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THE AMATEUR ARMY
BY PATRICK MACGILL
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
CHILDREN OF THE DEAD END
THE RAT-PIT
[Illustration: RIFLEMAN PATRICK MACGILL]
HERBERT JENKINS LIMITED ARUNDEL PLACE HAYMARKET LONDON S.W. MCMXV
_Wyman & Sons Ltd., Printers, London and Reading._
PREFACE
I am one of the million or more male residents of the United Kingdom,
who a year ago had no special yearning towards military life, but who
joined the army after war was declared. At Chelsea I found myself a
unit of the 2nd London Irish Battalion, afterwards I was drilled into
shape at the White City and training was concluded at St. Albans,
where I was drafted into the 1st Battalion. In my spare time I wrote
several articles dealing with the life of the soldier from the stage
of raw "rooky" to that of finished fighter. These I now publish in
book form, and trust that they may interest men who have joined the
colours or who intend to take up the profession of arms and become
members of the great brotherhood of fighters.
PATRICK MACGILL.
"The London Irish,"
British Expeditionary Force,
_March 25th_, 1915.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
I ENLIST AND AM BILLETED 13
CHAPTER II
RATIONS AND SICK PARADE 23
CHAPTER III
PICKETS AND SPECIAL LEAVE 36
CHAPTER IV
OFFICERS AND RIFLES 48
CHAPTER V
THE COFFEE-SHOP AND WANKIN 60
CHAPTER VI
THE NIGHT SIDE OF SOLDIERING 71
CHAPTER VII
DIVISIONAL EXERCISE AND MIMIC WARFARE 85
CHAPTER VIII
THE GENERAL INSPECTION AND THE EVERLASTING WAITING 99
CHAPTER IX
READY TO GO--THE BATTALION MOVES 111
CHAPTER I
I ENLIST AND AM BILLETED
What the psychological processes were that led to my enlisting in
"Kitchener's Army" need not be inquired into. Few men could explain
why they enlisted, and if they attempted they might only prove that
they had done as a politician said the electorate does, the right
thing from the wrong motive. There is a story told of an incident that
occurred in Flanders, which shows clearly the view held in certain
quarters. The Honourable Artillery Company were relieving some
regulars in the trenches when the following dialogue ensued between a
typical Tommy Atkins and an H.A.C. private:
T.A.: "Oo are you?"
H.A.C.: "We're the H.A.C."
T.A.: "Gentlemen, ain't yer?"
H.A.C.: "Oh well, in a way I suppose--"
T.A.: "'Ow many are there of yer?"
H.A.C.: "About eight hundred."
T.A.: "An' they say yer volunteered!"
H.A.C.: "Yes, we did."
T.A.: (With conviction as he gathers together his kit). "Blimey, yer
must be mad!"
For curiosity's sake I asked some of my mates to give me their reasons
for enlisting. One particular friend of mine, a good-humoured Cockney,
grinned sheepishly as he replied confidentially, "Well, matey, I done
it to get away from my old gal's jore--now you've got it!" Another
recruit, a pale, intelligent youth, who knew Nietzsche by heart,
glanced at me coldly as he answered, "I enlisted because I am an
Englishman." Other replies were equally unilluminating and I desisted,
remembering that the Germans despise us because we are devoid of
military enthusiasm.
The step once taken, however, we all set to work to discover how we
might become soldiers with a minimum of exertion and inconvenience to
ourselves. During the process I learned many things, among others
that I was a unit in the most democratic army in history; where Oxford
undergraduate and farm labourer, Cockney and peer's son lost their
identity and their caste in a vast war machine. I learned that Tommy
Atkins, no matter from what class he is recruited, is immortal, and
that we British are one of the most military nations in the world. I
have learned to love my new life, obey my officers, and depend upon
my rifle; for I am Rifleman Patrick MacGill of the Irish Rifles, where
rumour has it that the Colonel and I are the only two _real_ Irishmen
in the battalion. It should be remembered that a unit of a rifle
regiment is known as rifleman, not private; we like the term rifleman,
and feel justly indignant when a wrong appellation plays skittles with
our rank.
The earlier stages of our training took place at Chelsea and the White
City, where untiring instructors strove to convince us that we were
about the most futile lot of "rookies" that it had ever been their
misfortune to encounter. It was not until we were unceremoniously
dumped amidst the peaceful inhabitants of a city that slumbers in the
shadow of an ancient cathedral that I felt I was in reality a soldier.
Here we were to learn that there is no novelty so great for the newly
enlisted soldier as that of being billeted, in the process of which he
finds himself left upon an unfamiliar door-step like somebody else's
washing. He is the instrument by which the War Office disproves that
"an Englishman's home is his castle." He has the law behind him;
but nothing else--save his own capacity for making friends with his
victims.
