5^ KITCHENER'S ARMY AND THE TERRITORIAL FORCES KITCHENER'S ARMY AND THE TERRITORIAL FORCES 'I he Full Story of a Great Achievement BY EDGAR WALLACE LONDON : GEORGE NEWNES, LIMITED SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND, W.C. CONTENTS PA'.E ItitrO(iticlii>» 3 chapti:r I THE BIRTH OF THE NEW ARMY "SWKARINC.-IN " — SCENES IX LONDON— THE EFFECT OF THE GREAT RETREAT — HOW THE EMPLOYERS HELPED— THE " I,EVELT.ING-UP " PROCESS — IN BARRACK AND IN CAMP— THE STEADY FLOW OF RECRUITS 9 CHAPTER II THE RECRUIT'S FIRST DAYS IN THE NEW ARMY UNDER CANVAS — FIKSI' LESSONS — PHYSICAL TRAINING — WITH THE AWKWARD SQUAD — SECRETS OF THE RIFLE WHAT ADVANCED SQUADS WERE DOING — INFANTRY BUGLE CALLS — A bird's-eye VIEW OF A KIICHENER BATTALION 33 CHAPTER III PROGRESS TOWARDS EFFICIENCY TRAINING 'lO A TIME-TABLE— WORK AT THE RANGES —JUDGING DISTANCES — LESSONS IN SCOUTING — THE ART OF TAKING COVER — A FIELD DAY AT ALDERSHOT TRICKS OF TRENCH WORK WITH THE .MACHINE-GUN SECTION 65 CHAPTER IV THE ARTILLERYMAN IN THE MAKING-WITH THE ENGINEERS DRIVERS AND GUNNERS — IN THE RIDING SCHOOL BREAKING IN THE HORSES DUTIES OF THE GUN TEAM— HOW CAVALRYMEN WERE TRAINED — BUILDERS OF BRIDGES — WITH I hi: army -lELEOKAPHISTS— 'IHE NAVVIES' BATTALION 97 CHAPTER V TRAINING THE R.A.M.C. - ARMY SERVICE CORPS-NAVAL BRIGADE STKKT'CHLR IlRIl.l. — LESSONS IN THE HOSPITALS — HOW THE R.A.M.C. WORKS ON THE FIELD— ARMY SERVICE CORP.S, THE "GENERAL SERVANTS OF THE ARMY " MECHANICAL TRANSPORT SECTION THE MAX WHO CREATED THE NEW ARMY. . 1 29 CHAPTER VI WITH THE TERRITORIALS THE TRAINING OF THE; NEW OFFICERS READY FOR "imperial SERVICE" — RELEASING REGULAR TROOPS FROM INDIA— IN THE FIRING LINE — A TRAINING CORPS ON THE BATTLEFIELD —THE FINE RECORD OF THE UNIVERSITIES AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS 161 ^L^oF^No A Record of Friends and Relatives who ANSWERED THE CALL OF KiNG AND COUNTRY IN THE Great War: i9l4 - 1915. INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS Lord Kitchener of Kharlomn ... Action of Shrapnel Advancing through a Wood After the Doctor's Visit Aldershot, Training at ... Ambulance Corps, U.P.S. An Interval at Manoeuvres Army Cooks, A Lesson to Army Farriers at Work Army Service Corps Army Transport ... Artillery on Parade Artists' Rifles, The Australian Cavalry in Egypt ... "Awkward Squad" at Work ... "Bantams," The (17th Welsh Battal Bayonet Charge, Practising Bayonet Exercise, First Movements Bayonet Practice at Aldershot ... Bayonet Thrust, Learning the Bicycle Ambulance Boxing Match, A Spirited Breaking in Remounts ... Bridge Building ... 92, 122, 123 Bringing in a Wounded Man ... Bringing up the Water Waggon Bringing up the Guns ... Bugle Calls Bugle Company at Practice Building Their Own Huts Camp Butchers at Work Camp Kitchens, Aldershot Camp on Suez Canal Caterpillar Traction Engine Cavalryman's Education, The ... Cavalry Horses Challenging a Photographer Citv of London Royal Fusiliers Civil Service Recruits Cleaning Harness ... Cleaning Rifles Composition of a Company PAGE Frontispiece 103 73 44 28 129 170 136 142 146 139 100 178 187 18 140, 176, ion) 90, 124, 125 36 1 68 19 26 ' '7 13" 80 94 144 131 78 60, 182 '57 ... 24 ... 46 ... 48 ... 187 ... 141 1 10 ... 114 ••• 95 ... 165 ... 118 121 ... 71 ••• 59 Constructing a Cask Bridge Cookhouse, A Model Cooking the Dinner Cycle Scouts in Ambush Cyclist Corps ... ... "Devil's Own" (Inns of Court O.T.C.) Dinner Time, Recruits' Drilling in London Parks ... 6, 7, Drilling on a Football Ground ... Driving in the Piles Dummy Target Practice Entraining Guns ... Entrenchments on East Coast Empire Battalion (Royal Fusiliers) ... Epsom Downs, Marching on Field Ambulance, R.A.M.C Field Forge Field Hospital, R.A.M.C Field Kitchen Field Telephone at Work "Fireman's Lift," The ... Firing Practice First Aid Footballers' Battalion Training Foot Inspection after Route March Full Equipment of British Soldier Fully-trained Company, .A German Offices as Recruiting Depot ... Getting the Horses' Meals Good Jump, .\ Gun Drill Gun Emplacement. Constructing a Gunner Receiving Orders Gymnasium Instructors ... Hants Regiment on Thirly-mile March Heavy Guns Climbing a Slope Herts Yeomanry Scouts Highlanders (5th Camerons) His Majesty Reviews Recruits His Majesty Reviews .\rlists' Rifles ... • 93 ... 48 ... 40 ... 82 126, 183 162, 184 ... 32 8. 9. 56 ... 159 ... 124 ... 68 142 106 ... 19 ... 36 ... 132 ■■■ '43 ... 132 ... 138 102, 169 ... 130 ... 72 ••• 135 ... 52 •■■ 45 ... 148 ... 84 31 120 III ... 102 ... 10; 102 II ... 162 ... 104 75. 185 ... 26 ... 29 .. 178 IV Index to Illustrations Honourable Artillery Company 9S, Morses Stabled in a Street Inns of Court Officers' Training Corps Inspection by Lord Roberts Kit Inspt-cliun . . . Learning the Salute Learning to Shoot Straight .. . . Lesson in Sighting, A Lesson in Swordsmanship, A ... London Rifle Brigade London Scottish, The ... ... 47, 172, Machine Gun Section. .\ Machine Gun under Co -er ... . . Machine Gun on Haystack Middlesex Hussars .Miniature Range, At tne Motor Lorry as Repair Shop Mctor Scouts turned Soldiers . . Mules for Gun Teams Musketry Practice Npval Brigade at Crystal Pa'pce Naval Brigade Recruits ... Naval Brigade's Sleeping Quarters ... Northumberland Hussars Officers' Rank, How to Distinguish ... Ofticers' Training Corps On the Way to the Training Camps Passing the Doctor Perilous Work of the Royal Engineers Physical Drill on Station Platform Pl.'vsical E.xercises 14, i Placing the Centre Span Playtime in Camp Pole Targets Polishing up for Parade Practising Revolver Shooting ... Prime Minister's Son Drilling ... Public Schools Corps Puttees, Proper Way to Adjust ... Queen's Westminsters on the March PAGE 66, 168 '54 62, .84 20 •• 34 •■ 39 8 .. 67 .. 116 .. 180 o. 174 r2, 186 .. gi .. 119 .. 114 50. 70 140 .. 86 .. iiS •• 65 .. .58 •■ 15>1 •• 159 .. 1S6 35. 40, 4'. 43. 44. 51 4 loS 35 , 96 125 , 80 6q "3 17 41 1, 16 16 176 Ranelagh, At Ready for the Front Receiving Rations Reconnaissance Work Recruits Carrying their Beds Regimental Cook at W'ork I'Jcstaurant under Canvas, A I?est on the March, A ... Rifle Instruction Right Way to Load Route March, Halt en a Royal Scots Fusiliers Scouting Instruction Semaphore Practice . 12 Sergeants' Mess, Hornchurtb Service in Camp ... Signalling Instruction and Practice 8^. 1; Snapshooting Instruction Soldier as "Handyman," The ... Sportsman's Battalion, The Surrey Yeomanry W'atering Horses ... Swedish Drill in the Open Taking Cover ... Taking the Oath ... Tarpaulin Raft carrying Men ... Territorials Overseas Transferring W'ounded to .Xmbulance .. Trench-construction Explained Trench-digging 54, sr, Trestle Bridge Completed Trigger-pressing Lesson, A Trinity College Occupied by the New .\rniy Tug of War, A PAGE 112 '50 47 66 22 78 63 33 b, 23 68 76 184 University and Public School Corps ... Unloading Forage Visual Training Waiting to Enlist in Whitehall \\"elsh Regiment's Mascot W'estmorland Yeomanry ... Wooden Horses for Cavalry Recruits ... Yeomanry Motor Scouts ... "Your King and Country Need You" 164 50 I So 156 .. 66 ■• 79 .. 156 .. iSi 10 71 5 122 .. 188 ■■ 134 ... 74 56, 74 •■ 144 .. 70 .. 38 ■ 5' .. 84 •• 139 .. 128 4 ... 89 .. 161 no KITCHENER'S ARMY AND THE TERRITORIAL FORCES The Full Story of a Great Achievement EDGAR WALLACE Ha THE REVEILLE irk I 1 hear the iramp of ihousandj And of armed men the hum ; Lo [ a nation's ho'^ts have gathered Round the quick alarming drum — Saying, " Come, Freemen, come ! Eire your heritage be wasted." said the quick alarming drum. " Let me of my heart take counsel : War is not of Life the sum ; Who shall slay and reap the harvest When the autumn days shall con-.e ? " But the drum Echoed, " Come 1 Death shall reap the braver harvest," said the solemn-soundmg drum. What if. "mid the battle's thunder. Whistling shot and bursting bomb. When my brothers fall around me. Should my heart grow cold and numb ? " But the drum Answered " Come I Better there in death united than in life a recreant— come I" Thus they answered — hoping, fearing. Some in faith, and doubting some. Till a trumpet-voice proclaiming. Said, "My chosen people, come!" Then the drum, Lo I was dumb. For the great heart of the nation, throbbing, answered, "Lord, we come!" GEORGE NEWNES, LTD., 8 TO ii SOUTHAMPTON STREET, W.C. ABUNDANTLY SATISFIED WITH THE ARMY HE CREATED.- Photo. Bassano. -EARL KITCHENER OF KHARTUM. KITCHENER'S ARMY AND THE TERRITORIAL FORCES The Full Story of a Great Achievement BY EDGAR WALLACE INTRODUCTION " Kitchener's Army ! " — a phrase which may well stand for a hundred years, and, indeed, may stand for all time as a sign and symbol of British determination to rise to a great occasion and to supply the needs of a great emergency. It is not my task here to discuss the military situation as it might have been, or to offer arguments for or against national service, nor yet to say whether the recruitment of the first few months of the war disposes of or makes inevitable a system of compulsory service. The purpose of this volume is to place on record in a permanent form a chapter of Britain's history of which the people of all ages who call these islands their home may indeed be proud. The outbreak of war found all the nations concerned unprepared save one. Germany alone, which had been preparing, scheming, and planning for the day on which it would be at war, was ready in every department to the last button on the last service tunic. Germany, with huge reserves of men and stores and warlike material, swept resist- lessly down through Belgium and secured for herself a momentary and, as it was thought at the time, an unchallengeable advantage. Russia was not ready, France was not ready, and most certainly Great Britain was not ready to deal with the huge numbers and the great masses which were instantly directed against the Allies. At the time when the British Army was mobilising in England, and when Russia had no more than 300,000 men on the scene of action, Germany had concentrated forty- four Army Corps, divided into nine Armies, the smallest of which, under General von Deimling, was charged with the task of keeping strictly on the defensive behind the Vosges. The rest of this enormous mass was concentrated between Aix-la-Chapelle and Strasburg, and the eight Armies which were equipped and in the field days, indeed weeks, in advance of some of the Allies were, reading from right to left (that is to say, from north to south), the first army under von Kluck, the second under von Buelow, the third under von Hansen, the fourth under the Duke of Wurtemburg, the fifth under the Crown Prince of Prussia, the sixth under the Crown Prince of Bavaria, the seventh under von Heeringen, and the eighth army, which was merely temporarily formed, was known as the Army of the Meuse and was under von Emmich. Von Emmich's Army was immediately ready for service the moment war was de- clared, and stationed, as it had been before the outbreak, a short distance from the Bel- gian frontier, it had during the later days of July been brought up to war strength by the secret additions of reserves, who had been personally notified and had been charged to keep their notification to them- selves. The British Army Expeditionarv Force, which immediately mobilised on the out- break of war, was roughly 160,000 officers and men; but only a very small proportion of these was ready for war. When the Germans swept down through Belgium they found themselves opposed at Mons to two Army Corps only (80,000 men), which later, Kitcheners Army LORD KHCHENER's APPEAL FOR RECRUITS MET WITH THOUSANDS OF BRITAIN'S SONS. THE PHOTOGRAPH By MEN EAGER TO comparative sizes of the armies is instruc- tive. Peace War No. of Nation. footing. footing. gnn.s. Austriu . 500,000 2,200,000 2.500 France (inclndiiiL; Algerian troops) 790,000 4,000,000 4,200 Great Britain 234,000 380,000 1,000 Germany 850,000 6,000,000 5,500 Russia . . . . ,700,000 7,000,000 6,000 Photo. Styort and General. BEFORE A RECRUIT CAN BE ACCEPTED HE HAS TO PASS A VERY THOROUGH MEDICAL EXAMIN.ATION. at Le Cateau, were reinforced by a division, and were still further augmented in the early part of September by another Army Corps. Large as w-as this force from the point of view of a nation which has never engaged more than 160,000 men in any one battle formation since the wars of the Middle Ages, it was insignificant by the side of the great armies which were gathering on the Continent. A little table shov.ing the As will be seen by the above table, the only advantage — and it was merely a rela- tive advantage — which Great Britain pos- sessed was the larger proportion of guns she had to the number of men under arms, but this advantage is neutralised by the fact that the Indian Native Army, which is not included in this table, possess no guns at all, and depend for their artillery upon the British Army. So whilst at first it seems that we have one gun to every 380 men, if we put in the 200,000 Indian native troops serving, the proportion is reduced to one in 580. It mav be said, and, indeed, has been said, that Great Britain, from the insularity of her position and the protection which her huge Navy and her narrow seas afford her, is not so greatly in need of an Army as was either of her great rivals, who have huge frontier lines to protect and must needs de- Kitcheners A niiy 5 Photo. Topical. IN INSTANTANEOUS RESPONSE FROM HUNDREDS OF HOWS THE WHITEHALL RECRUITING DEp6t BESIEGED 5ER\-E THEIR COUNTRY. when frontiers had territories ac- quired or lost by t h e belligerent Powers, and it was just as evi- dent that, great as might be the influence which a naval Power might exercise in the course of the war, the settle- ment and the terms of peace would be dictated by the possessors of large land forces. It was evi- dent, too, from the many signs which Germany gave us that she had aimed for many vears to secure a world domination, and lo impose her will upon the peoples of the earth. Neces- sarily, Great pend upon seas of armed humanity to protect their great indus- trial districts and their strategic posi- tions. This was largely true ; b u t equally true was it that great armies ii a ve functions to fulfil other than the actual w i n- ning of bat- tles. It was evident from the beginning that this war could only end when the whole of the map of Eur- ope had been changed, been readjusted and Britain, of all the couiuries in ihe world, stood in the way of her ambitious scheme, and, as inevitably, Germany had planned tile overthrow of this country. Britain, liow- e\er, could only be overthrown by a sequence of circumstances. The first was that she should not intrude herself in this war, but that she should leave Germany and Austria to finish their great antagonists, and establish themselves in Belgium and upon the North Sea, so that at the trium- phant end of the war Germany should have a naval base from which she could in course of time operate against her great sea rival. It was evident, therefore, that to make her Navy doubly effective, it was necessary to destroy the enemy's land power. Events did not turn out as Germany an- ticipated; and though, by her lightning mobilisation and the rapidity of her march past, she succeeded in obtaining initial successes — and those with great loss — she quickly found her advantages nullified by new and menacing forces which were rapidly coming into existence against her. Un- doubtedly the greatest of these forces was the creation in Britain of a most unexpected Army. It denotes the machine-made char- acter of German thought that our enemy did not believe in the existence of that Army, palpable as it was, until he received evidence RECRUITS TAKING THE OATH AT Phntn. Spi-'it ami Gctjcral. THE CENTRAL RECRUITING DEp6t, WHITEHALL. Kitchener s Army RFXRL'ITS ON THEIR WAY FROM THE RECRUITING of its excellence and its numbers on the field of battle. I have related all the circumstances which were responsible for the beginning of Kitchener's Army, and it only remains to add one very important fact, that the reader may appreciate to the full, the extraordinary accomplishment of those entrusted with the conduct of Great Britain's military affairs. To sav that Great Britain was unprepared for this great war is to say that, whilst she was ready to believe that Germany, France, " H " COMPANY OF THE POST OFFICE RECRUITS Kitcheners Army 5FFICES TO THEIR TRAINING CAMPS. Russia, and Austria would some day or other be involved in a world conflict, she did not anticipate that she would be called upon to enter that field, or be asked or expected to organise great military forces to combat Prussian militarism upon land. She did not, indeed, realise that such a con- flict could not be waged without Britain's power and Britain's place amongst the Powers being challenged, not only by one section of the belligerents, but by all. I have referred to the unreadiness of Great Vhoto. Sport and CenerdL MARCHING IN COMPANY FORMATION IN REGENT'S PARK. Kitchener s A nuy Photo. RAW RECRUITS TRAINING IN KENNINCTON PARK. Britain to participate in so huge a conflict as that which raged through Europe in the summer and autumn of 1914, and by that I do not mean that our men were ill-trained or ill-equipped. All that is meant is that, while we had the clothing and equip- ment, arms and am- munition, guns and horses to furnish the British Army and its reserves, we had not supplies for larger forces than the num- ber set down as Britain's normal war strength. The task the Govern- ment set itself was a formidable, nay, a staggering one. It was in the first place to take 500,000 raw men from the streets, from the clubs, from the fields, from the villages, towns, and cities of Great Britain, and not only to train them in the art of war in the shortest space of time that it is possible to train soldiers, but also to prepare the equipment, the arms, and the munitions and stores of w'ar. And so Kitchener's Army came into existence with a rush. It came intoexistence in the crowded .streets of the great cities, in the peaceful villages up and down England, Photn. '^port and r,rnrr,-il KF.CRUITS OF THE LINCOLNSHIRE REGIMENT BEING INSTRUCTED IN THE US Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, where men came forth from office, warehouse, and factory, or tramped from their farms and their cottages to the nearest recruiting office ; it came into existence on the decks of home- ward bound steamers, where little coteries of young m.en, eager and enthusiastic, re- turning to their Motherland to give their services, had already joined themselves into parties for enlistment in certain regiments. Kifchciici's ^l nil v CHAPTER I THE MEN OF THE FIRST ARMY. A\ observer watching" the animated scene before one of the greatest recruiting centres of London in the early part of August might have witnessed a strange sight — a police- man grasping firmly the arm of a flushed and smiling voung man, and leading him gently down the road, past his jeering com- panions to a point a quarter of a mile from the place whence lie had been taken. For this young man had, with great temerity, dared to insinuate himself at the wrong end of the long queue which was waiting its turn to parade before the medical ofliccr and to be examined that its fitness for army ser- vice might be certified. This young man could complain, as he did, that he had already been waiting for six hours, that he had journeyed from Canada at the first hint of war, and that he was most anxious to begin working at his new profession as soon as it was possible: but the unanswerable retort was that he was only one of thou- sands, .and that the recruiting autliorities were quite unable to cope with the rush of men which had followed the demand of Lord Kitchener and the Prime