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British Army From Within

<h2 class="vspace">CHAPTER IV INFANTRY</h2></div> The old-time term, light infantry, has little meaning at present as far as difference in the stamp of man and the weight of equipment carried is concerned; one infantry battalion is equal to another in respect of “lightness,” except that some Highland battalions, recruiting from districts which provide exceptionally brawny specimens of humanity, obtain a taller and weightier average of men. Varieties of equipment in the old days made infantry “heavy” and “light,” but the modern infantryman is kept as light as possible in the matter of equipment in all units. Certain battalions possess and are very proud of distinctions awarded them for feats on the field of battle. Thus it is permitted to one infantry regiment, including all its battalions, to wear the regimental badge both on the front and the back of the helmet in review order, also on their field-service caps, to commemorate an61 action in which the men were surrounded and fought back to back until they had extricated themselves from their perilous position—or rather, until the survivors had extricated themselves. In another regiment, the sergeants are permitted to wear the sash over the same shoulder as the officers, in view of the fact that on one occasion all the officers were killed, and the non-commissioned officers took command, with noteworthy results. Yet another distinction, but of a different kind, is the concession made to Irish regiments in allowing them to wear sprigs of shamrock on St. Patrick’s days. In the “review order” or full dress of modern infantrymen—and in fact of all British soldiers—there are certain buttons and fittings which serve no useful purpose, and soldiers themselves, even, sometimes wonder why these things are worn. The reason is that, in old time, all these fittings had a use; the buttons on the back of the tunic supported belts which are no longer worn, or covered pockets which no longer exist. There is a reason also in the officer wearing his sash on one shoulder and the sergeant his on another, and in the same way there is a reason for every seemingly useless fitting in a soldier’s review uniform—it perpetuates a tradition of the particular battalion or regiment concerned,62 or it keeps alive a tradition of the service as a whole. To the outsider, these may appear useless formalities, but they are not so in reality; the soldier is intensely proud of these things, which make for esprit de corps and maintain the spirit of the Army quite as much as material advantages. The actual spirit in which the infantryman views his work is a difficult thing to assess. One noteworthy example of that spirit is the case of Piper Findlater, who, wounded beyond the power of movement at Dargai, sat up and piped—an amazing piece of courage and coolness under fire. Yet that same Piper Findlater, invalided home and out of the service, could display himself on a music-hall stage, an action which was incomprehensible to the civilian mind. But, to the average infantryman, there was nothing incongruous in the two actions—one was as much the right of the man as the other was to his credit, and Findlater was typical of the British infantryman. Under the present system, each infantry regiment is divided into two or more battalions. Under the old system, each battalion was distinguished by a number, but the numbers have been abolished in favour of names of counties or districts, and two or more battalions form the regiment of a county or division of a county. It is very seldom that63 these two or more portions of the same regiment meet each other, for, in the case of a two-battalion regiment, one battalion is usually on foreign service while the other is domiciled in England, and the home battalion feeds the one on foreign service with recruits as needed to keep the latter up to strength. A notable exception to this rule occurred in the case of the Norfolk Regiment a few years ago, when the first and second battalions met at Bloemfontein, one outward bound at the beginning of its term of foreign service, and the other about to start for home. The infantryman is fitted for what constitutes the greater part of his work, when the season’s “training” is over, by what is known as “route marching.” In this, a battalion is started out at the beginning of the route-marching season on a march of a few miles, in light order—carrying rifles and bayonets only, perhaps. The distance covered is gradually increased, and the weight of equipment carried by the men is also increased, until the men concerned are carrying their full packs and marching twelve or fourteen miles a day. Service conditions are maintained as far as possible, so as to make the men fit for long marches at any time; by this means the men’s feet are hardened and the men themselves brought64 thoroughly into condition, while weaklings are picked out and marked down for future reference. “Falling out” on a route march without good and sufficient reason means days to barracks for the offender, at the least, and “cells” is a