Officers and Rifles

As I have said, I have learned among
other things to obey my officers and depend upon my rifle. At first the
junior officers appeared to me only as immaculate
young men in tailor-made tunics
and well-creased trousers, wearing swords
and wrist-watches, and full of a healthy
belief in their own importance. My mates
are apt to consider them as being somewhat
vain, and no Tommy dares fail to salute
the young commissioned officers when he
meets them out with their young ladies on
the public streets. For myself, I have a
great respect for them and their work;
day and night they are at their toil; when
parade comes to an end, and the battalion
is dismissed for the day, the officers, who
have done ten or twelve hours’ of field exercise,
turn to their desks and company accounts, and time and again the Last Post
[pg 49]
sees them busy over ledgers, pamphlets, and plans.

Accurate and precise in every detail, they
know the outs and ins of platoon and company
drill, and can handle scores and hundreds
of men with the ease and despatch of
artists born to their work. Where have
these officers, fresh youngsters with budding
moustaches and white, delicate hands, learned
all about frontage, file, flank, and formation,
alignment, echelon, incline, and interval?
Words of direction and command come so
readily from their lips that I was almost
tempted to believe that they had learned
as easily as they taught, that their skill in
giving orders could only be equalled by the
ease with which I supposed they had mastered the details of their work. Later I
came to know of the difficulty that confronts
the young men, raw from the Officers’
Training Corps, when they take up their
preliminary duties as commanders of trained
soldiers. No “rooky” fresh to the ranks
is the butt of so many jokes and such biting
sarcasm as the young officer is subjected to
when he takes his place as a leader of men.

Soon after my arrival in our town a score
[pg 50]
of young lieutenants came to our parade
ground, accompanied by two commanders,
a keen-eyed adjutant, brisk as a bell, and
a white-haired colonel with very thin legs,
and putties which seemed to have been
glued on to his shins. The young gentlemen
were destined for various regiments, and
most of them were fresh and spotless in their
new uniforms. Some wore Glengarry bonnets,
kilts, and sporrans, some the black
ribbons of Wales; one, whose hat-badge
proclaimed the Dublin Fusilier, was conspicuous
by the eyeglass he wore, and others
were still arrayed in civilian garb, the uniform
of city and office life. Several units of my
battalion were taken off to drill in company
with the strange officers. I was one of the chosen.

The young men took us in hand, acting
in turn as corporals, platoon sergeants, and
company commanders. The gentleman with
the eyeglass had charge of my platoon, and
from the start he cast surreptitious glances
at a little red brochure which he held in his
hand, and mumbled words as if trying to commit something to memory.

“Get to your places,” the adjutant yelled
[pg 51]
to the officers. “Hurry up! Don’t stand
there gaping as if you’re going to snap at
flies. We’ve got to do some work. There’s
no hay for those who don’t work. Come on,
Weary, and drill your men; you with the
eyeglass, I mean! I want you to put the
company through some close column movements.”

The man with the eyeglass took up his
position, and issued some order, but his
voice was so low that the men nearest him could not hear the command.

“Shout!” yelled the adjutant. “Don’t
mumble like a flapper who has just got her
first kiss. It’s not allowed on parade.”

The order was repeated, and the voice raised a little.

“Louder, louder!” yelled the adjutant.
Then with fine irony: “These men are
very interested in what you’ve got to tell them…. I don’t think.”

Eyeglass essayed another attempt, but
stopped in the midst of his words, frozen
into mute helplessness by the look of the adjutant.

“For heaven’s sake, try and speak up,”
the adjutant said. “If you don’t talk like
[pg 52]
a man, these fellows won’t salute you when
they meet you in the street with your young
lady. On second thoughts, you had better
go back and take up the job of platoon
sergeant. Come on, Glengarry, and try and trumpet an order.”

Glengarry, so-called from his bonnet, a
sturdy youth with sloping shoulders, took up his post nervously.

“A close column forming column of fours,”
he cried in a shrill treble, quoting the cautionary
part of his command. “Advance
in fours from the right; form fours—right!”

“Form fours—where?” roared the adjutant.

“Left,” came the answer.

“Left, your grandmother! You were
right at first. Did you not know that you
were right?… Where’s Eyeglass, the
platoon sergeant, now? Who’s pinched him?”

This unfortunate officer had dropped his
eyeglass, and was now groping for it on the
muddy ground, one of my mates helping him in the search.

Other officers took up the job of company
commander in turn, and all suffered. One,
[pg 53]
who was a dapper little fellow, speedily
earned the nickname of “Tailor’s Dummy;”
another, when giving a platoon the wrong
direction in dressing, was told to be careful,
and not shove the regiment over. A third,
a Welshman, with the black ribbons, got
angry with a section for some slight mistake
made by two of its number, and was told
to be careful and not annoy the men. He had only got them on appro’.

Spick and span in their new uniforms,
they came to drill daily on our parade
ground. Slowly the change took place.
They were “rookies” no longer, and the
adjutant’s sarcasm was a thing of the past.
Commands were pronounced distinctly and
firmly; the officers were trained men, ready
to lead a company of soldiers anywhere and to do anything.

No man who has trained with the new
armies can be lacking in respect for the
indefatigable N.C.O., upon whom the brunt
of the work has fallen. With picturesque
scorn and sarcasm he has formed huge
armies out of the rawest of raw material,
and all in a space of less than half a year.
His methods are sometimes strange and his
[pg 54]
temper short; yet he achieves his end in
the shortest time possible. He is for ever
correcting the same mistakes and rebuking
the same stupidity, and the wonder is, not
that he loses his temper, but that he should
ever be able to preserve it. He understands
men, and approaches them in an idiom that
is likely to produce the best results.

