THE WEST INDIAN ARMY
In Jamaica the Army is mainly considered as a prop to society. Among the
whites the officers are in great request as dancing men, players at the
game of tennis and possible husbands for fair daughters. Among the
blacks the same applies to the coloured Tommy, except that there is no
tennis. The West Indian regiments have seen service, and have proved
their metal as fighting men in various parts of Africa. The West Indian
Colonels are as proud of their black regiments as any commander of any
white battalion of the line. But the languorous atmosphere of Jamaica
does not suggest strife; so, the tendency among Jamaicans, high and low,
rich and poor, is to regard the military as purely social people. When
the Governor is one guest short at a dinner or luncheon or tennis
function, an officer is requisitioned from the nearest garrison or camp.
When Mama is hard up for men at one of her select dances, the subaltern
receives a dainty invitation.
In the day-time the young West Indian Army officer gets through his
early morning work as quickly as possible, and then scrambles,
schoolboy fashion, into the playing fields. Drill is over by midday, and
then the uniform (khaki and sun helmet) is flung aside for cool flannels
or polo breeches. From midday until four the hours must be spent inside
a house, away from the sun. So after luncheon it is forty winks, or
cards or a game of pool. Then, when the full heat of the sun has
smouldered into the early evening glow, the games begin. Polo, cricket,
tennis, or golf; these are the first favourites. A few will take a spin
on a fast pony; others, it may be, will sail across Kingston Bay and
take a surf bath among the palisadoes. But for the majority it is either
polo, cricket, tennis, or golf. Golf for seniors, polo for the young
subaltern newly joined, tennis for the older captains, and cricket for
full lieutenants. The two hours between four and six mark the playtime
for the Jamaican Army. After six the clubhouses or mess smokerooms
tinkle with the music of many glasses, as the young officers refresh
themselves after two hours’ work in a climate marking well above 100° on
the thermometer. An hour with pipes and comrades over the friendly
glass, and then a bath and dinner. After dinner the officer becomes the
social animal, and the messroom and barrack-yard know him no more till
midnight. That is the life of the Army officer. It is rather dull and a
little monotonous; but the young men make the most of it and meanwhile
pray for leave and England.
With the Colonial Tommy it is different. He works at his drill or
musketry and then, at midday,
[Illustration: A TROPICAL LANDSCAPE NEAR CASTLETON]
dines. If he can he gets off for the afternoon; then he lounges into
Kingston and plumes himself on the side walks to the admiration of the
black and yellow girls. No sun has any terrors for your true West Indian
soldier. His skull is thick enough even without the protection of his
smart undress cap. His amusement is similar to that of an English Tommy
in any garrison town, except that he does not drink so much. He is the
idol of the populace; especially on the afternoon of the Sabbath, when,
after Church is over, he is permitted to parade at large in the
brilliant full-dress uniform of his regiment. Scarlet and yellow or
scarlet and white, zouave jackets, and white or yellow spats, his get up
is that of a French Zouave West Indianised; and he is the King of
feminine Jamaica. He is popular among men and women alike, since the
civilian men are conscious of a reflected grandeur when in company with
a soldier in full dress. A military comrade helps them with the women,
just as one returned yeoman peopled a smokeroom with heroes during our
South African War. The black Tommy is paid his shilling a day, just as
though he were a redcoated white man. He was recruited in some West
Indian island, or in Western Africa in the district Sierra Leone,--he
cares not where, for now his home is the cool barrack-room,--and he is
quite content to stand before a few thousand people as a soldier of the
King. Generally he has at least one silver medal to show that he has
heard the music of the Martini fired in anger. He has fought savage
races in lands where a white man has no right to go, and he knows that
he has his value. He is not jealous of the draft of the white British
regiment which, for some unknown reason, is always to be found in the
hills somewhere about Newcastle; he is not jealous because he is too
conscious of superiority. Could a white regiment have marched in the
full glare of the noon sun through Ashanti and not dropped a man? Could
a white man pierce jungle and fight through malarious tangled
undergrowth, wading slimy swamps, swimming rushing rivers, and live? Can
any company of white soldiers march with the swing of a West Indian
Regiment when the black pipers shriek the quick-step?
When the white men think they can, and say so, then West India rises by
half companies and ties service razors on stout sticks of ebony, and
there is riot in the land of perpetual sunshine. Black men are mauled
with heavy belts in the fashion of the British Infantry, and white men
stagger home gashed with razor cuts and faint for lack of blood. When
the civil war is over, each side, conscious of victory, willingly
forgives and for several months forgets. Then peace is found among the
huts at Newcastle, and sweet peace amidst the tents of the plains.
The black troops insist that it is necessary that their women should be
treated with respect, even deference, by their white brothers in arms.