possibility. The work of the infantryman is less complex than that of any other branch of the service: he has to be trained to march well and to know how to use his rifle and bayonet. Principally, given the physical endurance for the marching part of the business, he has to learn to shoot, and the simplicity of his duties is compensated for by the thoroughness with which he is taught. Then, again, discipline is of necessity stricter in infantry units than in other branches of the service; the cavalryman, with a horse to care for as well as himself and his arms and equipment, and the driver or gunner of artillery, with “two horses and two sets” (of saddlery) or his gun or limber to mind, is kept busy most of the time without an excess of discipline, but the infantryman in time of peace is concerned only with himself, his arms and equipment, and his barrack-room—a small total when compared with the cares of the man in the cavalry or artillery. By way of compensation, the infantryman is made to give more65 attention to his barrack-room; he is restricted, in a way that would not be possible in the cavalry or artillery, in the way in which he employs his leisure hours, and parades are made to keep his hands out of mischief, as well as to train him to thorough efficiency. A brigade of infantry, consisting of four battalions, looks a perfectly uniform mass of men on, say, a service, dress parade, but intimate knowledge of the characteristics of the men in each battalion reveals a world of difference; each regiment has its own traditions, and each battalion differs widely from the rest in its methods of working, its way of issuing commands, and its internal arrangements. There is a standard of bugle calls for the whole Army, but practically every infantry battalion infuses a certain amount of individuality into the method of sounding the call. The buglers of the Rifle Brigade, for instance, would scorn to sound their calls in the way that the East Surreys or the York and Lancaster battalions sound theirs, and conversely a York and Lancaster or an East Surrey man would smile at the bugle call of the Rifle Brigade battalion. The districts from which men are recruited, too, account for many little peculiarities in the ways of different battalions. There is obviously a world of difference between66 the way in which a man of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry will view a given situation, and the view adopted by a man of the East Surreys, for one is “reet Yorkshire,” while the other is Cockney all through. Dialects and regimental slang combined make the language of the one almost unintelligible to the other, and, while each arrives at precisely the same end by slightly varying means, each claims superiority over the other. The spirit of the British infantryman, with very few exceptions, consists mainly in his belief that he is a member of the best company in the very best battalion of infantry in the service. As for his particular arm of the service, he points with pride to the fact that he comes in from a march and gets to his food while the poor cavalryman is still fretting about in the horse lines, and he has no two sets of harness to bother about after a field day. He slings his equipment on the shelf and goes off to his meal when the field day is over, while the poor gunner is busy with an oil rag, keeping the rust from eating into his gun and its fittings until the time comes to clean it. Thus the infantryman on his advantages, and with some justice, too. But in the barrack-room the cavalryman and artilleryman have the advantage. They can make down their beds and snooze when work is done,67 secure from interruption until “stables” shall sound and turn them out to care for their “long-faced chums.” The infantryman, on the other hand, has to prepare for barrack-room and kit inspections at all times; he has to wet-scrub and dry-scrub the floors, blacklead the table trestles and legs of forms, whitewash himself tired on articles which, to the civilian eye, appear already sufficiently coated with whitewash, pick grass off the drill ground, and carry out a host of orders which seem designed for his especial irritation, though in reality they are designed to keep him at work and prevent him from being utterly idle. In certain hours, the infantryman must be made to work to keep him in condition, and if the work of a necessary nature is not sufficient to keep him employed, then work is made for him. It must be said that, owing to the existence of undiscerning commanding and other officers, a lot of this work, although undoubtedly it fulfils its purpose, is irritating to the last degree, and might with advantage be exchanged for tasks which would exercise the intelligence of the men instead of rousing their disgust. Grass-picking is an especially detested form of labour which is common in some battalions of the infantry. In most units, however, men are put to useful occupations; in some stations where68 available ground admits, gardens are allotted to the men, who cultivate creditable supplies of vegetables for the use of their messes and flowers for decorative