sentry who
preceded him on the post, and started to keep watch according to
orders, though in his particular position there was little enough to
watch. Quite suddenly he grew terribly afraid, not with a natural
kind of fear, but with the nightmarish kind of terror that children
are known to experience in the dark. His reason told him that in the
position that he occupied there was nothing which could possibly
harm him, for behind him was the bush, through which a man could not
even crawl, while before him and to either side was the chain of
sentries, of which he formed a part, surrounding his sleeping comrades.
His imagination, however, or possibly his instinct, insisted that
something uncanny and evil was watching him from the darkness of the
tangled mimosa bushes, and was waiting a chance to strike at him
in some horrible fashion. He tried to shake off this childish fear,
to assure himself that it could not possibly be other than a trick
of “nerves” brought on by darkness and the need for keeping watch,
when--crash!--something struck him with tremendous force in the back
and sent him forward on his face.
Half stunned, he picked himself up from the ground, and the pain in his
back was sufficient to assure him that he had not merely fallen asleep
and imagined the whole business. With his loaded rifle at the ready
he searched the edge of the mimosa bush as closely as he was able,
but could discover nothing; he had an idea of communicating with the
sentry next in the line to himself, but, since there was no further
disturbance, and nothing to show, he decided to say nothing, but simply
to stick to his post until the next relief came round.
Suddenly the uncanny sense of terror returned to him, intensified. He
felt certain this time that the evil thing which had struck him before
would strike again, and he felt certain that he was being watched by
unseen eyes. He was new to the country; as an irregular he was new
to military ways, and he promised himself that if ever he got safely
home he would not volunteer for active service again. The sense of
something unseen and watching him grew, and with it grew also the
nightmarish terror, until he was actually afraid to move. Then, by
means of the same mysterious agency, he was struck again to the ground,
and this time he lay only partially conscious and quite helpless until
the reliefs came round. The sergeant in charge of the reliefs had an
idea at first of making the man a close prisoner for lying down and
sleeping at his post, but after a little investigation he changed his
mind and sent one of his men for the doctor instead.
The doctor announced, after examination, that if the blow which felled
the man had struck him a few inches higher up in the back he would not
have been alive to remember it, and the man himself was taken into
hospital for a few days to recover from the injuries so mysteriously
inflicted. In the morning the column moved off on its way, and no
satisfactory reason could be adduced for the midnight occurrence.
But residents in that district will tell you, unto this day, that one
who has the patience to keep quiet and watch in the moonlight can see
baboons come up from the mimosa scrub and amuse themselves by throwing
clods of earth and rocks at each other.
It is a good camp story, and I tell it as it was told to me, without
vouching for its truth. Any man who cares to go into a military
camp--by permission of the officer commanding, of course--and has the
tact and patience to win the confidence of the soldiers in the camp,
can hear stories equally good, and plenty of them. For, as previously
remarked, camp life breeds yarns.