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?”

[pg 14]

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
[pg 15]
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
[pg 16]
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
[pg 17]
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
[pg 18]
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.

[pg 19]

“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.

[pg 20]

“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:

[pg 21]

“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
[pg 22]
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.

[pg 23]