Minister for the first 103,000 men. The machinery of the peacetime recruiting office was not designed to pass tiiousands of men a day. To pass, as it did, a larger num- ber of recruits for the Army in twenty-four hours than that par- ticular ofiice had passed in a 3-ear in normal times was an achieve- ment in itself. In jus- tice to the Chief Re- cruiting Officer, it can- not be said that his system broke down, but rather tiiat it could not be accelerated beyond a certain speed; and recognising this, the Government established offices, not only in the principal centres of all the great towns of Eng- land, but in the out- hing suburbs and in d market r/iofo. Sfnrt and General. MEN OF THE rUELIC SCHOOL EOYS' CORPS WAITING TO LEAVE HYDE PARK FOR THEIR CAMP AT EPSOM. B lO Kitchener s A nny photo. S^ort and General. SWEDISH DRILL IN THE OPEN. — THE QUEEN VICTORIA'S RIFLES TRAINING AT HAMPSTEAD. towns which were accessible to would-be actual examination and swearing-in of indi- recruits. Thev came in such huge numbers viduals proceeded as rapidly as was that not only was it impossible to deal ex- humanly possible, but it was likewise im- peditiously with them as masses, though the possible for a long time to house, clothe, and Photo. St^ort and General ANOTHER EXERCISE OF THE LONDON RFGIMENT. QLEEN VICTORIA'S RIFLES, AT HAMPSTEAD. Kitchener s A riiiy 1 1 DEVELOPING THE RECRUITS PHYSIQUE. — THE PHOTOGRAPHS SHOW A SQUAD OF FUTURE GYMNASIUM INSTRUCTORS FOR KITCHENER'S ARMY UNDERGOING THEIR TRAINING AT THE GYMNASIUM, ALDERSHOT. i p these e numbers ch grew in every day. " e may i2^i n e our it, patiently cheerfully ing one of long queue side the recruiting siuiffling ward at a snail's pace as the queue moved up, and as the men, in parties of six and seven, were released to the medical in- spection room, reaching at last the long-desired portal and finding him- 12 Kifchcucrs A r, lav self ushered brusquely intu a large, square apartment, equipped w i t li a \v e ig h i n ij machine, a scale for measuring height, a wash- bowl for the medical oflicer's hands, and two tables, at one of which sat a clerk busily filling up the attestation forms, contain- ing particulars of the recruit's physical appear- ance, his trade. relatives, and measurements. In a few moments the would-be recruit is standing erect in nature's uni- form. The ex- am i n a t i o n is brief but thorough. Heart and lungs are tested by stetho- scope and by judicious tap- ping. His chest is measured and his exact weight recorded. The rec ru it hops across the bare room, first on one leg and then on the other. His teeth are inspected, and then comes the crucial test of eyesight. A small card, con- taining a number of letters in various tvpes, is placed on tlie wall opposite him, and he is asked to tell, first with one eye and then with the other, not only the names of the letters indicated, but he is also required to distinguish certain dots, their number, and their formation. A quick examination follows for varicose veins and other infirmi- ties, and then with a curt nod he is dis- missed to his clothing. The Medical Officer signs the attestation form, and the recruit is hurried into another room where half-a-dozen men who have also passed the medical officer are waiting their turn. NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICERS OF THE NEW ARMV UNDERGOING INSTRUCTION "Swearing In." Presently the recruiting officer enters from his office, accompanied bv an orderly, who distributes a number of New Testa- ments to the waiting recruits, who take them shyly or with that evidence of embarrass- ment which comes to self-conscious people who are doing unaccustomed things. "Take the book in your right hand. You swear — sav after me, 'I swear.'" " I swear," repeats the recruit. "To serve His Majesty the King." "To serve His Majesty the King," says the recruit, and the oath proceeds — "His heirs and successors . . . and the generals and officers set over me by His KitchcncFS A riny IN PllVSIC.M. TK.MN'ING AT THE HEADQUARTERS' GYMNASIUM, ALDERSHOT. Majesty the King, his heirs and successors, so help me God ! " Tiie book is kissed, and the raw civihan who came into the builcHng on one side- goes out at tlie other a member of the great army which is forming and part and parcel of that brotherhood of arms which "binds the brave of all the earth." He may have asked to be enlisted for some special regi- ment, and in the beginning, when the ^^^^r Office called for recruits, it gave a number of friends who cared to come together the pri\ilege of serving together in any regi- ment they chose, or, if they had no par- ticular choice, in any regiment which the War Office desired to fill. 13 This was the very beginning. The long, wait- i n g queues t h e interested Inokers-on, the hurry and rush of the recruiting office, the bustle and seeming indifference of the great city — this is the atmo- sphere in which the first Kit- chener soldiers came to the Army. The broad doorway of the chief recruiting office was the gate to a land of strange and tragic ad- venture and it ".as with a light heart and a high hope that the voung men of Great Britain passed through to the wonderful land beyond. That was what one witnessed en the Thames Em- bankment in the heart of London ; it was likewise seen in every great town and every small town throughout the kingdom. B i r m i n g ham, -Manchester, Newcastle, Cardiff— all the great industrial and manufacturing centres, no less than the smaller towns, estab- lished or enlarged their recruiting offices and daily sent their quota of new young soldiers to the depots. I siiall have something to say later with refer- ence to the wonderful organisation of these depots, and the way the rush of recruits was received, sorted out, and distributed over the country to various centre.;. It v.as all done on a weil-organised plan, on lines in operation in ordinary times of peace. The civilian reader knows little or nothing of these matters. But I hope to make it clear to him wiiat a marvellous achievement Vhoto. Gale and Pntdcn. UMDER COMPETENT INSTRUCTORS KITCHENER'S RECRUIT? the collection, handling, and distributing of these crowd- ing thousands was in reality. The military authorities had to deal with something they had probably never antici- pated in their lifetime. Tlicv rose to the greatest emer- gency in our history. In the last weeks of August, Mr. Asquith in the House of Commons an- nounced that the Govern- ment would ask for credit which would enable the new WarMinister, Lord Kitch- ener, to raise a new army of 500,000 men. This was fol- lowed at a later date by the announcement that the first 500,000 would be supple- mented byasecond half-mil- lion. With that announce- ment began the formation of the Kitchener masses. One million men ! It was an extraordinary number to the Britisher, who never thought in hundreds of thousands. Men who had A STRRTCHIXG POSITION IN , Kitclicucrs A rmy TALCHT MANY SPLENDID EXERCISES TOR THE STKENGTIIENINC OF THE ML'SCLES Phoio. L.N. A. this grave P)loto. L.IV..'!. been discussing and curious matter wherever they met together in rail- way trains, in the streets, in clubs, in the intervals be- tween the acts at the theatre, asked one another the same question : " Where are we going to get them from ? " The upper and lower middle classes had come to regard the soldier as an in- dividual who was exclu- sively recruited from certain social strata, just as he re- garded wheat as a peculiar and necessary cereal which grew in the fields as a matter of natural course, and with the cultivation of which he himself was not immediately concerned. Volunteering and the Territorial movement he understood, and in this he himself had dabbled, but the Regular Army was apart and aloof from the under- standing and from all par- ticipation by the thousands of men occupying i6 Kitcheners Army A CORPORAL INSTRUCTS A RFXRUIT IIOW rK&rERLV TO ADJUST IIIS PUTTEES. rejjular positions in com- mercial life or entitled to describe themselves as "independent." Cer- tainly these latter never thought of the Army save as an institution to be viewed through the windows of an officers'' mess-room. The aver- age )-oung man of Britain was wont tO' cheer enthusiastically stories of I^rilish hero- ism. He himself was immensely patriotic and! honestly desired to serve his country as best he- could. That he did not enlist was due not to his lack of patriotism, not to his failure to appre- ciate the extraordinary demands which were being made upon his country, but just from sheer failure to under- stand that he himself could be of any service in the ranks of the Thoto. Rcotd Pr.ss WITH THE PUBLIC SCHOOI.ROVS AT EPSOM.— LIEUT. F. R. FOSTER, THE FAMOUS CRICKETER, LEADING HIS COMPANY. Kitchen CI- s A nuy 17 Army. Iiuk'cd, it would be fairer to reduce down tiie preliminary hesitation of the younj^ men of England to a sense of modesty rather than to a desire to shirk. A few days after the announcement had been made in Parliament that the British Army was to be so enormouslv increased, there appeared on every public vehicle in London a neat placard to supplement the official posters which at that time were covering the windows of post offices and public buildings and were occupying large spaces in the columns of the dailv Press. You saw this appeal in long blue and red merce — the appeal was working. Yoi* could not get away from it. It was flashed upon the screens of picture theatres; it ap- peared on some of the boards before the theatre doc^rs; it was on the tram tickets; it was pasted on the windows of private- houses; it appeared imexpectedly in the- pulpit and on the stage; it was printed in' neat little characters upon leaflets; it sprawled largely upon the gigrmtic posters- with which private enterprise co\ered whole- facias — "Your King and Country need you." Young men came up from their homes ta strips fastened to the wind-screens of taxi- cabs ; you saw it on a larger scale plastered to the sides of the motor-buses, so that no men could enter on his journey cityward without receiving an appeal which for a time he honestly regarded as being applied to somebody else ! It took some days for the leaven to work. But in these days the recruiting offices were crowded. A great throng surged into New- Scotland Yard; enormously long queues tilled with the youth of the City made their way to the recruiting office. One could not walk through a prnicinal street without passing little self-conscious parties being marched down to the nearest railway station to entrain for the depot of some regiment. But large as the crowd was, it was, gener- ally speaking, made up of that class of which the rank and file of the Armv had aways been formed, with here and there a sprinkling of a better type of man, and although there was no perceptible response to the recruiting literature which was at this time flooding London — that is to say, in so far as it affected the hirher grades of com- Phalo. Chirkc and Hytle I-UACTISING REVOLX'ER SHOOTING IN THE CRVl'T OF TIIE KENNINGTON PARISH CHURCII. their offices, and on the journey they dis- cussed the war, and they expressed their doubt as to whether the nuniber required would ever be raised by voluntary effort. Thev even went so far as to say that if the w-orst came to the worst, they would enlist. Bui in the first few days of the war — indeed, until after the British .Vrniy was engaged — the youth of middle-class England took only an academic or enthusiastic interest ir> the war according to their tenipcraments, and never conveyed the impression that i8 Kitcheners A nny tlu-y tlicmsclvcs were needed in the actual prt>seiuti()n of tlie war. The Effect of the Great Retreat. I5ut tliere came sudden enlisjhtenment, which acted like an electric spark : the retreat frum Mons, and the jjublication of a story in a newspaper which purported to be that of a great disaster to British arms. It was this that stirred the imaj^ination and roused the conscience of our younij manhood. It is true that the incident reported was not a disaster, though on first inspection it bore a resemblance to such. But the fact that it was published and that it should have re- mi'd exercises of a promenade — and discuss this unbelievable thing, and there was time, too, for the real significance of the news to sink in. Vou can only understand the seeming apathy of tiie nation in tiie early days of the war (though the superficial observer would see nothing to support the theory of apathy in the huge crowds before the re- cruiting office) by probing into the British mind, and understanding something of its hopes and beliefs. We had found ourselves allied to two great countries — two great military nations, one of which was capable of putting seven million men in the field, Phoh-y. Record Press GETTING FIT FOR TIIE FRAY.— NEW RECRUITS IN THE FIRST STAGES OF MILITARY INSTRUCTION. ceived the cachet of the Censor, came in the nature of a shock. This was on a certain Sunday in .'\ugust. There was one day to think over this ter- rible news of defeated British soldiers straggling all over the countrvside in France; of beaten units, the remnants (jf what had once been great regiments, com- ing wearily into the little towns of the north of France, to tell their harrowing story to a shocked correspondent. .\ whole Sunday in which men could w-alk up and down the front — for it was summer time and the summer resorts were filled with flan- nelled young men who found pleasure in the and the other four million men. We had talked of the Russian "steam-roller" army, which would slowly move across East Prussia, spreading its millions like a cloud of locusts across the fertile lands of Silesia and East Prussia. We knew that the French were so ready for war that on the first trumpet-call three or four million men would stand to arms. But our people knew nothing of the intricacies and the difficulties of mobilisation. They knew nothing of political factors in warfare, that rnight keep an .\rmy cooling its heels whilst new equipments were procured, or of the enormous distances over which Russian soldiery would have to cross before Kitchener s Army 19 the\' could be concentrated on the enemy's front. On that Sunday there was one question asked: Where are the French? Wherever they were, or whatever they were doing- (and we know now- how^ they were occupied), it was obvious they were not in a position at that moment to help this retiring British Army, battling from .Mons to Maubeuge, from Maubeuge to Le Cateau, and fighting every inch of its way towards Paris. That was a thought to ponder on ; it gripped them hard. Monday morning took the great army of young men by train, by 'bus, by tram-car, or driving their own cars in many cases, to their offices and their businesses in the city. At every few yards they were confronted with the simple statement that their King and their Country needed them. Then, per- haps, the inspiration came in a flash that it was ihey themselves to ivhom this appeal was being made ! Thousands of young men went to their oflices on that Monday with their minds made up. The resolution had come. Grave Phr'to. Rrcord PrfSi. THE EMPIRE DATTAIION OF TIMl ROYAL FUSILIERS BRING IN-SrECTED IN GREEN PARK CV MAJOR-GENERAL C. L. WOOLLCOMUE. Kitclicncrs Anuv THE LATE FIELD-MARSHAL LORD R013ERTS IXSPECTIN'I Kitcheners A rniy 2 I i« Pholo. fa'Tini'JcM VhvW Co ECRUITS OF kitchener's SECOND ARMY IN TEMI'LE GARDENS. 22 Kitcheners A riiiy employers, sitting in their private olTices, received deputations in some cases of nine or ten to twenty men, who explained their position. In nearly every case the employer commended, encouraged, and sympailiised, and did his part by rapidly improvisin<;- a system by wiiich the dependants of his em- ployees should not sutler by the heroism of their men. I know at least one emplojer who was dumfounded. "Certainly, my youn;::^ friend," he said to a score of young men who entered his room one after the other to say they meant to offer themselves. "Certainly, my younjj friend; do so; let me know the result, good luck." These young men went off to the recruiting office and never returned. This was what dum- founded their employer. He had the vaguest idea of these things. He expected ing ground now at a tremendous rate, for it was taking to itself all that was best, physic- ally and mentally, of English manhood. .^.nd now London began to see extra- ordinary sights. For playgrounds and open spaces, in wliich the voices of children had predominated, now resounded to the siiarp, staccato words of command issued by drill-instructors. The patter of chil- dren's feet was gone, and in its place the tramp of marching men. Healthv young Britons in their shirt-sleeves wheeled and formed, advanced and retired, formed tv.o ranks and four at a siiarp order, and with head erect and chest expanded, went seri- ously to the fjusiness of preparing them- selves for national defence. The great public parks and open spaces were filled; e\en in the paved churchyards Photo. Record Press RECRUITS OF THE LANCASHIRE REGIMENT CARRYING THEIR BEDS THROUGH A WILTSHIRE VILLAGE TO THEIR CAMP. they would all come back and report them- selves with a few days allowed them to clear up affairs, enabling him to make fresh ar- rangements to fill "their places ! He knows now Kitchener's new men were allowed no days of grace before taking up their train- ing. •New faces appeared in the recruiting queue, a new type of recruit began to elbow its way to the front, first in a trickling stream and then in a whole volume which rnade the normal river overflow into a dozen little subsidiary streams each makinj; for one of the new emergency recruiting stations which were being opened all over the town. A new tone came to the tents, a new intona- tion, a suggestion of Public School and University. Kitchener's .