If the equanimity of English householders who are about to have
soldiers billeted upon them is a test of patriotism, there may well be
some doubts about the patriotic spirit of the English middle class in
the present crisis. The poor people welcome to their homes soldiers
who in most cases belong to the same strata of society as themselves;
and, besides, ninepence a night as billet-fee is not to be laughed
at. The upper class can easily bear the momentary inconvenience of
Tommy's company; the method of procedure of the very rich in regard to
billeting seldom varies--a room, stripped of all its furniture, fitted
with beds and pictures, usually of a religious nature, is given up
for the soldiers' benefit. The lady of the house, gifted with that
familiar ease which the very rich can assume towards the poor at a
pinch--especially a pinch like the present, when "all petty class
differences are forgotten in the midst of the national crisis"--may
come and talk to her guests now and again, tell them that they are
fine fellows, and give them a treat to light up the heavy hours that
follow a long day's drill in full marching order. But the middle
class, aloof and austere in its own seclusion, limited in means and
apartment space, cannot easily afford the time and care needed for the
housing of soldiers. State commands cannot be gainsaid, however, and
Tommy must be housed and fed in the country which he will shortly go
out and defend in the trenches of France or Flanders.
The number of men assigned to a house depends in a great measure on
the discretion of the householder and the temper of the billeting
officer. A gruff reply or a caustic remark from the former sometimes
offends; often the officer is in a hurry, and at such a time
disproportionate assortment is generally the result. A billeting
officer has told me that fifty per cent. of the householders whom he
has approached show manifest hostility to the housing of soldiers. But
the military authorities have a way of dealing with these people. On
one occasion an officer asked a citizen, an elderly man full of paunch
and English dignity, how many soldiers could he keep in his house.
"Well, it's like this--," the man began.
"Have you any room to spare here?" demanded the officer.
"None, except on the mat," was the caustic answer.
"Two on the mat, then," snapped the officer, and a pair of tittering
Tommies were left at the door.
Matronly English dignity suffered on another occasion when a sergeant
inquired of a middle-aged woman as to the number of men she could
billet in her house.
"None," she replied. "I have no way of keeping soldiers."
"What about that apartment there?" asked the N.C.O. pointing to the
drawing-room.
"But they'll destroy everything in the room," stammered the woman.
"Clear the room then."
"But they'll have to pass through the hall to get in, and there are so
many valuable things on the walls--"
"You've got a large window in the drawing-room," said the officer;
"remove that, and the men will not have to pass through the hall. I'll
let you off lightly, and leave only two."
"But I cannot keep two."
"Then I'll leave four," was the reply, and four were left.
Sadder than this, even, was the plight of the lady and gentleman at
St. Albans who told the officer that their four children were just
recovering from an attack of whooping cough. The officer, being a
wise man and anxious about the welfare of those under his care, fled
precipitately. Later he learned that there had been no whooping cough
in the house; in fact, the people who caused him to beat such a hasty
retreat were childless. He felt annoyed and discomfited; but about a
week following his first visit he called again at the house, this time
followed by six men.
"These fellows are just recovering from whooping cough," he told the
householder; "they had it bad. We didn't know what to do with them,
but, seeing that you've had whooping cough here, I feel it's the only
place where it will be safe to billet them." And he left them there.
But happenings like these were more frequent at the commencement of
the war than now. Civilians, even those of the conventional middle
class, are beginning to understand that single men in billets, to
paraphrase Kipling slightly, are remarkably like themselves.
With us, rations are served out daily at our billets; our landladies
do the cooking, and mine, an adept at the culinary art, can transform
a basin of flour and a lump of raw beef into a dish that would make an
epicurean mouth water. Even though food is badly cooked in the billet,
it has a superior flavour, which is never given it in the boilers
controlled by the company cook. Army stew has rather a notorious
reputation, as witness the inspired words of a regimental poet--one of
the 1st Surrey Rifles--in a pæan of praise to his colonel:
"Long may the colonel with us bide,
His shadow ne'er grow thinner.
(It would, though, if he ever tried
Some Army stew for dinner.)"
Billeting has gained for the soldier many friends, and towns that have
become accustomed to his presence look sadly forward to the day when
he will leave them for the front, where no kind landlady will be at
hand to transform raw beef and potatoes into beef pudding or potato
pie. The working classes in particular view the future with misgiving.
The bond of sympathy between soldier and workers is stronger than that
between soldier and any other class of citizen. The houses and manners
of the well-to-do daunt most Tommies. "In their houses we feel out
of it somehow," they say. "There's nothin' we can talk about with the
swells, and 'arf the time they be askin' us about things that's no
concern of theirs at all."
Most toilers who have no friends or relations preparing for war
have kinsmen already in the trenches--or on the roll of honour. And
feelings stronger than those of friendship now unite thousands of
soldiers to the young girls of the houses in which they are billeted.
For even in the modern age, that now seems to voice the ultimate
expression of man's culture and advance in terrorism and destruction,
love and war, vital as the passion of ancient story, go hand in hand
up to the trenches and the threat of death.