“Every man of you has friends of some
sort,” said the musketry instructor, as we
formed up in front of him on the parade
ground, gripping with nervous eagerness the
rifles which had just been served out from
the quartermaster’s stores. We were recruits, raw “rookies,” green to the grind,
and chafing under discipline. “And some
sort of friends it would be as well as if you
never met them,” the instructor continued.
“They’d play you false the minute they’d
get your back turned. But you’ve a friend
now that will always stand by you and
play you fair. Just give him a chance,
and he’ll maybe see you out of many a tight
corner. Now, who is this friend I’m talking
about?” he asked, turning to a youth who
was leaning on his rifle. “Come, Weary, and tell me.”

[pg 55]

“The rifle,” was the answer.

“The crutch?”

“No, the rifle.”

“I see that, boy, I see that! But, damn
it, don’t make a crutch of it. You’re a
soldier now, my man, and not a crippled one yet.”

Thus was the rifle introduced to us. We
had long waited for its coming, and dreamt
of cross-guns, the insignia of a crack shot’s
proficiency, while we waited. And with the
rifle came romance, and the element of responsibility.
We were henceforward fighting
men, numbered units, it was true, with
numbered weapons, but for all that, fighters—men
trained to the trade and licensed to the profession.

Our new friend was rather a troublesome
individual to begin with. In rising to the
slope he had the trick of breaking free and
falling on the muddy barrack square. A
muddy rifle gets rusty, and brings its owner
into trouble, and a severe penalty is considered meet for the man who comes on
parade with a rusty rifle. Bringing the
friend from the slope to the order was a
difficult process for us recruits at the start
[pg 56]
the back-sight tore at the fingers, and bleeding
hands often testified to the unnatural
instinct of the rebellious weapon. But the
unkindest kick of all was given when the
slack novice fired the first shot, and the heel
of the butt slipped upwards and struck the
jaw. Then was learnt the first real lesson.
The rifle kicks with the heel and aims for
the jaw. Control your friend, humour him;
keep him well in hand and beware his fling.

I was unlucky in my first rifle practice
on the miniature range, and out of my first
five shots I did not hit the target once. The
instructor lay by my side on the waterproof
ground-sheet (the day was a wet one,
and the range was muddy) and lectured me
between misses on the peculiarities of my
weapon and the cultivation of a steady eye.

“Keep the beggar under control,” he
said. “You’ve got to coax him, and not
use force. Pull the trigger easily, as though
you loved it, and hold the butt affectionate-like
against the shoulder. It’s an easy
matter to shoot as you’re shooting now.
There’s shooting and shooting, and you’ve got
to shoot straight. If you don’t you’re no
dashed good! Give me the rifle, you’re
[pg 57]
not aiming at the bull, man, you’re aiming
at the locality where the bull is grazing.”

He took my rifle, slid a cartridge into the
breech, and coaxed the trigger lovingly towards
him. Three times he fired, then we
went together to look at the target. Not a
bullet fired by him had struck it. The
instructor glared down the barrel of the
gun, made some nasty remarks about deflection,
and went back to yell at an orderly corporal.

“What the dickens did you take this
here for?” he cried. “It’s a blooming
wash-out,¹ and was never any good. Old
as an unpaid bill and worn bell-mouth it is, and nobody can fire with it.”

On a new rifle being obtained I passed
the preliminary test, and a rather repentant
instructor remarked that it might be possible to make a soldier of me some day.

Since then my fellow-soldiers and I have
had almost unlimited rifle practice, on miniature
and open ranges, at bull and disappearing
targets, in field firing at distances from
[pg 58]
100 to 600 yards. On a field exceeding
600 yards it is almost impossible to hit a point
the size of an ordinary bull; fire then must
be directed towards a position. Field or
volley firing is very interesting. Once my
company took train to Dunstable and advanced
on an imaginary enemy that occupied
the wastes of the Chiltern Hills. Practice
commenced by firing at little squares of
iron standing upright in a row about 200
yards off in front of our line. These represented
heads and shoulders of men rising
over the trenches to take aim at us as we
advanced. In extended order we came to
our position, 200 yards distant from the front
trenches. At the sound of the officer’s
whistle, we sank to the ground, facing our
front, fixed our sights, and loaded. A second
whistle was blown; we fired “three rounds
rapid” at the foe. The aiming was very
accurate; little spurts of earth danced up
and around the targets, and every iron
disc fell. The “searching ground,” the
locality struck by bullets, scarcely measured
a dozen paces from front to rear, thus
showing that there was very little erratic firing.

[pg 59]

“That’s some shooting!” my Jersey friend
remarked. “If the discs were Germans!”

“They might shoot back,” someone said,
“and then we mightn’t take as cool an aim.”

We are trained to the rifle; it is always
with us, on parade, on march, on bivouac,
and recently, when going through a dental
examination, we carried our weapons of war
into the medical officer’s room. As befits
units of a rifle regiment, we have got accustomed
to our gun, and now, as fully trained
men, we have established the necessary unity
between hand and eye, and can load and
unload our weapon with butt-plate stiff to
shoulder and eye steady on target while the
operation is in progress. In fact, our rifle
comes to hand as easy as a walking-stick.
We shall be sorry to lose it when the war is
over, and no doubt we shall feel lonely without it.

Footnote 1: (return)

“Wash-out” is a term used by the men when
their firing is so wide of the mark that it fails to hit
any spot on the card. The men apply it indiscriminately
to anything in the nature of a failure.

[pg 60]