\rmv was gain- of I^ondon, one saw these eager recruits at their work. On the sacred" lawns of the Inns of Court, whence the pedestrians were warned in time of peace, squads marched and manoeuvred. You saw them swinging through the city, alert and cheer- ful, wearing their civilian garb, without arms, uniform, or equipment, shaking them- selves into the mould in which heroes are cast. Day and night the work went on. Every miniature rifle range was commandeered by the military. New little ranges came into existence in the most unlikely spots. In some cases they were to be found in the gloomy crypts of churches; these cfTering. as they did, a great amount of quiet space, were utilised to train the men in firing: and Kitcheiiers Army -J A RECRUIT RECEIVING INSTRUCTION IN RIFLE-SHOOTING. niming. And even as the recrui'ing oflice absorbed its tliousands, other tliousands came; the congestion grew heavier, though now the streams of recruits moving into barracks had swollen until they were verit- able rivers. Half the passengers by the trains which moved out of London north, east, south, and west were men of Kit- chener's Armv, men who, perhaps, a week before had been sitting in their offices waiting for such news of the war as they could secure from the newspapers, with no idea of themselves forming part of the great brotherhood which was engaged in thrusting back the enemies of civilisation, and who now had a deeper and a more real joy in the knowledge that thev were assist- ing in the great and splendid work. What the Employers Did. Some businesses were whollv denuded of managers, clerks, and emplo\ees. But though it might spell ruin to the patriotic emplovers, no obstacle was placed in the way of men enlisting; and, indeed, the em- ployer realising, perhaps, that he himself was past the militar\- age, prepared a sacrifice on his own part, and offered to the families of these patriots what compensation for the loss of their bread-winners it was possible for him in his circumstances to make. This enormous influx of recruits was taken to the Army without anv sensible disturbance of industry. It was carried out, too, and could only be carried out, with the hearty co-operation and help of the women of England. To the mothers and wives of Kitchener's new Army the nation owes a great tribute of gratitude. No record of the fine achievements which our young men accomplished would be complete un- less reference were made to the magnificent spirit of the women of rJritain, who sent their men to war without flinching. It was A SQUAD OF "a" COMPANY, 8tH BATTALION LEICESTERSHIRE REGIMENT, "AT THE SLOi'E, AT WOKINGHAM. KifcJicucrs Army RECRUITS BUILD THEIR OWN IILIS- P]iolo. 6poit and OcnciuL -CAMIUUDGE 'university MEN BUSY WITH THE SAW. brought about also by the sacrifice of our titled families and of landed proprietors, who not only gave their sons, their money, and themselves to the cause, but placed at the disposal of the military their lands. All over England, in every private park, on every common, on every recognised camping-ground, were to be seen, in the late summer and the earlv autumn, the white tents of this new force, and the men themselves, split into squads and companies, were learning the rudiments of their craft near by. "The Levelling-up " Process. Our recruit, with his strange, new friends, who have come so suddenly into his life, but whose faces he will see for manv a long day, not only in barrack and camp, but on the field and in the firing trenches before the enemy, marches through this new- London, blazing crimson and blue with recruiting posters and cheery appeals to the laggard, to a railway station where hundreds of other small parties are filling the platforms and waiting their turn to shake the dust of London from their feet and begin the serious business of soldiering. Waterloo Station in those days was a re- markable sight. From Waterloo, Alder- shot was fed; so, too, was Borden Camp, im Salisbury Plain; so, also, w a s- W i n c h e s- ter, the great rifle depots and the head- quarters of the Hampshire Regiment; Southamp- ton, where a camp had been estab- lished ; De- vizes, the headquar- ters of the Wiltshire Regiment, and the great artillery camps at Oke- h a m p t o n might only be reached from this station. Waterloo was, indeed, the military station for all arms, and every train that drew out, whether on its way to Exeter, where the gallant Devons were mobilising, or towards Aldershot, that remarkable soldiers' town, was packed full of light-hearted but determined men, who had already settled down, and had taken to themselves the happy and buoyant spirit of their new profession. Let us picture the position of the new- recruit, who has come from a comfortable home, and has had a good education. He is now^ meeting for the first time, not the soldier confident, alert, and with that inde- finable quality which ever)' I3rilish soldier possesses of genial tolerance, but new, strange, raw elements, which, perhaps, more than an\- other, would, in ordinary times, jar on his ner\cs. He who has come from a house in which his every need has been anticipated, either by a doting parent or by trained servants, finds himself on equal terms with the son of the charwoman, whose existence he had hardly noticed. The son of the charwoman recognises his new comrade, and is the more embarrassed of the two. What is the logical developm.ent of this new mingling- of elements? The Army- experience teaches us that men in the Army level up, as men in all noble professions must do. Groups having a noble object, or an elevating object, or an object calling Kitchciwr s .7 ]-]U\ MEN OF C COMPANY, 4TII BATT. ROYAL FUSILIERS, into play all the finest qualities of the race, must, in course of time, reach an average level, a little lower, perhaps, than the highest, but certainly much higher than tlic lowest, intelligence in that group. This evolution goes on where groups of men are banded for unworthy purposes, but it works exactly the other way about. It would be absurd to say that instantly, by the mere taking of an oath, these two incompatibles are going to be brouglit down to a common denom- inator, if the jum- ble of terms be allowed. They will each eOge towards one another from the very first. The better-class man will unbend and unstiffen and get down as far as he can ; the other, the more humble, will reach up to the best of his ability. Some day, after hardships mu- tually endured, after pri\-ations commonly shared. D these two will' meet together on a common, ground, man 10 man, and find some- thing very a d m i r - able in one' another, and learn to re- spect each other's-^ "best." The Recruit in Barrack and Camp. Let us fol- low the for- tune of the recruit when he has taken the oath of allegiance,, and when in company with perhaps fifty or sixty other men, he is marched through the streets of the town to the railway station which' is to carry him to his depot. He has. probably applied for a certain regiment, or, if he has not done so, perhaps a batch of soldiers are required for some particular' corps. Since they have no particular wishes in the matter, they are earmarked for the regiment requiring recruits, and in batches Piwto. sport and General. \VORKING ON A ROOF. Phntn. Dally Mlrrnr TIIF, FINISHED HCT, THE TEMPORARY HOME OF THE RECRUIT. :6 Kitchener s A nny of 1.::. an J sixtv are marched off to join their unit. F o r t u n a t el y, when the great rush was on the weather was warm — was, indeed, very hot, and the immediate incon- ALDEKhllOT. veniences which the recruit was called upon to face were not of such a character as to un- duly distress him. He arrived at his depot in some quiet little country town to discover the barracks crowded out, every available NO. 13 PLATOON, "d" COMPANY, 5TH CAMERON HIGHLANDERS. Photo. Gale and Poldc Kitcheners Army 27 INNS OF COURT O.T.C. INFANTRY BF.ING INSTKUCTED IN SLOW MARCHING IN LINCOIn'S INN FIELDS. tent tilled, the recreation rooms, libraries, and gymnasiums crowded with men ; and he learned with disma\' that there was no place for him to lay his head. A somewhat discouraging- experience for the young patriot, fired with a desire to serve his coun- try, but one which was borne with infinite good humour. A couple of blankets were handed to him, and he was told to sleep where he could. The weather, as I sav, was of such a character that al fresco "lodgings" entailed no great hardship; and under the old trees of the barrack scjuare, or on the sloping meadows behind the barracks, the new-comer laid himself down and made himself as comfortable as he could, enjoy- ing, perhaps for the first time in his life, a night under the stars. But all the time the authorities were work- ing at top speed to relieve the congestion. The depot, crowded as it was, did not hold the newcomer for very long. The skeleton of the new battalion appeared upon some far-away down ; a dozen great army trans- ports dumped their canvas bags, their sacks of tent-poles and their floor-boards, and left them in charge of an Army Service Corps officer. Presentlv a|Dpeared an advance party of old soldiers, generallv drawn, as far as was possible, from the regular regi- ments, and, failing those, from the Special Reserves which had had experience of '8 Kitchener s A nny PhctO. RtcOTd I'r, THE NEW ARMY IN THE MAKING AT ALDERSHOT. camping out; and two long lines of white tents appeared, a great marquee for officers' mess, other marquees for stores. A quarter- master arrived on the spot, a small group of officers who surveyed the empty tents a little gloomily, a handful of non-commissioned officers, who drew from the big marquee store — now becoming rapidly furnished with the stationery which is indispensable to army organisation — their various "rec|uisitions" and "returns," their books and their camp equipment. New lorries appeared, long trains of Army Service Corps wagons, filled with blankets, waterproof sheets, arms and ammunition ; and then on top of these a few men, obviously old soldiers, chosen for the work, who were quickly promoted to the rank of Lance-Corporal or Corporal, and whose duty it was to find the first guard for the new camp. And then the men began straggling in. They came in little parties of fifty and a hundred from the depot, which had fitted them with khaki, carrying their white canvas kit-bags containing spare uniform, boots, shirts, and such knick-knacks and extras as wisdom dictated. Some of them could cook ; these were requisitioned at once by the Sergeant master-cook, on the look-out for likely regimental chefs. A great many, perhaps, in the early days could keep accounts; the quartermaster required some of these, the Commanding Officer others. The sprinkling of officers, keeping a sharp look-oiit for men of intelligence were not slow to distribute chevrons of promotion as the days went by. To the keen man in Kitchener's .Army promotion came quickly. Kitchener s A iiii v 29 The Steady Flow of Recruits. Steadily men were coming in ; every evening broiiglit a fresli party, every morning found another line of tents extend- ing farther back from the original line; and every day the gathering of troops upon the adjacent improvised parade- ground grew larger, until upon one fine morning four strong double companies stood to attention, and it was whispered abroad that the battalion was "full." All this time new oflicers had been arriving. In some cases they had travelled thousands of miles in order to lend a hand in constructing the Kitchener corps. In one case an officer travelled day and night for 4,500 miles, leaving his ranch — he was farming at the foot of the Rocky Mountains — in order to offer himself as a subaltern. He had been an officer and had retired, and now, at the first call of duty, he had returned, as thousands of others had returned, to the colours. The battalion was indeed full, and had been full long before the men of that battalion had suspected it. For in another part of the country, and upon yet another open plain, the same process of building had been going on, with the help of men drawn in some cases from the first new battalion. New stores iiad been erected, new tent lines laid down, and new stragglers had appeared, and by the time the ist Service Battalion had reached its full complement of men the second was half filled. So this process went on. One battalion followed hard upon the heels of the other. On different ground, under different conditions, but bound together by the regimental badge they so proudly wore, the voung battalion were getting fit. It will be as well to describe something of the machinery for receiving and distributing the supply of recruits which comes in ordinarv times, and which was utilised to such excellent MAIESTY THR KING. ACCO.MrAMKn CV LOR[) KITtllENRR, KKWKUINO KECKLn> AT AT DFRSHOT. 30 Kitcheners A rniy THE START OF LORD KITCHENER'S ARMY. THB FIRST ADVF.RTISEMESr ISSUED BY THE WAR OFFICE, AUCtST StH, 1914. Your King and Country Need You. A CALL TO ARMS. An addition of 100.000 men to his Majesty s Regular Army is immediately necessary in the present grave National Emergency, Lord Kitchener is confident that this appeal will be at once responded to by all those who have the safety of our Empire at heart. TERMS OF SERVICE. General Service for a period of 3 years or until the war is concluded. Age oi Enlistment between 1 9 and 30. HOW TO JOIN. Full Information can be obtained at any Post Office in the Kingdorn or at any .Military depot. GOD SAVE THE KING! purpose to dispose of the great rush of new soldiers after the outbreak of war and the issue of Lord Kitchener's call. The United Kingdom and Ireland are divided into a number of "commands." Taking them alphabetically, we come first to the Alder- shot command, which in- cludes a part of Hampshire and that portion of Surrey in which the Royal Flying Corps are stationed, at L>rooklands. The Eastern command comprises \orth- amptonshire, Cambridge- shire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Lssex, Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Middlesex, Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and Woolwich. The Irish command takes in the whole of the troops in Ire- land; the London (district) command includes the county of London and \\'indsor; the Northern command takes in North- imiberland, Durham, York- shire, Lincolnshire, Not- tinghamshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Leicestershire, and Rutland. Then there is the Scottish command. Warwickshire, Worcester- shire, Gloucestershire, Ox- fordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Cornwall, Devon- shire, Somersetshire, Dorset- shire, Wiltshire, and Hamp- shire are in the Southern command. The ^^Vste^n command takes in Wales rmd the counties of Cheshire, Shropshire, Herefordshire, Monmouthshire, Lancashire, Cumberland, Westmorland, and the Isle of Man. In these commands the organisation was completed for the creation of three new armies, a number afterwards increased to six, and even then adaptable to increase. These were the armies to be fed through the gaping doors of the various recruit- ing centres, and it was left to the depots to make the first Kitchener s A riiiy I rough organisation of the fresh armies and to act as sorting boxes into which the new men were grouped. In Great Britain and Ireland tliere are sixty-eight infantry depots, each designated with a number and generally referred to as the centre of a regimental district. These regimental districts take their numbers from a regiment which has its headquarters at the particular depot. Thus, the ist Royal Scots (ist Regiment of Foot) is in Regimental District No. i ; the Queen's 2nd Royal West Surrey Regiment is will more easily understand how Kitchener's Army came into the forces. We will take the 50th Regiment, the Royal West Kents, with its headquarters and regimental depot at Maidstone. The ist and the 2nd Bat- talions being regulars, the one with the Expeditionary Force and the other in India, we need not trouble about them. The 3rd Battalion was the Reserve battalion. That is to say, it was made up of militia, and, though primarily designed for home de- fence, could serve in case of emergency as the feeder to the Battalion at the THE lOKlUNE OF WAR.- -THE LONDON OFFICES OF THE UAMllCRG-AMEKIKA BRITISH RECRUITING OFFICE. G. P. ( LINE TRANSFORMED INTO A in Regimental District No 2 ; and so on. In addition to these sixty-eight regimental depots, which are the homes of the corps, and in wliich most of the records are kept, there is a Guards' depot at Caterham, and a rifle depot at \\'inchester — tlie Rifle Brigade being the one regiment in the British Armv whicii does not boast of a number. It was on tnis foundation that the new army began to build. If we take as an example one particular regiment, the reader Front, or, if necessary, could be employed en bloc in the field. The 4tii Battalion you will find in the Army list marked with a small circle and a St. Andrew's cross. This is an indication that this battalion, which is Territorial, has volun- teered and lias been accepted for foreign service. The same mark is found against the 5th Battalion, and, as a matter of fact, both 4th and 5th are employed, and have been sent abroad in order to relieve first line troops which were sent from this country. 3- Kitcliener s Ai^my After llie 51I1. in nfirmal limes, we misjht find a recnrd of a Cadets Battalion, but in time of war the Cadet units are dismissed in tliree siu)rt lines. Followinsj the 3th we reach the (>th liattalion, and now we have come to the first of the new "Kitchener" battalions which have enlisted since the war. .After tiiis follow the 7lh Service Bat- talion, and then the 8th and the 9th. This regiment may be taken as a micro- cosm of ilie whole army. We have the two rcijular battalions, one of which is servinsj in India and one at the Front; we have the Special Reserve, which is probablv in Fnejland and is being- utilised either for home defence or to feed the ist Battalion; we have tiie two Territfirial battalions, that is to say, the volunteer corps, which have been mobilised and sent abroad in order to relieve first line troops: and we ha\e four brand new reijular battalions of tiiat regi- ment, formed from the men who had taken their place in the queues at the recruiting- offices to form part of the new and splendid force which had come for\\ard at the nation's call. Not all the regular infantry regiments, stationed abroad returned, though in the- majority of cases they were brought back to the field. But it is safe to say, so far as. Kitchener's Army was concerned, that the- first results of recruiting meant that, where one man stood in the field at the beginning- of the war, he was reinforced by four others before the war had progressed very far. How did the recruits to Kitchener's .Armv "shape"? In what manner did' the recruit come to his own, and, from being a raw and awkward civilian, slow to move and slower to obey, develop into the smart, alert soldier? The story of his initial hardships and difficulties, of his extra- ordinary development, of the tragic comedy of his blunders, and of the gradual trans- formation which came to him, which de- veloped him from an irresponsible civilian' into a disciplined soldier of the King, wiI3 be told in the next chapter. KITCENEK'S ARMY H... H.„ NOT,„N-G TO COMPLMN' AHOUT ,N THE MATTER OF R^TIOVs'^'x^l"'"' """ ■' A TVI'ICALLV HArrV GROIP AT n,vv.._...,' °'^ NATIONS; THE ABOVE '•■■v^i^i 111 i HE. 1\I.\[ It. IS A TVI'ICALLV HArPV GROCP AT DINNER-TIME. Kitchener s Army 33 ■fe-A--- -^-^ ^ 1 Br^^ ^« -, ■ . J ^uLj*' jyk ^^*c!