purposes. Another favourite form of exercise, in which the infantryman is indulged with what appears to him unnecessary frequency, is kit inspection. At first sight, it would seem that the circumstance of an officer inspecting the kit and equipment of his men is not one which would cause an undue amount of trouble, but the reverse of this is the case in practice. Each man has to lay down his kit to a regulation pattern; at the head of the bed, on which the clothing and equipment is laid out, the reds and blues and khaki-coloured squares represent much time spent by the man in folding each article of clothing to the last half-inch of size and form, prescribed by the regulation affecting the way in which kit must be laid down for inspection. Then come the underclothing, knife and fork, razor, Prayer Book and Bible, brushes, and other odds and ends with which every man must be provided. If any article is deficient from the official list, the man is promptly “put down” for a new article to replace the deficiency—and for this he has to pay. The upkeep of a full kit is most strictly enforced, and,69 in addition to the completeness of the kit, the amount of polish on the various articles calls for much attention on the part of the inspecting officer. A knife or fork not sufficiently bright, boots not quite as well cleaned and polished as they might be, or brass buttons displaying a suspicion of dullness, lead at the least to an order to show again at a stated hour—not the single article, but the whole kit—while repeated deficiencies, either in the quantity of the articles or in the evident amount of care bestowed on them, will lead to defaulters’ drill or even cells. Kit inspection counts as a “parade,” and not as a “fatigue.” The latter term is used to imply all kinds of actual work in connection with the maintenance of order in the battalion, and varies from washing up in the sergeants’ mess to carrying coals for the barrack-room or married quarters. To each unit, as a rule, there is a coal-yard attached, and from this a certain amount of coal is issued free each week for cooking purposes, while in the winter months a further amount is allotted to the men to burn in the barrack-room stoves. If the allowance is exceeded—and since it is a small one it is usually exceeded—the men club round among themselves to purchase more, at the rate of a penny or twopence a man. The fetching of this extra70 coal does not count as a “fatigue” in the official sense. A roll is kept of all men liable for fatigue duty, and each man takes his turn in alphabetical order in the performance of the various tasks that have to be done. As these tasks differ considerably in nature and extent, it follows that the alphabetical way of ordering the roll is as fair as any, though artful dodgers, getting wind of a stiff fatigue ahead, will get out of doing it by exchanging their turns with those men who would otherwise get an easier task. As a rule, sergeants’ mess fatigue is one of the least liked, except on Sunday mornings, when it releases the man who does it from church parade—of which more later. For the actual housemaid work of the barrack-room, a roll is usually kept in each room, and the men of the room take turns at “orderly man,” as it is called. This involves the final sweeping out of the room after each man has swept under his own bed and round the little bit of floor which is his own particular territory. It involves the care of and responsibility for all the kits in the room while the remainder of the men are out at drill, and also the fetching of all meals and washing up of the plates and basins after each meal. The orderly man of the day is not supposed to leave the71 room during parade hours, except to fetch meals for the rest; it is his duty, after all have gone out, to put the boxes at the foot of the beds in an exact line, that there may be nothing to disturb the symmetry of things when the orderly officer or the colour-sergeant comes round on a morning visit of inspection. In a home station, as far as infantry is concerned, practically all barrack-room inspections take place before one o’clock in the day, and in the afternoons such men as are in the barrack-room have it to themselves. It is the rule in some battalions, however, that no beds may be “made down” before six o’clock—a harsh rule, and one which serves no useful purpose, unless it be considered useful to keep a man from lying down to rest. While guard duty is kept as light as possible in mounted branches of the service, it is allowed to assume large proportions in the infantry. In a cavalry regiment, the “main guard,” which mounts duty for twenty-four hours and has charge of the regimental guard-room and prisoners confined therein, is composed at the most of a corporal and three men, but in the infantry the main guard of a battalion consists of a sergeant, a corporal or lance-corporal, and six men, providing three reliefs of two sentries apiece. Guard duty is done in “review72 order.” That is to say, the men dress up in their best clothes, with the last possible polish on metal-work and the best possible pipeclay on all belts