This the white Tommy has not yet learned to do. Possibly the lesson is
difficult owing to the infinite extent of the acquaintanceship with
feminine Jamaica peculiar to the West Indian regiments. Every lady is a
friend of some soldier’s friend, if she is not his sister, aunt, wife,
or mother. So trouble sometimes springs from this source. Then it is out
belts and razors until the officers intervene. Shots have been fired,
but this is unusual. And the result of the court-martial offers no
encouragement to would-be marksmen. As a rule the Tommies, black and
white, mix and fraternise as well as may be expected. Each has a large
respect, well mixed with a great contempt, for his alien brother. Each
serves the same white King whose dominion over all the earth is
unquestioned. The King is the common sentiment to which hangs the
brotherhood of the British soldiers, white and black.
On the other hand the Jamaican police are not popular with the people of
the island. The uniform they wear is not sufficiently striking; there is
no great blaze of colour--no suggestion of power or rank or beauty. A
plain white tunic and dark blue trousers with a red stripe, a simple
white helmet and plain black leather boots, make up the uniform of the
Constabulary. It is impossible for a negro to respect such a costume, or
to be proud of a police so uniformed. So the people have come to look
upon the policemen as workers; men made for use, and not turned out for
the sake of ornamenting a town already bright and picturesque enough.
And it may be that this is the reason why the Jamaican constable is
regarded as a judicial potentate--a man whose word is law--a person to
be avoided, even feared. The presence of a policeman stops the noisy
jabber or a street crowd of fruit-sellers; his approach melts a group
of excited quarrellers; his uplifted hand stems the tide of rushing
traffic--just as it is in England. The police are efficient and
unpopular. The constable alone among the inhabitants of Kingston does
not lounge and laugh and chatter. If he smiles it is with an air of
conscious superiority. The mouths of the men are curved downwards in the
form of a perpetual sneer. The law cannot be merry; the limbs of the law
may not be humanly happy.
The Jamaican police force is well organised and very efficient. There
are inspectors and sub-inspectors, staff-sergeants and sergeants and
constables, and above all one white Chief. Most of the senior officers
are white men; the rank and file are black and brown, and yellow and
dusky white. It is on the rank and file that the work of Government
falls. A plain constable in Jamaica is a far more powerful man than any
white-gloved, long-sworded police inspector in England. Every regulation
beat in the island of rivers is a courthouse, presided over by an
impartial and all powerful policeman-judge. Fifty times a day he will be
called upon to arbitrate in matters of great delicacy. It may be that
there is a doubt in the minds of two women as to the ownership of a
valuable article of diet or furniture. The policeman weighs the evidence
of witnesses and pronounces judgment. He will, in cases of real
necessity, administer the oath to people whose mere word is open to
doubt, and he makes people swear, Scotch fashion, with uplifted hands.
Round such street-corner courts small crowds are allowed to congregate,
and respectfully listen to the words of one whose knowledge of
police-court ritual stands him in good stead. I have heard a policeman
restore to a woman that good name which the jealousy of a chattering
neighbour had flung to the four winds; the same man afterwards settled a
knotty point in regard to the freshness of a heap of fish which a
despondent purchaser pleaded were bad. This was a serious case; the
constable smelt the fish and handled them with the reverence of an usher
for a barrister’s brief bag. In this instance the judgment of the
constable gave satisfaction to one man and made him unpopular with a
crowd. It was openly suggested that he had received a promise of largess
from the man whose case he upheld. As a body the force has a
Spartan-like love for unpopularity, born of the exhibition of unbending
power in performing their illegal office of judge and jury. I once
toured the side streets of the city with a pompous black sergeant who
obviously knew the town only from the kerbstone to the railing. The
Jamaica police have no eyes that see through brick walls. They have a
love for intrigue, but lack the capacity of meeting cunning with
detective craft. If a thing is to be seen with the naked eye they see it
well enough; but, as a rule, they have no imagination and no power of
working up theories. Sherlock Holmes would have been a chemist only had
he been born a negro.
Every constable seems to imagine that, socially and politically, he is
far above the ordinary inhabitant. He feels towards his coloured
brethren in about the same way as a cavalry colonel feels towards a
newly-joined militia private. Between a member of the constabulary force
and an ordinary person there can be no close friendship. The black
policeman lives in a atmosphere of the police court, and seems always to
regard every member of the public as a possible prisoner and a certain
criminal. Really in his heart I think he feels the bitterness of his
exalted loneliness. He inwardly regrets the necessity of his aloofness
from human pleasures. He would probably prefer to be a soldier. This he
will never admit, even to himself. But, I repeat, probably he would
prefer to be a soldier of the line. The uniform is better; it is far
more picturesque. And the men of the West Indian Regiments combine
dignity and popularity in a manner entirely mystifying to the Jamaican
police. Besides, the brilliant-soldier companies march down the high
road to the music of pipes and drums, and the weary constable has to
stand by and see that the road is clear. The soldier is a picturesque
hero; the police constable is--a constable of justice and nothing
more.
[Illustration: OUTSIDE A WEST INDIAN COURT HOUSE]
A WEST INDIAN COURT HOUSE