- V. li^^^^^^^^l ■^ jfc''v'r^\J ik^^fl^iuU^^^ f^^h 1 M^^ - ^J^^fluPal' ^|k^| < 3^^ M 1 ^^^1 ^ - -^ ^ m MEN OF THE SOUTH MIDLAND BRIGADE TAKING A WELCOME REST ON A MARCH. CHAPTER II. THE RECRUIT'S FIRST DAYS IN THE NEW ARMY. The recruit passed from the depot in a very short space of time, to the battaHon to which he was to be attached for the re- mainder of his service. As a rule three days sufficed to fit him with his suit of blue serge, to be replaced later by khaki, his boots, underwear, and overcoat. Barrack accommodation was quite inade- quate to dispose of the new battalions — the more so since most of the permanent build- ings, barrack rooms, &c., were requisitioned by the quartermaster for the safe storing of clothing and equipment. The buildings, therefore, were replaced by tent lines, and where these were insufficient, the remainder of the troops were billeted. In other words, the householders in a town or village were asked to provide sleeping accommodation for the men of Kitchener's Army, and were rewarded at the rate of ninepence per man per diem. For this they were asked to do no more than give him a place to sleep in, and allow him the use of their fire for cook- ing purposes. Our recruit might, and often did, find himself fallen upon pleasant places. There were pleasant stories of billeting land- lords and landladies who provided Private Brown with his cup of tea in bed, and gave this lucky soldier the liberty of a warm bathroom at all hours of the day and night. The legends which surrounded the billets are numerous. There is the case of a for- tunate soldier who journeyed to parade every morning in a most expensive motor-car, and was whirled home, when the parades were finished at night, in the same lordly con- veyance — provided by his host. The average recruit was not so favoured, and upon his arrival with his new battalion, had to be content with tent accommodation. The method of "telling off " was simplicity itself. Upon arrival he and his fellows were formed up for inspection by the adjutant, and so many of the new men were allocated to one company and so many to another. It was then left to the company sergeant- majors to dispose of the newcomers accord- ing to the accommodation available. A great number of huts had to be hur- riedly erected to accommodate the troops, more especially after the advent of almost the wettest winter on record. The canvas tent in many places had to be aban- doned in favour of the wooden hut. Soon Kitcheners Army KIT INSPECTION OF A KITCHENER'S ARMY UNIT AT CAMBRIDGE. we had " Hut Towns " dotting the landscape all over the country. As an instance of how the welfare of the men was looked after the following story of Lord Kitchener is told. There had been complaints of faulty huts which had been too hurriedly built. He made a sur- prise visit to a certain camp, examined every completed hut; there were roofs which were not watertight, floors which were imperfect, and so on. Kitchener acted with characteristic promptitude, he would brook no im- perilling of the health of the men. He instructed the commanding officer to find billets for the whole of the men at once, and they were not allowed to spend another night in the huts. Under the guidance of a corporal the new recruit was introduced to his future comrades. The round bell tents, with their curtains rolled up to allow free ventila- tion, with their blankets neatly strapped at frequent intervals in the circle, were inviting enough, though the recruit could tell that he would find the boards \vhich formed the floor of the tent rather a poor substitute for the mattress he had known in his civilian days. The First Night Under Canvas It was a restless night for the recruit, this first night under canvas in such strange conditions; a night, more- over, in which he realised the limitations of the human frame as he endured the discomforts of sleeping on a wooden floor; in fitful fluttering dozes the night passed. It was almost a relief when the long, trembling call of the 1ST BATTALION OF CITY OF LONDON Kitche7iers A nny 35 reveille blared through the tent lines, proclaiming the beginning of his day. He went out into the raw morning air, and was astonished to find, even in the late summer, a white frost on the ground, and to discover also that the water which was brought to the camp by iron pipes from the nearest supply was very cold. A quick wash and brisk rubbing with his hard towel, and life took on a new and cheerful interest. Me was consumed with curiosity as to what the coming day would hold. He remarked with awe and admiration the facility and ease with which the men of the regiment — many of them only his seniors by a few days — fell into the somewhat complicated routine of military service. Comforted by a cup of coffee, which he ladled from the steaming dixies which the cook had prepared, he fell in to his first parade. By companies the regiment swung through the country lanes at a brisk march, varied now and again by a "double" (that is to say, a jog trot), and after this exhilarating little walk, lasting no more than half an hour, the companies came back to camp to eat a hurried breakfast, and to prepare for the more important work of the day. As yet he was very ignorant as to rank, and very dubious as to whether the youthful officer who came round in the morning to see that the tent flies were rolled up and that the blankets were neatly folded in tidy heaps was a colonel or a sergeant- major. His stay in the depot had been a very brief one, a very crowded and somewhat chaotic experience, in the course of which he had neither the time nor the opportimity to acquire even a rudimentary military knowledge. But it was never long before the inquiring recruit found a guide, philosopher and TERRITORIALS AT SWEDISH DRILL ON TATTENHAM CORNER PLATFORM. ;6 Kitch ciicr s A vmy friend. Seardiini; htlpltssly round, and most anxious in his siranj:;e posi- tion to find some new acquaintance, he would come upon the inevitable old soldier who, from the height of se\en years' service, would look down with a forbearintj eye upon the struggling ig- noramus, and, when- ever possible, would lend a helping hand. One day 1 heard ing. MEN OF THE 17TH WELSH BATTALION — OTHERWISE KNOWN AS "THE RHONDDA BANTAMS " OR THI lim paiienily explain- "That man there with one star on his cuff is a second lieutenant. lie's as raw to WHEN LORD KITCHBNER INSPECTED MANY THOUSAND TERRITORIALS ON EPSOM DJWNS THE WEATHFR WAS WINTRY IN ' ^ Kitc/iciicr s Arniv Z7 WELSH GURKHAS " — WITH THE ARMY BOOTS WHICH HAVE JUST BEEN SERVED OUT TO THEM. the game as you are, but he's learning. Don't take much notice of what he tells you, because he doesn't know any- thing. If you w-ant any advice come to me." An astounding and arrogant claim, but perfectly justi- fied, as the recruit was to discover. "The other chap over there with one stripe on his arm — we call it a ' dog's leg ' because of its shape — is a lance- corporal. The man with two stripes is a corporal ; with three stripes, a sergeant. The man with tin- EXTREME, BUT NEVERTHELESS THE MEN LOOKED VERY CHEERY AND FIT AS THEY MARCHED TO THE PARADE GROUND. ;8 KitcJieners Army CAMBRIDGE HAS BEEN "OCCUPIED" BY KITCHENER'S ARMY, AND SEVERAL OF H FULL OF SOLDIERS. THE PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS TRINITY COLLEGE IN THE crown above his three stripes is the old colour-serjeant. We call him company sergeant-major now, but he's just about the same as ever." This the recruit learnt at breakfast-time; a breakfast which was surprisingly luxuri- ous, consisting of tea, bread and butter, eggs, and just enough bacon to give flavour. This breakfast had come mysteriously from nowhere. Later he was to discover that at the far end of the camp things had been moving since before reveille, and whilst the battalion had been doing its little constitu- tional, there had been great breakings of eggs and splutterings of frying bacon, whilst steaming kettles had been bubbling over their wood fires, and the restless cooks had been working at top speed to provide a thousand hungry men with their break- fast. Breakfast had hardly finished when the warning bugle sounded, and the tent orderly — he wfiose duty it was to draw rations and to clean up the tents — had only begun his « Ji Kitchener s A rmy 39 COLLEGES HAVE BEEN )S OF THE MILITARY. work when the blue-coated figures fell in again in four long lines to answer their names and to undergo the trial of an inspection. Our new recruit at first was painfully conscious of his awkwardness ; how awk- ward he was he did not realise until he found himself in the unenviable position of right hand man of the awkward squad. It was not called the "awkward squad"; it bore the more euphonious title of the "recruits' first squad"; it included a surprising number of men who, unlike himself, perhaps, were not quite clear that their "rights" differed materially from their "lefts," but who, like himself, were anxious to be initiated into the mys- teries, even if they did confuse their right foot with their left at times. Beginning to Learn Let us start at the beginning of the training. It was a business full of startling discoveries for the new Kitchener men. The recruit was taught the first posi- tion of a soldier, which, so far from being a matter of simple understanding, required very serious effort "Body erect, head up, feet turned out at an angle of forty-five degrees, chest out, shoulders back, arms hang- ing loosely to the sides with the hands lightly clenched a little behind the seam of the trousers." No, it was not simple. When he was asked to extend his chest, he protruded too much of that part of his anatomy which lies due south of the chest. In other words, he had a disposition to force into pro- minence that portion of his body upon which, according to Napo- leon, the Army marches, but which in prac- tice affords the greatest trouble, not to the com- missariat d e part- men t of the Army, but to the drill i n- structor. It was a strained and awkward position i n which he found him- self. He had been accus- tom ed to allow his shoulders to slack forward, had developed his back A RECRUIT BEING TAUGHT THE REGULATION SALUTE. +0 suspicion of a hump, which in the Army is called "the boy." This phrase was a perplexing mystery to the recruit, and when he was placidly requested by the exasper- ated sergeant to "take the boy off his bark," he looked round puzzled and bewildered. When the nature of the request had begun dimly to sink into his mind, when he came to realise that standing erect in the first position of a soldier was some- thing of an achievement, the sergeant proceeded to explain other mys- teries For instance, when a soldier turns with his whole body, he does so upon scientific principles. The recruit, wlio had managed for many years to turn to the right or to the left regardless of any scientific rules on the subject, showed a not unnatural desire to dispense with the in- struct ions im- parted to him in making this movement. He Kitchener s A rmy BODY BENT SIDEWAYS AND LEG RAISED ONE OF TliE EXERCISES OUR RECRUITS HAVE TO PERFORM. was considerably surprised to discover how awk- ward he looked and felt when he shuffled to his appointed place, generally a few seconds after the remainder of the squad, who had already mastered the intricacies of the movement. He learned that, to turn right about, both knees had to be kept straight and the body erect while he swung round on the right heel and left toe, the left heel and right toe being raised. Then when the right foot was flat on the ground, the left heel had to be brought smartly up to the right, and brought into proper position without being stamped on the ground. All this A STROSG DORSAL EXERCISE— FORWARD LYING, TRUNK BENT FORWARD, ARMS STREfCHEU UPWARDS. was very interesting to me as I looked on ; it v\as equally interesting to watch the sergeant or corporal in charge Kitch encr s A rmy of the squad showing the "young ideas" how they were expected to show respect ant' deference to superiors in a per- fectly mechanical yet picturesque style — in other words, how to salute. Pos- sibly the instructor did not trouble to explain that when SWEDISH EXERCISES. AT THE WALL-BARS — LEG RAISING. the raises hand salute merely carrying out the practice of the knights of old, who, as they rode in the lists past the enthroned queen of beauty, raised their hand politely, that their eyes might not be dazzled with her splendour. That, at any rate, was the beginning of the military salute, whether the sergeant explained it or whether he did not. "Saluting isn't as easy as it looks," remarked the man who knew. "You must swing your arm up stiffly in a line with vour body, your elbows on a level with vour shoulder; then you must smartlv bend the arm and bring your palm to the head, so that the fingers of your hand rest an inch above your right evebrow. Many recruits tried other ways of salut- ing, I noticed. One would bring his hand forward so that his 2ND LIEUTENANT CYRIL ASQUITH, A SON OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DRILUNG WITH THE queen's WEST- MINSTERS ON HAMPSTEAD HEATH. CLIMBING THE IN- CLINED ROPE — A DIFFICULT EXER- CISE. Kitchener s Army "HANDS UP I "—BUT NEVER TO THE GERMANS I RECRUITS A SITTING ON NOTHING IS NOT SO EASY AS IT MAY APPEAR. Kitcheners Army 43 fSICAL DRILL WHICH WILL BRING THEM TO FIGHTING FITNESS. THE GYMNASTIC FEAT OF "DOWNWARD CIRCLING" IS ONE THAT OUR SOLDIERS HAVE TO LEARN. Kifcheners A rmy IIIE LlCllTEK SIDE OF SOLDIEMNG. THE CITV OF LOMION IIMLIKKS ASSIST A LOMI^AIU-; lO TAKE A BAIH. palm blotted out his nose. Invited to try ten minutes, the recruit was at last saluting^ apain, he would touch his hat like an ostler. mythical officers with great gravity and There was only one proper way, however, earnestness. He had at last come to the and he was hectored into it ; after a painful conclusion that he would receive no en- AFTER THE DOCTOR'S VISIT— WELSH SOLDIERS WHO HA\ E BEEN INOCULATED AGAINST TYPHOID. Kitche7icrs Army 45 couragement from the instructor in any attempt to introduce into the British Army a novel way of salutins;'. Brief as the time had been at the recruit's disposal since he rose that morning, he had been expected to do something which he hadn't done. This he discovered on the after-breakfast parade. "Take that man's name. Sergeant," said the officer commanding the company; and the recruit indicated learnt that he was delin- quent in some respect. Soon, to his shame, he was to learn wherein he had failed. A better-informed comrade on his right sup- plied him with the information. the ranks, confessing your shame to the world, readjust the deficiency, and step for- ward again into the level ranks which olTers a comtoriing haven to you once more. Nevertheless, the recruit in his despera- tion must make further inquiries. "What will happen to me?" he asked in a whisper. The old comrade, staring blankly to the front, and speaking without moving his lips, supplied the information. "You'll have to parade at reveille to- morrow morning fully shaved, which means you'll have to get up half-an-hour before anybody else, my lad. And you have to RECRUITS HAVE THEIR FEET INSPECTED AFTER A ROUTE MARCH. "Not shaved," he muttered under his breath. "But I only shave every other day," pro- tested the recruit. A sharp voice silenced him. "Stop talking in the ranks ! " Apparently you must do nothing in the ranks but stand in the first position of a soldier. You must neither talk nor turn your head, nor shuffle your feet until the order to "stand easv " allows you to do so. If vou find that a loose button or an un- hooked collar necessitates the movement of your hands, you must step two paces from shave everv dav whether you like it or not." The inspection being over, the recruits were sorted into various squads. To the lowest of all, the recruits' squad, the new man had to make his way. Others farther ad- vanced, and the envy of the battalion, were those already engaged in the noble exercise of bayonet drill ; but for the young recruit neither rifle nor bayonet was yet available. His work consisted of a continuous succes- sion of drills which had for their object the strengthening of his frame and the develop- ment of his physique. Kitcheners Army CAMP BUTCHERS WITH THE SPORTSMAN'S BATTALION (rOYAL FUSILIERS) CUT UP THE MEAT FOR DINNER. The recruit was not handed his rifle forth- with. Even if that were desirable, rifles were as yet too scarce to go round. It is true that toward the end of his awkward squad stage, one rifle, jealously and grudgingly loaned, was placed on a tripod before the squad, an object of veneration, and that one by one the men of the squad were allowed to take "sights" with it, but no more. So his time passed in a day made up of " heels raised . . . head bent . . . right bend . . . left bend . . . neck stretch. . . . What the deuce do you think you are doing. Private Clark, imitating Mr. Blooming Tree as Falstaff ? Stick your chest out . . . ihaVs not your chest ! . . . Now we will try it again for the benefit of Private Clark . . . heels raised . . . head bent. . . ." Amusing for the squad, but a little trying for Private Clark, who went to bed that night and groaned as he turned his aching form on the unyielding boards. In three days he would be as much an expert as the best of the squad. Upon the regimental sergeant-major and the N.C.O.'s fell the principal burden of instruction. "Sergeant What's-his-name" MAKING HIMSELF AT HOME IN A BILLET. h^d somc bcttcr material than the "mud," A RECRUIT COOKING HIS DINNER. which Kipling siugs of, to work upon, but Kiicheners Army 47 MEN OF THE LONDON SCOTTISH AT KINGSBURY RECEIVING RATIONS FROM THE SERGEANTS. the recruit in his "grub" stage — before he became even a chrysalis — was something of a trial, only to be borne patiently, be- cause of his enthusiasm. "Your right side. Private Smith, is the side you shake hands with," said a long-suffering sergeant to a more than usually obtuse private. "What side do you shake hands with ? " "I never shake hands, Sergeant," said the cheerful recruit. " I always say, ' What ho ! ' " Physical Training Time passes quickly when one is engaged in congenial occupation. Doubtless with his mind fully occupied with the new know- ledge he is acquiring, a young soldier finds on the first morning of his training that the order to "stand easy" arrived much sooner than he expected. That he should not feel the effect of standing still for too long a period — one of the greatest trials, I think, that a recruit endures — the move- ments were varied by what might appear to the onlooker needless marches up and down the parade ground, in the course of which he learnt how to turn or wheel about whilst on the move. This latter process required less scientific effort, it being merely neces- sary that he should emphasise the change CARRYING THE RATIONS FOR DISTRIBUTION. 48 Kitcheners Army A CAMP KITCHEN AT ALDERSHOT. of his direction by a smart stamp of the foot. All this was quite simple compared with the drill which followed later in the day. In ordinary times the youngs recruit goes through a course of physical training at the depot or regimental gymnasium. The minds which improvised the great A MODEL COOKHOUSE ON THE BELTON PARK ESTATE, GRANTHAM. THE KITCHENS ARE SCRUPULOUSLY CLEAN AND WONDERFULLY EQUIPPED. Kitchener s Army 49 Kitchener army did not hesitate at impro- vising gymnasia. Tlie course of physical drill was consider- ably changed, and only at Aldershot, where the large gymnasium offered facilities not so much for the recruit as for future in- structors of gymnasia, was the old Army course maintained. The work or drill de- signed to improve the physique of the soldier was carried out in the open air. The gymnasium work of a regiment is largely in the hands of the gymnasium sergeant (crossed swords over his three stripes indicates his calling). There were ing public. Here were admirable ready- made substitutes for the usual parallel bars ! Here Kitchener's men became gymna.sts, here they discovered what muscular development entailed. A man with suffi- cient courage to walk up to the mouth of a cannon would retire balifled and discouraged by reason of flabby muscles and stiff joints because of inability to perform balancing feats on a bar. He would flounder igno- miniously on mother earth like an over- turned fowl on the roadway ; he would pick himself up, try again, and probably land on the crown of his head, to the delight RECRUnS AT lllEIK EARLY MORNING TOILET. hardly enough of these N.C.O.'s to go round the 390 odd new battalions which came into existence in the first months of the war. Something less grand, therefore, than the palatial gymnasium at ■'\ldershot had to serve, and something more ready-made than the expensive apparatus and contrivances with which that and other institutions are furnished had to be found. And it was quickly done. A visitor to Blackheath, drawing near to Greenwich Park in those days, would witness a startling and entertaining spectacle. A new use had been found for the bars which, in peaceful times, protect the lawns from the encroach- G of the interested spectators. When he had had as much as the instructor felt was good for him for the time being, he would be moved along elsewhere to undergo more gruelling. No apparatus this time; he was now- to practise bodily contortions. He was in- vited to bend forward and outwards so that his hands could touch his toesor the ground. He had to follow the ni' vements of his in- structor in bending the trunk and neck backwards and forwards and sideways, this way, that way, and the next way, with end- less variations and combinations of such- like exercises. Look at the illustrations of these exercises in this work, you men of so /\ iTCiieiier s ^ rw 1' M^V ■ !r^' .