and equipment that permit of it; and the inspection to which the guard is submitted before taking over its duties is the most searching form of inspection which the soldier has to undergo after he has been dismissed from recruits’ training. The men of the guard do turns of two hours sentry-go apiece, and then get four hours’ rest, except in very inclement weather, when the periods are reduced to one hour of duty and two hours of rest. Experience has placed it beyond doubt that the “two hours on and four hours off” is the best way of doing duty in reliefs; it imposes less strain on the men, who have to keep up their duty for a day and a night, than any other form in which it could be arranged. Certain men in infantry units—and in fact in all units—are excused from the regular routine of duty in order to fill special posts. Noteworthy among these are the “flag-waggers” or regimental signallers, a body of men maintained at a certain strength for the purpose of signalling messages with flags, heliograph, or lamps, by means of the Morse telegraphic code, and also with flags at short distances by semaphore. Bearing in mind the average education among the rank and file, it is73 remarkable with what facility men learn the use of the Morse code. Against this must be set the fact that only selected men are employed as signallers; these are taught the alphabet, and the various signs employed for special purposes, by being grouped in squads, and, after their preliminary instruction is completed, they are sent out to various points from which they send messages to each other, under conditions approximating as nearly as possible to those which obtain on active service. In order to maintain the signallers of a unit in full practice and efficiency, the men are excused from all ordinary parades for a certain part of the year; during manœuvres they are attached to the headquarters staff of their unit and carry on their work as signallers, not as ordinary duty-men. The wagging of flags is only a part of their duty, for they have to learn the mechanism and use of the heliograph, since, when sunlight permits of its use, this instrument can be employed for the transmission of messages to a far greater distance than is possible even with large flags. Lamps for signalling by night are operated by a button which alternately obscures and exhibits the light of a lamp placed behind a concentrating lens. The practised signaller is as efficient in the use of flags, lamps,74 and heliograph as is the post-office operator in the use of the ordinary telegraph instrument, though the exigencies of field service render military signalling a considerably slower business than ordinary wire telegraphy. Another course of instruction which carries with it a certain amount of exemption from duty in the infantry is that of scout. The practised scout is capable of plotting a way across country at night, marching by the compass or by the stars, making a watch serve as a compass, military map-reading—which is not as simple a matter as might be supposed—and of making sketches in conventional military signs of areas of ground, natural defensive positions, and all points likely to be of interest and advantage from a military point of view. The work of the signaller has been going on for many years, but the training of scouts is a movement which has come about and developed almost entirely during the last twelve years, which, as the Army reckons time, is but a very short period. It may be anticipated that the practice of scouting and the training of scouts will develop considerably as time goes on. Needless to say, the orderly-man is excused all parades during his day of duty as such. Only in exceptional circumstances are cooks taken for75 parades, and such men as the regimental shoemaker, the armourer and his assistants, and other men employed in various capacities, attend the regular duty parades very seldom. On field days occasionally, and also on certain commanding-officers’ drill parades, the orders of the day announce that the battalion will parade “as strong as possible.” This means a general sweep up and turning out of men employed in various ways and excused from parades as a rule, and their unhandiness owing to lack of practice sometimes results in their being relieved from their posts and returned to duty, while frequently it involves their doing extra drills in addition to their regular work. The duty-man affects to despise the man on the staff, but this affectation is more often a cloak for envy. “Staff jobs,” as the various forms of employment in a unit are called, generally mean extra pay; in nineteen cases out of twenty they mean exemption from most ordinary parades and from a good deal of the ordinary routine work of the unit concerned; in almost all cases they mean total exemption from fatigues. Under these circumstances it is not to be wondered at that the secret ambition of the average infantryman at duty, when he has relinquished all hope of promotion, is to get on the staff. <hr /> 76 <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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