■ f~^^^^S?^K^ 9 ^^15 'W 'li. '^^^H ^1 & 1 7 r ,MB^ ^^^^w ""^^V^^^^l jj^^IPP^:^^ k ■ JiPfr— ' 4il-^U H t "iw ^1'^ '''■^ ""inl ^2 iu & . "■^^^^ ^^1 ^^^^^U- H iMn^ll ....fiii THE INTERIOR OK THE SERGEANTS MESS AT GREV TOWERS, HORNXHURCH. civilian habits who have not joined Kit- chener's army, and try what you can do. And this was only a small part in the training to develop the men's physique. The Army instructors mostly aimed at physical drill which could be carried out without any apparatus whatever. There was running drill, there was the marching, there was (later) bayonet exercise (a fine muscle- developer), trench digging, and so on. In these early days the men who simply could not master the rudiments of their work from sheer weak- ness were treated with the greatest of lenience. One day the instructor noticed that a man lying at the far end of the line did net raise his legs as the rest of the squad were doing, and, thinking the man was exhausted, he did not admonish him. After ten minutes passed and the man was still ying on his back, the in- structor walked to where the man lay — he was fast asleep. " Where the dickens do you think you are?" asked the wrathful N.C.O. "Staving a PRIVATE C. ARMSTRONG, CAMBRIDGE BLUE, CARRYING USEFVL LOG FOR THE FIRE. week-end Ritz ? " " I was Sergeant," apologetic at the dreaming, replied the recruit. ' Do you think you'll beat the Germans bv AWAITING THE WORI Kitchener s A rniy 5' kitchener's men at aldershot at leap-frog, an exercise which forms a part of their physical drill. dreaming?" demanded the exasperated officer. "That's just what I was dreaming!" replied the recruit triumphantly. "If you hadn't woke me up, the blooming war would have been over ! " It was just about this time, when these methods of developing his bodily fitness became part of his daily life, that the new recruit began to commune with himself on the subject of the exactions the military life made on his physical endurance. Every new experience widens a man's outlook. He began to understand that the erect car- riage, the steady step, the perfect balance and bearing of the men of a crack corps, is the outcome of much labour and training. The very man who, in his civilian days, had taken pride in his supposed strength, and gloried in his elegant physique, was now confronted with humiliating experi- ences. Compared with the standards of en- durance he had now to face, he had to admit to himself that his physical fitness was not so much to boast of after all. Watching his instructor raising himself upon his hands or, stretched on his back, lifting his stiffened legs until his extended toes were pointing to the blue heavens above — and all without any perceptible effort, the learner groaned to ^ zjjjmt COMMAND. — MEN OF THE ROVAL FIELD ARTILLERY READY FOR A TRIAL OF STRENGTH. 52 Kitchener s A rmy • • • t • ^•^ «^t« *« IN THE footballers' BATTALION MANY OF THE FIRST-CLASS PLAYERS HAVE ENLISTED, OF WAR AS THEY WERE FOR THE FIELD OF PLAY think he would have to follow the lead of the instructor to the bitter end. For the amazing sergeant could go through all this a couple of dozen times. Not so the quaking recruit. After a second or third attempt his poor arms were aching, his legs groggy, and his nerves a bit wobbly. It was an embarrassing revelation to him ; he learned for the first time of the lazy muscles which had never been called into play, of idle do-nothings that all his life had evaded their responsi- bility. In other words, he realised he had muscles in his body which he had never dreamt of. The discovery at first troubled him, and then braced him to further effort, enjoyed w^ith growing relish. He quickly saw, too, what it was all leading up to^this physical drill, designed not merely to keep the men fit and well, but because it was necessary before a recruit could even begin to become an efficient soldier that his physique should be developed beyond the conditions in which the examining officer found it. It was all arranged to build up the physique necessary for the soldier life. The physical training aimed at the co-ordination of the body and the nervous system ; thus only can all-round fitness, muscular development, and stamina be acquired. Mothers and fathers of the voung recruits were soon to see for themselves what transforma- tions were effected in their sons bv this training by Swedish exercises in the open air, by the severe drilling, and by moral and physical discipline. The change was wonderful. A 'notable instance was provided by one regiment, every member of which, after a few weeks' training, had to be measured for a new uniform, having completely outgrown the old. What other Squads were doing: Whilst this physical drill was proceeding, a more advanced squad AND THEY ARE Kitchener s Army 53 KEEN ON GETTING FIT FOR THE FIELD was elsewhere learning the more interesting part of the soldier's work. The supply of rifles in the early days was quite insutlicienl to arm the enormous numbers of recruits which were coming in. Some battalions, more fortunate than others, had sufficient rifles, at any rate, for the older recruits. it was indeed a joyous day when the young soldier was regarded as sufficiently advanced in his profession to be entrusted with a rifle, and fell in upon parade to learn something of this strange instrument which was placed in his hands. He was asked the inevitable question : — "Why is the rifle placed in the hands of the soldier?" and, after a moment's thought, he answered, as inevitably : — "To protect my life." The gorgeous opportunity, seized by successive generations of drill instructors, was once again snapped up. "Your life," replied the instructor, with fine scorn, "who on earth bothers about your life? The rifle, my lad, is placed in your hands for the destruction of the King's enemies." And that was the first lesson the recruit was taught, a real lesson of war; the first hint he received of the grim task which was his. There was never a recruit yet who did not carry away from that first instructor's drill a new sense of his responsibility to the State. The rifle is a strange instrument to handle. There are certain rites and ceremonies associated with its possession and carriage which the recruit had to learn. When for the first time he heard the command "Stand at ease," and then "Stand easy," what was more natural than that he should assume the attitude which, with the pictures beloved of youth still in his mind, he had come to think was not only natural but a little heroic? A watchful sergeant was ready to scorn this attitude. It was one which you may easily visualise. THF. footballers' BATTALION TRAINING AT THE WHITE CITY, LONDON. 54 Kitcheners Army The recruit would be standing legs apart, hands one over the other resting on the muzzle of the rifle. Now there are man\ reasons why a soldier should be 'forbidden to stand in this picturesque position; and in this par- ticular case the reason was that, were the rifle by mis- adventure loaded, and, by a greater mischance, ex- ploded, the recruit's hands, no less than any other por- tion of his person which came in the way of the bullet, would be shattered. The second (to the ser- geant the important) reason is that the palm of the hand is inclined to per- spire, and perspiration, which may get into the muzzle of the rifle, works such havoc as to drive the armoury sergeant mad. Since the armoury ser- geant is responsible for all the arms of the battalion, his point of view is of more consequence really than the view of the medical officer, who might be called upon to patch up all that remained of the too ven- turesome recruit. .A.nd it is equally forbid- den to carry any weight — a bundle or the like — over the shoulder by means of the rifle. For the soldier's salvation, and in the in- terests of his country, it is necessary that his rifle should at all times shoot straight; any strain upon the barrel of a rifle, even though to the outward eye it should show no sign of bending, is calculated to throw out all the carefully adjusted sights. "There's another thing you've got to learn," I heard the old comrade explaining to the recruits when the parade had been dis- missed; "and that is, you must never fix your bayonet in a barrack-room or in a tent, and you must never point your rifle at anybody under any circumstances." "Why not, if it isn't loaded?" suggested the recruit. "Unloaded rifles are always loaded," was the cryptic reply, "and it's a court-martial crime to do any of the things I tell you about. For instance, it is a court-martial THE PIONEER BATTALION OF KITCHENER'S ARMY (8tH BATTALION OXFORDSHIRE crime to whistle the Dead March in your tent." Death is held in peculiar sanctity in the Army. If the sentry "turns out the guard to all armed parties and to members of the Royal Family " (as his orders run), no less does he turn out the guard, which will stand presenting arms, to the meanest pauper funeral which passes his post. Such was the elementary work of the recruit in the first days of his training. Very soon he was continually being initiated into new mysteries, and within a very short time after the first response to Lord Kit- chener's call to arms, the countryside was alive with whole armies of soldiers in the making. Parliament had sanctioned an increase of the regular army by two millions. In November it was announced that the figure i Kitchener s Army 55 D BUCKS LIGHT INFANTRY) TRENCH-DIGGING ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF OXFORD of a million had already been reached, and that recruits were coming in at the rate of 30,000 a week. And so it went on. More and more thickly the countryside became populated with men in khaki. The spectacle of regiments drilling on every suitable training ground, of battalions route marching through town and village, of tents and huts springing up on every side was a glad guarantee of big things to come. The barrack square was no longer the old time barrack square. It was new ground Kitchener's men improvised for themselves. In field or meadow, on the moors, at the seaside, where the fine firm sands made ex- cellent drill ground— it was there the great work proceeded without ceasing, but with well-ordered and purposeful method. When work had to be carried on indoors, theatres, skating rinks, cinema halls, winter gar- dens, and any other avail- aljle building was comman- deered for military pur- poses; they all echoed to the tramp of these eager feet. It was on a country rtKid where, at a little bridge, which carried the tramping men over a river running at full flood, that I heard the old comrade explaining to a recruit who had asked for the reason of the order to "Break step." "You mustn't keep step (in piers or bridges," said he, "because the shock of uniform marching dam- ages the structure even of the strongest bridges, so that if a battalion was crossing Waterloo Bridge in London, the order would be given to 'break step.'" I travelled the country from east to west and from north to south. Aldershot, Laffan's Plain, and the Sussex Downs were mar- vellous spectacles. I saw and wondered. I saw the newest recruits labouring at their elementary task, such as I have already sketched. I saw the men as they became more and more advanced, drilling in every department of arms. There were the men in squad and company drill, the men of the machine-gun section, the field engineers, the artillerymen, the cavalry, the motor-cycle corps, the scouts, the signallers, squads at bayonet practice, musketry training, the transport corps, and whole armies route marching or at man- oeuvres, skirmishing, taking ambush, charg- ing up steep slopes and hills, entrenching, erecting barbed wire defences, and practis- ing every conceivable movement they would have to undertake when the time came in real and deadly earnest to fight in the cause of right and freedom. Here is what Rud- yardlvipling wrote of it all; and I endorse what his virile pen has written. One could see how splendidly the men had come on, he said, in a few weeks. "It was a result the meekest might have been proud of, but the New Army does not cultivate useless emotions. Their officers and their instruc- Kitcheners Army LEARNING 1 HE AKl OE 1 KENCU-UIGGING. — A SQUAD OF "a' COMPA SINCE THE OUTBREAK OF WAR THE LONDON PARKS HA Kitcheners Army 57 ->«i^ StH (service) battalion LEICESTERSHIRE REGIMENT AT WORK. % Wik M \ EEN EXTENSIVELY UTILISED FOR DRILLING BRITAIN S NEW AKMV, I H 38 Kitcheners Army tors worked over them patienlly and coldly and repeatedly, wiih iheir souls in the job : and with their soul, mind, and body in the same job the men took — soaked up — the instruction. And that seems to be the note of the New Army. "Thev have joined for ^ood reason. For that reason they sleep uncomplainingly double thick on barrack doors, or lie like herrings in the tents and sing hymns and other things when they are flooded out. They walk and dig half the day or all the night as required; they wear — though they will not eat — anything that is issued to them ; they make themselves an organised and kindly life out of a few acres of dirt and a little canvas; they keep their edge and anneal their discipline under conditions that would depress a fox-terrier and disorganise a champion football team. They ask no- thing in return save work and equipment. And being what they are, they thoroughly and unfeignedly enjoy what they are doing ; and they purpose to do much more." The work went on from early morning to late at night. There was the morning parade round the town or through the country lanes before breakfast; there was I BADGES OF RANK: HOW TO DISTINGUISH BRITISH OFFICERS. ON THE SHOULDER STRAP Crossed batons on a wreath of laurel with a crown above indicate A Field-Marshal Crossed sword and baton with a crown and star above indicate A General Crossed sword and baton with a crown above indicate Crossed sword and baton with a star above indicate Crossed sword and baton alcrc indicate A Lieut. •General A Metjor-General A Brigadier-General ON CUFFS A crown and two stars indicate A Colonel A crown and one star indicate A Lieut.-Colonel A crown alone indicates A Major Three stars indicate A Captain Two stars indicate A Lieutenant One star only indicates A Second Lieutenant 111 A crown, crossed swords, bugles, and three siHpcs, indicate Colour-Sergeant (Rifle Regiment) ON THE ARM (NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICERS) A crown, crossed flags, and three stripes, indicate Colour-Sergeant Company Sergeant-Major A crawn and three stripes indicate Three stripes indicate Sergeant Two stripes indicate Corporal One stripe indicates Lance°Corporal Kitchener s Army 59 4 Sedions=l Platoon. 4 Platoons=]CompanL{ 1 Section -• 2 Section — 3 Section 4 Sccti^on — ^ PLATOON PLATOON PLATOON A Companij about 260 men DIAGRAM SHOWING SECTION COMPOSITION OF A COMPANY. half-an-hour for this meal, then every man to his job until a little after midday, with an hour for dinner. From two until half-past four further drills, marches, or manoeuvres, with the briefest of rests. Between four and five came tea ; and even then for most of the men the day's work was not done. They were for ever learning, these Kit- chener soldiers, with precious little time or inclination for play. The evenings would often be taken advantage of by conscientious company officers, who, if there were no night operations to perform, would lecture the soldiers upon war and its practice. Very often the company ofificer had himself been attached to some regiment at the front, thus seeing war conditions and acquiring know- ledge which was of immense value to him and no less valuable to the recruit. I listened to many a catechism of an old soldier by inquiring recruits, and the man who knew was quick and willing to befriend these eager listeners. " When do they teach us," asked a re- cruit of him, "how to tell one officer from another?" It was a question that staggered his un- official instructor, but after casting his mind around helplessly, as though for some dim memory of such a course of training, he had to admit that none was ever given, in his recollection. "Second-lieutenants have one star on their cuffs, and on the shoulder-strap of their overcoats, lieutenants have two, captains three. A major has a crown, which is dif- ferent from the sergeant-major's crown, be- cause the major's is worked in worsted. A lieutenant-colonel has a crown and star. A colonel has two stars and a crown." PRACTISING SHOOTING AT THE MINIATURE RANGE AT THE SCHOOL OF MUSKETRY. 6o Kitchener s A rmy " What about a general ? " asked the re- cruit, and the old soldier smiled. "You'll never be close enough to a general to need worry about that," he said, and went into a long explanation of crossed swords and batons, stars, and crowns. "Some of the officers have little pieces of red cloth on their collar," said another. "Who are they?" "You needn't bother about those either," said the old soldier. "They're officers on the staff. That is to say, they're not con- nected with regiments, but assist the General in his administration." It was very difficult for the recruit to dis- tinguish officers of one regiment from another. It is true they had badges on each lapel of their tunic, but these were in dull bronze and almost indistinguishable. The doctor he came to know bv the little round circle containing the snake of .^sculapius twisted about a staff. The chaplain he recognised by the black Maltese cross he wore on his lapels. But the officers of other regiments who came and went in the great camp were mysteries to him — unsolved until a much later period in his career, when he came to realise what badges represented, and how certain symbols stood for a peculiar kind of regiment. The old soldier was very informative on these matters. ".■\11 Fusilier regiments have a little bomb with a burst of flame in brass on their collars," he said. "All Light Infantry regi- ments have a bugle in their badge, and all regiments raised in India before the Mutiny have a tiger." And so the inquiring mind was satisfied bit by bit. In reality the evening meal was the first Bugle. Trumpet. SOME INFANTRY BUGLE CALLS Reveille. ,= io8. ^m s s— ^^ V - J^ -^^—^ J- -i ' ^3 s i Come, make a move! and show a leg ' Whydil • ly dal ■ ly? Now don't yoa I _ I _ -# *- ■^-—^JT " # • 1 ■ \- -^r—^^^^ m "^ i Slower. ? S -■^=^ * I J ^^. ' ^ ^ u * g f r 1 s T3Z $ hear? Get out of bed. It's the Re veil • lei Get out, cow sharp, for the day's be - gun I S/ow£r U I I # • r Buqie Trumpet £55 - ^ r 1 S:=t: V-J- ^ J - J -^ .' . ^ Bugle. Trumpet. Dismiss, or No Parade. ^ «-^|t^ I I I '0 0ir 0'0 ^ Oh! there s nopradeio-day Oh i there sno p rade io-da> lis |oi ly sel-dom ihat we gel The chance lo stay a way Men's Meal (1st Call). ^^^^^^ -^-^g ^^^ i^-r-^ Oh' come to the cook-house door, boys' Come to the cook ■ house door I Kitchener s A rniy 6 1 Bugle. Trumpet. Retreat. = 76. i » • ». m- ^^»=h- =?=F ^^ ^ ^^— r 3CZ3E ^ I #-*- ^ ^«- J- 3 J Jl T"a 34 '^UU^^ ^ V -4 4 4'V -^. i -C _, * J L ' I ^ <» • ^. e£ -0 -0- \. ^ ^ii: $ ^ I - ^^ i^'^-^ fl ' Ur -^^-J^J 1 iJL rr .rjX.TIr '-r ^ breathing space the Kitchener soldier had since reveille. It was a very good meal, consisting of tea, bread and butter and jam, with an occasional relish. It was, too, the last official meal of the day. For some extraordinary reason the Government has never recognised the need of a soldier in respect to a supper, except in so far as it has christened the 4.30 repast by that name ! Between half-past four and half-past seven the following morning no meals were officiallv prepared, and the young soldier had to depend upon the coffee and food of every description which he could purchase at the regimental canteen. There was one point on which he was considerably puzzled; and here again the Armv provided no mentor for him other than his chance-met comrade. Every quarter of an hour, when off parade, and very frequently when he was on parade, he heard bugles sounding, and at first there was very little to assist him to distinguish one call from another. ^0 » s "There are a few you ought to know," said the old comrade. "You need not worry about the reveille, because you'll be asleep through one-half of it and only half- awake through the other. The first call a soldier learns is the 'cook-house ' for meals. The easiest one to remember is ' Lights out,' which is a single blast. The only ones that affect you by yourself whilst you're a private are the ' alarm,' the ' assembly,' and the ' fire call.' There are no field calls now, all the orders being given by whistles and signals." The recruit had therefore to pick up the calls as best he could. During the leisure hour which tea-time brought to him, he might hear one of the most beautiful of the calls — the "Retreat" (a call which marks the end of the day, and not the retire- ment of troops, as might at first appear) — and most recruits date their beginning of knowledge, so far as the bugle is concerned, from learning this tune. 'iTie origin of the traditional words fitted 62 Kitcheners Army to the music by the soldiers is lost in antiquity. Tommy, always humorous, has invented burlesque renderings of them that were far more to his liking than the authorised words. These unauthorised jingles were often unflattering, but always amusing and effective. Thus Tommy has parodied the Officers' Mess call in these lines : — Officers' wives have puddens and pies, Soldiers' wives have sliilly — The jolly old cook he fell in the fire, And never got out till reveille. while this was his rendering of the joyful "Dismiss — No Parade" call: — Oh, there's no parade to-day. There's no parade to-day. The colonel has a stomach-ache, The adjutant's away. His version of the meals, or "cook-house" call, was distinctly unfair, and is most cer- tainly not true to-day, when no fault can be found with the generous way Tommy is fed: — Go for the rations Orderly man. Stale bread and meat And mouldy old jam. The period which followed tea was not always free for tiie recruit. There was either a lecture or a night march of some kind to be carried out, and it was not until about half-past" seven that he was finally dis- missed, either to amuse himself in the re- creation rooms which private generosity gave, or the Government provided, or else to seek repose for his weary body in the shelter of his tent. The latter course was the more appealing to thousands, who found in the early days of their service that seven-thirty left them little more than sufficient energy to drag themselves to the regimental coffee room, where, after the lightest of suppers, they THE "execution" OF A " SPV " AT ST. ALBANS. Kitchener s A nny 63 MEN OF THE 70TH INFANTRY BRIGADE, IN TRAINING AT FRENSHAM PARK, HAVING DINNER IN A BIG MARQUEE. returned to find rest on the floor-boards of the tent. Bed-making was a simple process. Where mattresses were provided, the recruit had to unroll his bedding, spread the blankets, un- dress and utilise his clothing as a bolster, get in between the blankets by the shortest route — and, after that, oblivion, till the compelling sound of the reveille brought him out again to greet the cold dawn. The Men who Helped And all the time he was blundering through to perfection there was a small army of people whose work it was to assist him in emerging from the grub stage, and to create, often from very unpromising material, the disciplined soldier, alert and self-reliant. There were officers innumer- able, but the bulk of these themselves re- quired training, being newly come to the business of soldiering. There were the quartermasters (commis- sioned officers holding the honorary rank of lieutenant), who were procuring kits, clothing, and equipment ; the pay officer, who was arranging his salary; the Army Service Corps, which was providing him with his daily food ; a whole legion of in- structors and non-commissioned officers and commissioned officers, who had emerged from their retirement at the request of Lord Kitchener, guiding the recruit in tiie way he should go ; doctors, who watched his feet ; scientists, who prepared their toxins to guard him against that military scourge, typhoid fever. Cooks were being trained so that he might have fresh bread every day; companies of engineers were being employed that his camp might be healthy and his communications by telegraph wire and telephone be made secure. It seemed as though Britain, conscious of the nobility of effort which had brought Kitchener's Army into existence, was utilising all her care and all her strength to guard the soldier in the making from the dangers that might otherwise threaten him in his novel sur- roundings. A Bird's-eye View of a Kitchener Battalion Taking a bird's-eye view of a battalion in the early days of the training, you might have thought there was no cohesion, and that each little party was working at 64 Kitchener s A rniy something which was entirely forei<:;;n to the other. One company lying on the ground with its legs extended upward, performing trying physical evolutions, had no apparent association with the men who, in another part of the parade ground, were, with great stamping of feet, engaged in the bayonet exercise. And yet the same training came to all, and gradually the laggard recruits who had come late were reaching a stage of military perfection which would enable them to act together by companies. And contemporaneously with this physical training, there began the spiritual creation of the young soldier. He was not taught by a book or by an instructor. He was, in this matter, the pupil of the old soldier, and the leaven of history and tradition was doing its work. The recruit began his military career with the sort of idea that one regiment was very much like an- other, and that there was not a pin to choose between them. If he found himself in the Wigshires, the fact only interested him be- cause he had no idea that such a regiment had existed. If anybody had told him that the Sharpshooters would make a better regi- ment, he would have accepted the statement calmly, and thought possibly there must be something in it. He was neither sure of himself nor his regiment. There was soon, however, to be revealed to him in ever- increasing glory the extent of the Wig- shires' wonder. Men and officers of famous regiments come and go, but its soul, its spirit, embodied in history and tradition, lives on for ever. He learnt there were such things as battle honours, and that a certain sacred flag, which was never seen, and was, indeed, at that particular moment, reposing in the local cathedral, had inscribed upon it the names of some sixteen villages and towns in various parts of the world where the regi- ment and the men of the regiment of otlier days had secured fame and glory on the battlefield. He learnt that his regiment was the finest marching regiment in the world; that of all the troops who had been engaged in the great war, none had behaved with such splendid valour and with such extraordinary endurance as the ist Battalion of his par- ticular regiment. It might not be in the papers, there might be no record of any particular accomplishment; but the thing was so, all the same. The Kitchener soldier began to take a pride in this wonderful ist Battalion of his, with its huge list of casualties and its fine roll of honour. And when eventually his cap badge was served out to him — there was a shortage of these in the early days — he wore it with singular pride, and would not have exchanged it for the badge of any other regiment on the earth. Then one afternoon the adjutant of the Kitchener battalion addressed the squad, telling them that he expected them to be worthy of the ist Battalion. He put the recruit and his fellows on their mettle. The pride of the regiment was grow'ing slowly but strongly, and there were several hun- dred camps in England filled with men all exalted by a secure conviction that their Corps represented the flower and pride of the British Army. What foundations of future regimental prestige, pride, and glory may these new regiments be laying for soldier generations yet to come ! "They are already setting standards for the coming millions," Rudyard Kipling WTOte, "and have sown little sprouts of regi- mental tradition which may grow into age- old trees. In one corps, for example, though no dubbin is issued, a man loses his name for parading with dirty boots. He looks down scornfully on the next battalion where they are not expected to achieve the impossible. In another — an ex-Guards sergeant brought 'em up by hand — the drill is rather high-class. In a third they fuss about records for route-marching, and men who fall out have to explain themselves to their sweating companions. This is en- tirely right. They are all now in the Year One, and the meanest of them may be an ancestor of whom regimental posterity will say : ' There were giants in those days ! ' " Kitchener s A riuy 65 1 1 life- 1^' ^w w*l| THE 2ND BIRMINGHAM CUV BAIIALION AT MUbKEIKV i'liACl ICE IN iUlTON PARK. CHAPTER III. THE RECRUIT'S PROGRESS TOWARDS EFFICIENCY. He was a fresh-looking, sturdy yoiitli. He stood 5 ft,. 10 in. in his socks, I should say, and for all his height and breadth he was lithe and hardy. But he was fidgety and uncomfortable. He was in the train, and so was I, on my way home from a day spent with the new Army in the field. At every station where the train stopped he asked, in an accent wliich defies reproduction, "Am ah reet for Aldershot?" He had been re- cruited somewhere in Lancashire, and was on his way from the depot to join his battalion, and was a stranger in a strange land. He was out of his element, almost scared, I thought, at his own boldness, as a man might be who had suddenly plunged into a new and unknown life. The train was packed full with Kitchener men in little groups, their white canvas kit- bags reposing on the luggage-rack ; Kitch- ener men on short leave, and Kitchener men in their rawest state journeying to their new units. Our Lancashire recruit was new enough to the game to handle his rifle gin- gerly and to regard with wondering interest other men like himself. "It is a fine life," hesaid. "Rough?" "Yes, a bit, but not so rough as you would think. The chaps you rneet are grand, and the officers couldn't be better. How long do we stop at Rugbv?" he asked anxiouslv. He had a letter to write. I watched him finish the furtive performance as the train drew in at Rugby Station. The letter, he blushinglv admitted, was to a girl. It had dropped on my knees from his fumbling, awkward fingers. As he tried to seal it a photograph of himself in his new uniform dropped out. " ^he didn't mind me going away, in fact she made me enlist ; and she was right. We were to be married soon — that thing's a little keepsake she wants; only had it taken yesterday." He was as excited as if he were on the way to the Front. The work at the depot had been unusually strenuous, but he was looking forward to the work at Headquarters. "They give vou a rare gruelling at Aldershot" (he called it "The Shot." by the way, which proves he was already half a soldier), "but I can stand it, we've had marches and drill and a bit of shooting. Took me a long time to get used to this fellow," he patted his rifle, "but now I think I can manage it." I reproduce this trivial incident, as it shows how the reality of the work and the part thev were to plav in the war was borne in upon these men. In this railway carriage, with these Kitchener men, I somehow experienced a sudden sense of the urgency of the work in 66 Kitchener s A rniy hand. 1 think it also gripped the men ; one or two of tiiem had already been in France. Some were going to finish their training there, while the others speculated as to when they would be ordered off. These were some of the men who had joined in the first rush to the recruiting offices. I gathered from their talk some- thing of the enormous tasks they had already accomplished. Strangers to each other, they were beguiling the time in relating stories of their ex- periences in the training days that now lay behind them. There was the atmosphere of the Kitchener Army. It was working against time, everywhere haste and bustle to get ready ; it was an army training for war — war already being waged in the smoking fields of France, whence came the cry for men and more men. It was a specialised training in essentials designed to fit men thoroughly, yet quickly, for the actual battlefield. Had not Kitchener said the whole of the new army was to be readv by the spring? Yes, haste was necessary, but there was to be no flurry or slipshod preparation; it was to be a fight of trained men against trained men; therefore everything must be purposeful, scientific, and thorough. There was no suggestion of picnic in its camp life. It was an army train- ing for the deadly Ixisiness of war, and so urgently needed that there was no time for the leisurely method AT THE SCHOOL OF MUSKETRY, HYTHE. TEACHING SNAr-SHOOTlNG OR RAPIDTT' HELD TO THI INSTRUCTION IN RECONNAISSANCE WORK. NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICERS LEARNING TO DESCRIBE THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE FIELD OF OPERATIONS. * Kitcheners Army 67 be able to shoot, to dig, to march, to charge, to use his ivnowledge in a scien- tific manner, to sit a horse in certain cases, to handle his rifle, to be initiative and self-reliant, to preserve a steady nerve, and to be so inspired with esprit de corps that in moments of extreme danger he would tliink of his unit, of his regiment, before all else. It was thus the work was goinjr forward, orderly yet urgently and un- ceasingly, with the time limit and a definite end always in mind; every- thing was to be ready by a given date. I saw this process going forward all over England. I saw it in Alder- shot — a veritable ant-hill, where, from dawn till night, square and common, heath, hill, and valley were alive with khaki figures, all working earnestly and with a singleness of purpose wonderful to see. Everything I saw upon the broad plains of Wiltshire, all that I wit- nessed upon the heather-clad lands of Hampshire, all that went on be- tween Aldershot and Borden, between '■•i^'-' '^.. )f aim, by means of the eye disc nstructor's eye. of training of peace days. The men worked to a time- table, cramming into every available minute the tuition which experienced men were able to instil into them. Officers even came back from France to teach them some of the special wrinkles this par- ticular war had taught. Before taking the field every one of these new men must be an efficient soldier. He must A LESSON IN SIGHTING. 68 Kitcheners Army IIIE I9TH BATTALION KOVAL FUSILIERS LEARNING TO AIM THEIR RIFLES AT THE PROPER WAY TO LOAD IN THE STANDING POSITION. Kitchener s A rmy 69 JLMMV TARGET. woiUinj;' in positions rthicli, to the outsider, seemed horribly iinconifortable. Sometimes, on a quiet stretcii of liie road between railway station and camp, I would coitie upon one of the new batteries of the Royal Field Artillery. There are 130 of these somewhere in England, and in a later number I hope to describe their training. Occasionally I would find them going into mimic action, dashing with jingle of harness and cracking of whips across rough ground to take up a position which had been chosen. Sometimes they would be proceeding solemnly between little wooden posts, turning, cantering, galloping, and walking, in order to test the driver's ability to pass between obstacles without the wheels of the guns touching them. Already these men had learned how to manage horses and guns. And always and everywhere it was the same — an atmosphere of deadly earnestness, urgency, and concentration. The Kitchener POLE TARGETS FORMING A SKELETON ENEMY OPERATED BY A PRIVATE. white tents were bathed in sunlight, you could look across the valley at the rain which was falling twenty miles away. The Adjutant had been an agent of one of the great insurance houses of London. Pre- vious to this he had been lighting in Natal, and had trained raw Kaflks for supply work. "There is very little difference between the men you see here and those you have seen at Aldershot," he said, "except that our men prefer trench digging to anything else ! " That was easily understandable, for these young soldiers of Kitchener's Army had served their apprenticeship in mine's, and were perfectly contented when they were enthusiast was sometimes impatient and querulous about things he reckoned did not matter. Little he knew. I was amused to hear a newcomer — a young man, lately a City stockbroker — say to an old seasoned warrior, a retired Colonel, whom he was entertaining at a village inn after a hard day's drill : "Now tell me. Colonel, don't you think all this rifle drill is tomfoolery ? We're out for business and quick training in essentials; can't they cut out all this dreary practice in 'presenting arms,' 'sloping arms,' and the rest ,of"it? It's sp much wasted time, seems to me. The trick is to be able to shoot, isn't it, and shoot straight ? Kitcheners Army A LESSON IN TRIGGER-PREbSlNG. This everlasting drill is so much humbug, you know something about the price of good enough in peace time when there is stocks and shares, but you know less than no need to hurry, but now — now hustle's the my little Scotch terrier there about what word." you're here for. I came down from Lon- "Damn it, sir," replied the ruffled don to see how you were getting on, and Colonel, "you speak like a fool; doubtless I'll take the liberty of giving you a word SHOOTING AT A MINIATURE RIFLE RANGE. Kitchener s A rmy 7' of advice. If you'll do as you're ordered and be- cause you're ordered, and trust to others to know what's right, you'll get on with your business quicker." " Keep cool, Colonel ; I'll sit at your feet and learn wisdom if you've a mind to impart it — only I expect your wisdom is of tiie same old red-tape order." " You think so ! You don't know I was watch- ing you on parade this morning, young man. I watched how you handled your rifle; it was all I could do to keep from shouting at you. Had you ever a rifle in your hand before you came here, may I ask ?" "I don't mind saying that I never had. I'll confide a little more to you. I imagined it a pretty simple thing to raise a rifle to the shoulder and fire. I knew, of course, some practice was needed to shoot straight. I found that with the butt pressed into my l^iJ^^l iJ[ v^i^JL^K^^ iii 1 SOLDIERS CLEANING THEIR RIFLES BY POURING BOILING WATER DOWN THE BARRELS. shoulder it was all I could do to hold the rifle with my left arm stretched out and the right crooked towards the trigger; the wretched thing had a tendency to wobble — the thing's a bit heavy, you know. RECRUITS LEARNING TO TAKE COVER BEHIND THE BOARDS OF A POLO GROUND. Kitcheners Army A MJLAl) O; (Jl hhN .S \\ K^TMINS I K KS AT FIJJING PliACTlCE IN THE COURSE C A .\1AC1U.\E OUN SECIION ^.AKl.NG COVER IN A DITCH. Kitc/iener s A rmy 73 Allliuugli 1 i;ot tlie back-siyht and llie fore-sisjht in line with my object, 1 couldn't keep it fixed at that for a second. I had extraordinary trouble to keep the muzzle from wobblinfj to and fro; it would point at anything in the world except the bull's-eye, althougii // seemed to stare steadily at me from the other end of the range all the same." "Thank heaven you have the sense to confess it. You'll soon conquer that. It was the rifle drWl, however, we were discussing. Now let me tell you something you obviously do not know. The thing of particular value in this drill is that it familiarises you ivith the rifle — with its weight, its balance, and how to handle it so that it becomes almost part of you. No doubt you think it absurd that you, who are training- hard to engage the enemy as soon as possible, should bother your head about the best way of bringing the rifle butt from the ground to the shoulder. Equally unnecessary, no doubt, to go through the complicated bayonet exercise, since your only desire is to slay your foe with the bayonet, K A CAUTIOUS ADVANCK TJJROUGIl THICK UNDERGROWTH. 74 Kitchener s A rmy TKENXH-DIGGINC. IS HAKD WORK, LUI THE MEN IN TRAINING CO ABOUT IT WITH LIGHT HEARTS. LIEUT. SWAINSTON EXPLAINING TO THE QUEEN'S WESTMINSTERS THE METHODS FOLLOWED IN THE CON- STRUCTION OF A TRAVERSE DUG UNDER HIS DIRECTION AT HAMPSTEAD HEATH. Kitchener s A rniy 75 and therefore it is not to be supposed that you would introduce anvthing of ceremony into your method of destruction. It may not have occurred to you that he may slay you. "There's a reason for everytliing you're ordered to do. You've oot to occupy as little space as possible, my lad. The less there is of you and your rifle, the less there is for the enemy to hit. That's why j-ou must practise standing" with your rifle close to )'Our side. You bring your rifle to the ' slope ' because that's the easiest way of carrying it." 3'ou are able to handle it easily under all sorts of unlooked-for circumstances." This detailed and thorough training in musketry, therefore, was one of the essen- tials, although some of the new Kitchener men, like the old Colonel's friend, were slow to understand the why and the wliere- fore of it. The range work was now reaching its advanced stage. Targets at 600 yards were being battered day by day by companies of men, all anxious to emulate their fellows. For the keenest rivalrv existed between companies, and the most' extravagant THE QLEEN S WESTMINSTERS TRENCH-DIGGING ON HAMPSTEAD HEATH. The young man nodded in agreement. "For equally good reason you are taught to bring your arm from the ' slope ' to the ' present,' and from the ' present ' to the ' order ' — that is, your position at ' atten- tion ' — your rifle by your right side. And when you have mastered the peculiarities of this piece of steel and wood, and learned instinctively where the point of balance lies, and can handle it without danger to your- self or to your comrades, you are ready for exercises which necessitate the rifle being carried in the most convenient manner, and claims were put forward nightly as to rival merits. The recruit, who no longer regarded him- self as a recruit, had got over all his earlier awkwardness with the rifle, and had learnt to resist the impulse, which every recruit has, to press the trigger at inconvenient moments. He had come to the point when he almost automatically ceased breathing when he pressed the butt into his shoulder and gently pressed — not pulled — the trig- ger, still keeping his sight upon the object he was aiming at, even long after the bullet 76 Kitchener s A rmy had left the muzzle. A sol- dier pulls the trigger gently in- w a r d and u p - ward. So doing, he exercises no jolt upon the rifle, and does not, even lo a slight extent, disturb his aim. The recruit had now mastered questions of tra- jectory, and the difference between the line of sight and the line of fire. "What is a trajectory?" asked the recruit, and his instructor glared, but ex- plained with some labour: "Don't you know that the bullet does not follow the direct passage from muzzle to target, as the soldier sees it, but takes a slight curve, and reaches its billet by a downhill route?" He had learnt the neces- sity for holding his rifle straight, and he had been taught by pains- taking instructors what happens if it is just a little askew, and he had become a mathematician in so far that he was able to allow for the effects of light and wind. During the period of his recruit training — that is to say, when he was firing minia- ture rifles, in order to improve himself in aiming, he had fired at a variety of targets, varying from the common card target, on which his hits were plainly recorded, to the cinema target — a much more exciting ex- perience, where he was firing at racing cyclists and getting them every time. Naturally enough, manv of the courses through which the soldier in ordinary times of preparation would have passed were necessarilv condensed in order that the A KITCHENER BATTALION WAITI soldier might concentrate the whole of his attention upon matters essential. His firing course was reduced to the smallest limit. He was initiated into the mysteries of "grouping," and learnt that it was not necessary that a man aiming at a target should hit the bull's-eye, but that it was verv necessary that, wherever he hit, he should hit again. That is to say if, firing at a target, I hit it in the left-hand corner instead of the central spot which is known as the bull's-eye, I am expected, when I am "grouping," to put all the rest of my shots somewhere near my first. Indeed, much of the old method of target firing was dispensed with, and instead, the Kitcheners Army TO FALL IN FOR A ROUTE MARCH. recruit was taught to shoot at a "bobbing jinny," a head and shoulders of various colours, which appeared suddenly from the earth, stayed up for a second, and was gone again. The first sections that fired at these ap- paritions fired wildly enough, and delivered most of their bullets at a moment when the head disappeared. And this snap-shooting was one of the most valuable pieces of train- ing the recruit received. He had to undergo a "visual training," and his military vocabulary was consider- ably enlarged. His course of tuition began on landscape targets — that is to say on strips of card or ground 11 canvas painted to represent a distant landscape. From a distance of twenty-five yards, and taking the landscape sector by sector, he gave his opinion as to the distance each painted object represented. "A sector, about which you hear a great deal," said his instructor, "is an area of ground which is roughly fan-shaped — t h e observer, so to speak, standing on the handle and looking toward the extended sticks of the fan." Battle practice targets arranged in tiers, so that each tier repre- sented a further distance, were used to instruct the N.C.O. The old service bull's- eye target was a conspicuous ob- ject on a land- scape — the recruit had to judge the distances which separated him from a dingy- coloured enemy against a neutral- coloured back- assistance of a range- without the finder. "It is impossible to estimate distances beyond 1,200 to 1,400 yards," he was told; "below that distance you can tell the dis- tance to within a hundred yards by the size of the object. You can't go far wrong if you are any judge at all; if, when you're asked to judge, say, the distance the spire of a church is, and you say to yourself, ' The distance cannot be more than so many yards, or less than so many — I'll split the difference.' " At night, when the area of vision was limited, he judged mainly by sound. "You can hear the sound of marching 78 Kitcheners Army BRINGING IN THE WATER-WAGON. PREPARING THE MIDDAV MEAL. men on soft ground if you are standing. You hear tliem on hard ground best when vou are lying down." There were other instructions. "Use your eyes, use your ears, use your brains. If you are scouting and you see a body of the enemy pass, count them and mark the distance they are from you. You can see a man's eyes at loo yards, his buttons at 200 yards, his face at 300. When he's 400 yards away you can just see the movement of his legs, and the colour of his uni- form at 500. If he fires at you, watch the flash of his rifle ; if the report comes one second later he is 350 Kitchener s Army 79 yards away, two seconds 700, and so on." "But, Sergeant, how am I to count a passing enemy if he is too far off for me to see ? " de- manded the recruit. "Mark a point he is passing — a tree, a house, or a telegraph-pole. Look at your watch and see how long he takes to pass a given point. If it is cavalry riding in twos, sixty will pass every minute, if cavalry at a trot, 220 to 230 pass. Guns and wagons pass five to a minute, and infantry in fours, 200." I watched a squad at bayonet exercise, grim and terrible to anyone who thought of the deadly work that has already taken place in the great war. But ob- viously for the time being the men were thinking more of the fascination and fun of THE SOLDIER IS A HANDY MAN WHO CAN TURN HIS HAND TO ANYTHING, EVEN TO A BIT OF MANGLING. EVES front! the QUEEn's WESTMINSTERS FACE THE FIRE OF A FAIR SHARP-SHOOTER. 8o it— and also, when they left off, of their tired bodies, because bayonet exercise is tiring work, without a doubt. Here was a man with the biceps of a boxer lunging for all he was worth at a dummy figure, a heavy bag packed with fibre— "Steady, mv man, that is not the way to slip the bayonet into your Kitcheners A nny he explained, is that which you deliver with one hand, the other hand being out- stretched to balance the body. "Then you will find that the bayonet goes in by itself. There's no necessity for putting your weight into your thrust. Simply throw up 'the rifle straight ahead of you, with one hand holding the small of the butt. THERE IS PLENTY OF THE FIGHTING SPI enemy. You mustn't lurch like that. You'll overbalance yourself and then you'll find your German friend standing over you and you'll be at his mercy. Let me show you again how to do it," said the old expert. The most effective of the bayonet thrusts. RIT IN KITCHENER'S ARMY, AS IS SHOWN BY THE GREAT POPULARITY OF BOXII The weight of the rifle and the sharpness of the bayonet will do the rest." So the admonished recruit started again to practise upon the heavy bags packed with fibre, and tested the accuracy of this statement. As yet, his bayonet was not sharp- ened, but even in a fairly blunt condition he Kitcheners Army 8i found there was quite sufficient edge on the weapon to carry it through its objective. But for the men, naturally enough, field operations made the most fascinating fea- ture of their training. Into these they put all their heart and soul. The operations savoured of actual warfare, and were of absorbing interest, calling forth, as they The British system of fighting— the out- come of experience in many little wars— is unlike any other in the world, or was, until our quick-witted enemy saw and grasped its advantage and endeavoured lo imitate it. The system of fighting is that known as "open order "—a method of fighting which is foreign to the German ideals. It UCIIES, WUICU, SriRITEDLV CONTESTED, ARE GREATLY ENJOYED BOTH BY COMBATANTS AND SPECTATORS. did, their faculties of observation, reason- ing, and intelligence. They could appre- ciate also the reason for things; indeed, the work fascinated the best type of men. There were so many undreamed-of things that riveted their attention; they had to use their wits. L enabled us with a verv small force to hold back larger bodies of the enemy in the early davs of the war. The German oftrcer who wrote, "The British make extraordinary use of the ground," stumbled on a truth. Our troops are able, by availing themseh-es of every Kitchener s A rmy piece of cover, to hide themselves from their enemy and to shield themselves from his rifle attack. On the Sussex Downs, on Yorkshire moors, on the heaths and hills of Surrey, in the meadows and woodlands of A PATROL Ol c\i IK SCOUTS LYING IN AMBUSH UNDE Essex, the men learned their lesson, halt- ingly at first, but later with surprising alert- ness. The new recruit, whose idea of " cover " was of the vaguest kind, who perhaps . had visions of battlemented walls and sound concrete defences, was to learn that a hum- Kitchener s A rmy 83 OF A HEDGE. mock, even a blade of grass, if it screens the attacker or defender from the clear view of his adversarv, was not to be despised. He learned that ditches and hedges were the veritable gifts of Providence, especially intended for the British soldier; and that even a slight unevenness of ground, a mound, a hollow, a hillock or a ditch, which he might not have noticed had he traversed it in his civilian days, gave him an immeasurable advantage over an attacker in the open, if it was properly utilised. At first, if a man did find cover — cover which was self- evident even to his amateur eyes — the chances were that he would make a wrong use of it. "Now, men, never fire over your cover; fire round it and fire \rom the right of it." Obvious, when you come to think of it; but not all of us think before we act, especially in the heat of battle. "Why not from the left?" thought the recruit. His unspoken question was already answered while he was still worrying over his thought. "If you fire from the right of cover, the whole of your body, with the exception of your rifle hand and your right shoulder and the right side of your face, is pro- tected by the heap of stones or earth which you are using. If you fire from the left, the whole of your body is exposed and the cover is no use whatever. Do not forget it ! Always take the right of the cover, and keep your rifle closely pressed against the bank or hayrick or door or whatever it is which is protecting you, to give your rifle greater steadiness." Again: "When you're firing from a loophole, fire from the left; because it's not the loophole which is giving you cover, but the bit of solid steel on the left of it. if you rest your rifle against the right side of a loophole, die whole of your body is exposed to any chance shot which happens to find the gap." From Yorkshire to Lancashire, from Lancashire to the wilds of Cumberland, from Cumberland back again to Aldershot I went, to witness the continual progress of successful effort. Aldershot and the camps about were always the more fascinating, for here one saw every branch of the service come "into action." There on a grey w^inter morning I saw the men of the new Army engaged in field work. No longer were the men addressed by spoken words of command. Thev had to keep alert, with eyes fixed upon the commander, watching for the signal which now took the place of the spoken word, with ears open for the shrill call of a whistle which was to change their forma- tion. \\'ith fifty of his fellows, the recruit lay extended upon the damp earth, a little hummock serving as cover, his eyes fixed upon his commander, who was cautiously, and with body bent, moving ahead. Suddenly the arm of the officer ahead would swing from rear to front. Instantly the whole company rises as one man and moves ahead, for the signal has come to "advance." Then the officer sees something he does not quite like. His arm shoots up and remains rigid above his head ; the company halt. They detect another quick movement, as though he were patting some invisible dog. Immedi- ately the whole sink to the ground, obedient to the signal. Then the officer's arm goes up again, and he makes two or three little circles above his head. This is the order to retire, and the company, turning about, moves back the way it came. 84 Kitcheners Army Again the officer pats the imaginary dog, and down goes the company ftat upon the ground, their faces toward the front. Again the advance signal. The clenched hand of the officer moves up and down as though he were manipulating a pump, and the company breaks into a ri;n, since this is the signal to "double." The company is now in extended order, the number of paces between each man being regulated by the wishes of the com- mander. Suddenly the officer's whistle THE UNIVERSITY AND PUBLIC SCHOOL CORPS AT EPSO: sounds a succession of short, sharp blasts, and the extended ranks, continuing their run, close in upon their commanding officer. Mythical cavalry has been sighted, and cavalry cannot be met in extended order, but in shoulder-to-shoulder formation with the bayonet. "Never worry about cavalry charging you," remarked a man of experience. "It doesn't very often happen in war, and it doesn't happen twice to the same cavalrv." 1!SI' "Mn^^t.-.trmw^^ ''if niWI A FULLY TRAINED COMFANV OF KITCIlENFi; 's ARK. Kitchener s Army lAVE TRAINED INTO A FINE BODY OF SOLDIERS. In this ominous style did he indicate the uselessness of cavalry attacking infantry troops in close formation. This was the beginning of the field train- ing — a training which extended by and by to every branch of warfare and its science, as we shall see. This "field-training" succeeded the cere- monial drill, the marching by companies, the manoeuvring of sections and platoons into line, the exercises with rifle and bayonet, and the longer ph_\-sical drills which were part of the daily routine in the earlier days of the recruit's service. Field work is a general term which com- prehends all the field training outside actual barrack-square training. One morning would be devoted to drill in extended order, another to the practice of the attack, yet another to the more difficult and back- aching business of trench digging. Here the recruit came upon unsuspected lines of information. He touched the fringe of real war one day wiien he was i \^ i AND READY FOR THE FIELD. 86 Kitcheners Army ent;aged in extended order attack, and during an in- terval watched a more advanced brigade attack being delivered against a mimic enemy. The officer of his company seized the opportunity of imparling a little lecture, illustrating his points by the operations which were going on under the company's e3'es. The trenches the "enemv" were planning to attack were plainly to be seen, long, yellow scars on the dun surface of the earth. But the novice who ex- pected to see something happen there was deceived. The fire that greeted the advancing infantry of the enemy, which poured across the ground with a veil to the attack, came from a quite unexpected quarter. "Thev are false trenches," the officer to his novices. "You cunning infantry, by turn- ing over loose earth in regular lines, will often convev to the enemy an impression that the trenches are in a certain place. The advantage of this is that the enemy's artillery fire is drawn upon those abrasions, while his foe, remaining in well- dug and well-protected trenches, invisible to the eye, waits for the enemv to come up and then enfilades him — in other words, takes him on the flank. 'A commander has to be very careful in his attack," the officer went on, "otherwise he will find himself throwing the whole of his strength at trenches which are only a foot or so deep, and which con- tain none of the enemy." "But don't they see them digging their trenches, sir?" asked the recruit. The officer smiled. "They will see you digging your trench," he said, "because you will do it bv day. But at the front all trench lines are dug by night, and under the cover of darkness thev are not only dug, but they are screened from observation by brushwood and loose attacking explained interested see how making MANY OF THE MOTOR SCOUTS OF THE AUTOMOBILE ASSOCIATION grasses. You must always remember," he went on, "that the edge of a trench should follow, as far as possible, the natural con- tours of the country in which it is dug. Any straight, unnatural line will at once be seen by the enemy, and will draw his fire. Half the art of trench digging is to conceal, not only the body of the soldier from the enemy's bullets, but to hide the place in which those bodies are concealed." These false trenches, besides, also serve the purpose of deceiving the enemy as to the numbers of the force which is opposed to him. He has to make his plans according to the information he can collect from spies, and since it is impossible for the spy to get up to the firing line without detection, there are innumerable subter- Kitcheners Army 87 >I I'XTEERED FOR WAR SERVICE, AND ARE HERE SEEN TRAINING. fuges by which the agents of the enemy discover the strength of the defending troops. One way is to count the rations wliich are issued many miles behind the firing hne — rations intended for the men in the trenches. Very often at Aldershot there were much bigger things than company work on hand. Then reveille would bring long columns of infantry moving in the direction of Laffan's Plain, or toward the Fox Hills, looking for- ward eagerly to a real big field day. A mysterious enemy had established himself, holding a ridge which barred the way to London. This enemy, invested for the moment with all the malignity and despera- tion of the Hun, was in point of fact nothing more dangerous than a couple of Kitchener's battalions which had been simul- taneously ordered up from Pirbright to guard the rail- way against the invader frcjin Aldershot. There was a deadly earn- estness about these opera- tions which was very im- pressive. Over at the back of the hills, as the column swr.ng up the steep little road which leads to the wilderness of firs and bracken beyond, enemy guns were thundering, and to the recruit, with his twenty-five rounds of blank ammunition in his pouch, there was something of the reality and splendour of war in his furtive move- ments against his unseen foe. The enemy infantry was supposed to be supported by artillery fire, and so the battalion, smartly, though without haste, was open- ing up into little groups fifty yards or more apart. It was the first step in an infantry attack under such circumstances, as then it was not likely that the burst of a shell would wreck harm on more than one group. So, without confusion, keeping in touch through their platoon commanders and company officers, the attackers progressed until they were almost within range of the .rifle fire of the opposing unseen infantry. They took to extended order at the shrill command of the whistle. A little later they dropped prone upon their stomachs and wormed their way along, varying this slow progression with a quick, sharp burst. This was when another signal came, and the\- would jump from their prone position almost as one man and tear eagerly forward, still crouching as they ran, their rifles at the trail. Another whistle — and down to earth they flopped once more, seemingly making part of the winter landscape. They were becoming wise hands at the game of war. Not one of them took cover behind the bare and stunted shrubs that 88 Kitcheners Army A MOrOR-CVCLIST SCOUT AND DESPATCH RIDEB AT SIGNALLING PRACTICE. here and there dotted the level plain. For this reason, that it was safer to fall straight to earth. Every definite object, such as one of these trees, made an easy target, and its exact range would be certain to have been marked by the men in the trenches they were attacking. The men of the attacking army knew the little things that matter in the great game of war. Now the scouts had come into action. You could hear the rattle and crash of musketry, and then the staccato note of the new machine-gun section. High in the air circled a buzzing aeroplane, noting, locating, and from time to time swooping back on the attackers' lines to report. Nearer drew the opposing lines. You saw no sign of soldiers on either side. Yet the men, crouched down level with the ground, were creeping forward per- sistently. But for the rattle of rifle fire, now incessant all along the line, and the unwearying crash of artillery, you might suppose that these wooded hills were innocent of soldiers. The scouts had already returned stealthily; the advance parties had fallen back, to conform with the general line; shrill whistles called in aU directions; and suddenly the hills were alive with men, who rushed frantically forward ; till at the shrill of whistles they again dis- appeared. And so the sham fight developed to its crisis, to the successful drawing of the enemy from their position, till at last the bugle sounded "Stand fast!" and the day's fight was ended. The pawns in the game claim their victories loudly, and dispute with some asperity the success of attack or de- fence, but the result was in the hands of umpires, and was communicated at a conference of officers by the general commanding — a conference where the ability or failure of individual com- manders was discussed with sometimes embarrassing frankness. In the late afternoon, as the dusk came, I again encountered this bat- talion of the new army. They had been out since daybreak; weary and somewhat mud-stained, they were marching along the broad highway back to camp. It may have appeared so only to imagination, because I had been greatly stirred — still, I think it was actual and real. The light of battle was still in their eyes, they had a proud and determined bearing. They had done a good day's work; they knew it, and anticipated the praise their commanding officer would bestow on them. On this drab day in a quiet English county, it had been as near as possible the real thing. From start to finish, indeed, "war conditions" was the keynote of all the "Kitchener's Army" training. It was a training, first, last, and all the time, in the essentials of war. It could iiardly be other- wise. Had not Lord Kitchener said that the new armies were to take the field by the Spring ? Once more that day I was to see them. This time it was at an evening lecture. Kitchener s Army 89 The driving rain was lashing the window- panes of the hall, which had been a skating rink. There were men there, I know, with blistered hands and aching back — the legacy from digging trenches. Others who had been in the sham fight still smelt of the grassy earth on which they had crouched and crawled. The fascination of the game he was learning had gripped the Kitchener man, and, in spite of his fatigue and aching limbs, he listened with the keenest appre- ciation to those lessons in the thousand subterfuges of war. They might only be little points, but he greedily took them all in, storing them up for future use when the day came. It is safe to say that no Kitchener soldier will ever forget in his after life the thrill and the joy of those earlv-morning fights^ under grey skies, with the bite of snow in the air and the dark background of gaunt trees to introduce the atmosphere and gloom of war. He will not forget the bivouacs, when the Kitchener battalions moved out at night and marched in silence across country to take up their position at dawn ; the whis- pered conversations; the doze into which he fell when he was given little half-hour spells of rest. Stumbling through the night, led sometimes by a disc fastened to a pole — a disc covered with luminous paint, which was visible only to those who marched in the rear — and sometimes bv the more primitive process of keeping in touch with the foremost file, he marched on, hour 'billy," hie goat mascot ok the welsh regiment, marched proudly with the troops WHEN they were REVIEWED BY THE KING. M Kitcheners A rmy I.KAFiNING HOW TO IHKUSl Willi THE BAYONET. after hour, till the dawn came, and, with the dawn, his surprise attack. Some of the camps were kept under war conditions, and occasionally a commanding olTicer would receive, perhaps in the middle of the night, the startling information that an enemy force was moving on his position. From tent to tent hurried the orderly ser- geant, urgently calling the men to parade, and the defenders' line would be hardlv formed before the advance scouts of the attacker were in touch. Sometimes no such warning came to him, and the first intimation that a neighbouring camp, or one some twenty miles away, was harbouring unfriendly designs, carne in the shape of the wild shots which the out- posts were firing. In this connection a very amusing story came to me. Between two carnps in the north of England there existed a rivalry which could only be described as deadly. Surprise attacks "upon one side or the other were of constant occurrence, and all this went on with the full approval, in- deed with the commendation, of the general officer commanding, who watched the growth of this proper war spirit with every satisfaction. It came so that the men in one camp did not undress when they re- tired to their tents, until they were abso- lutely certain that the men of the other camp were so engaged in some general scheme of tactics that no attack was to be feared. Both sides employed spies, and both went to extraordinary lengths in order to bam- boozle the other. Once the northern camp, moving down by night to surprise their enemy, were met half way by a devastating fire, the enemy having received information in time to establish trench lines half way between the two camps. On another occa- sion the southern camp attempted a secret attack, and by dint of hard marching came up to the "enemy" an hour before dawn, only to find that his tents had entirely Kitchener s A rviy 91 vanished, llie whole camp havino^ been shifted overnight, with the exception of a few store tents. Returning somewhat dispirited and probably a little amused bv the "enemy's" cunning, the troops marched back to their own camp, only to be met by a withering fire from the northern army, which had made a wide detour in the night and seized the camp of the attacker, and was now holding it against him. Such exercises as these, duplicating as they did many of the actual conditions which the soldier would be asked to face, made splendid training for the young soldier. They heartened even the newest of the recruits, and brought him into line with his older comrades. The value of this was immeasurable, for the levelling up of the newer recruits to the standard of those who had had four or five months of training, was one of the difficulties of commanding officers, who were constantlv finding raw civilians on their hands who, from necessity, must often be included in tactical schemes which required all the experience of the "old soldier." liut there is no tutor like the trained man, and a duffer who found himself between two "knowing" privates learnt more in a couple of days of actual "warfare" than he could have learnt in the same number of weeks upon the barrack square. Tricks of trench work especially appealed to the Kitchener soldier, since the great war had developed so largely into a vast conflict of entrenchments. One little bit of know- ledge he acquired will serve as an example. All that one can see of a barbed wire en- tanglement before a trench in most instances are the upright posts to which the wire, invisible from any distance, is fastened. Therefore, in preparing dummy trenches there was no need for him to make elaborate pretence or to put strings in place of wire. All that was necessary to do was to place wooden posts at intervals, and these were quite sufficient to deceive an attacking force info believing that wire exists. The Ivitchener man was taught how to build A MACHINE-GUN SKCTION UNDER CO\'ER, WAITING TO GIVE THE ENEMV's PATROL A SURPRISE. the most effective form of parapet, and "parados" against rear fire, how to make traverses, how to construct " head cover with any material he could scratch together. "Where shall I get material?" The recruit had not yet got out of the habit of asking questions. . ,, , , • " Anywhere— cut that bush— take an axe and fell that tree— In, you ! take your bill-hook and cut the grass. Not in front of the trench, you idiot ! Do you want the enemy to spot the cleared space ? Besides, grass is cover." For this purpose every regiment has in its equipment bill-hooks, reaping-hooks, and axes. The lessons of the great war would be the subject most often chosen in the lectures he listened to, and some particular attack or defence, details of which had been received, would be used to illustrate the advantage of some variety of tactics. A blackboard and a piece of chalk would illustrate the futility of certain kinds of defences, and would show the recruit how the popular idea of a trench was not only valueless, but dangerous to the man who used it to shield himself against the bullets of the enemy. Well, indeed, did the soldier of the new army learn the lesson which his wise masters taught him, and learned it all the more readily since there was going on under his very eyes the practice and proof of all this teaching. If anything, the training Kitchener's Army received was even more valuable than the training which the regular soldier had experienced during peace time. The object lessons the war afforded constantly, in the craft of the soldier, gave an additional THE 9TH NORTH STAFFORDSHIRE RF.G1^ ■ Kitchener s Army 93 interest to the lectures and made for a quicker comprehension on the part of the recruit. No section of battalion workers were of greater importance, not only so far as the effective fighting strenglii of the regiment was concerned, but from the point of view of piiysique and efliciency, than the machine-gun section. We started the war with a con- siderable shortage of machine-guns, and learned to our cost that every German battalion could produce two, and sometimes four, to our one. We had learned the value of concentrated Maxim-gun fire, and, since this weapon is a complicated instrument, re(|uiring careful and technical handling, the men of the new machine-gun sections were chosen for their physique, alertness, and intelligence. In most of the newer battalions the section manoeuvred with a wooden gun, the necessary Maxims not being available for some considerable period. Drawn by mules, which earned for the man told off for the care of this animal the ironic title of "trooper," the gun team had to learn many other things than the actual mechanism of the gun. The Maxim is practically a rifle with an automatic breach action. To prevent the rifle barrel becoming over-heated, it is enclosed in a brass water-jacket, and ammunition is fed to the breach by means of canvas belts carrying supplies of cartridges. The recoil of one shot loads and fires the next cartridge, and so on ad tJifinitum, or until the belt is exhausted. This is a very rough description of the very complicated mechanism of the machine-gun, but describes, in general terms, the principle of the weapon. CriSIXG THE BUILDING OF RAFTS AND BRIDGES. THE PICTURE SHOWS THE SKELETON OF A CASK BRIDGE BEING LAUNCHED. Kitchener s A rm i niE Minni.F.SEX imperial yeomanry have been ENCAf.ED ON WIMRLEDON COMMON IN THE WORK OF BREAKING; 'Mil- actual handling of the gun was mas- tered soon enough by these eager young men who had volunteered for the work — more dangerous than the ordinary infantry work, because the rattle of a Maxim usually makes its presence known, and usually ofTers the enemy very few difficulties in the way of locating its exact position. In ad- dition to this, the steam from the water- jacket is also liable to betray its presence, and call upon the devoted "gunners" the fire of enemy artillery. The No. I of the gun — he who actually fires and sights the weapon — must be an excellent shot, for if he misses, he misses not only with one round, but with ten or twenty. The recruit learned the value of Maxim fire, one of the most potent factors in surprise attacks, and a most powerful infantry arm for covering retirements or assisting ad- vances of infantry. "If your gun jams — which means if a cartridge misses fire or refuses to come out after firing— you are a dead man," said the instructor. "See that every cartridge is in Its place in the belt. A little carelessness will cost you your life— and, what is more important, may mean the loss of the gun to the enemy." '"' Grasping the two brass handles of the gun and pressing the double button which controls tlie fire, the gunner can sweep whole areas clean, and, thanks to its mobility, it is possible to carry it on its tripod or wheel it on its light carriage across country which would be impracticable for heavy artillery. It is not generally known by civilians that in some of the sham attacks such as I have described, a wooden rattle, in the style of the old police rattle, which faithfully pro- duces the sound of Maxim fire, was often employed to indicate the presence of that weapon and to accustom Company officers to give their commands in a tone which would rise above the din of firing. "There were three kinds of machine-gun fire," the recruit was told, "ranging fire, in which from ten to twenty rounds are 'loosed off' with the object of securing the range; rapid fire, when the greatest volume of fire is required. This does not neces- sarily mean an absolutely continuous fire. It is necessary after every fifty rounds to pause a little while in order to make certain that the sights are right. And, lastly, traversing fire, which is employed with the object of 'spraying' as wide a front as possible." The machine-gunner largely depends for his instructions upon semaphore signals. Observers would signal "P," to mean that A itchcut 7' .V //' lll\ 95 IMS FOR THE AKMV. llie bullets are striking fifty yards beyond tlie target; and " M " (meaning minus, as tlie other means phis) liiat it is fifty yards short of the target. With Kitcliener's Army came into existence a new variety of machine-gun, the weapon being carried as a side-car to a motor-cycle. The advantage of this new arm had not been full\- tested, but it was obviousl\- an extremelv important addition to the eciuipment of a regiment. The word "gun" is sometimes loosely employed to describe the machine-gun. "Gun," howe\er, invariably means cannon, and the training of the new artillery was one of the most imporlant of Lord Kitchener's tasks. Artillery has played a great part in the war, and we shall see in the next chapter how men were trained to follow in the foot- steps of heroic "L" Battery and the splendid batteries of the Royal Field Artillery, which upon a dozen fields have maintained the high traditions of "The Royal Regiment." To watch the amazing work which was going on all o\er the country was to experience some of the sensations which a dumbfounded French Minister of W^ar confessed on the occasion of his visit to England. M. Millerand said that he was simply astounded at the wonderful results that had been obtained with Britain's new army. Dealing with the visit of the French Minister of War to England, a leading Parisian newspaper said: — "It is not the number of men already with the colours or flowing into the re- cruiting offices which most impressed M. Millerand, but their plu'sical and moral qualities and the remarkable degree of per- UNDER SUSPICION. A PHOTOGRAPHER IS CHALLENGED BY A SENTRY, AND HAS TO INDKKC.O A SEARCHING CROSS-EXAMINATION BY A SERGEANT. 96 Kitcheners Army CROSSING THE CROSS-TREES IS A BALANCING FEAT OF NO SMALL DIFFICULTY, BUT IT IS ONE OF THE THINGS A RECRUIT HAS TO LEARN. fection of their training. He was able to ascertain that, from a physical point of view, the troops he saw at Aldershot, and also at Epsom, could not be surpassed. Not only are these men of a high physical standard, however. The five months which they have spent in camp, training day and night, and in every kind of weather, under condi- tions which — except for shells and bullets — were practically the same as those experi- enced by their comrades at the front, have turned them into trained soldiers. There can be no doubt that these British armies are equal to the best." MOTOR- 'buses ready TO TAKE THE RECRUITS' EQUIPMENT TO CAMP. Kitchener s Army 97 A GKOl 1' Ul- NMIMM. KK(.KI \\- CHAPTER IV THE ARTILLERYMAN IN THE MAKING— HORSEMANSHIP AND QUNNERY- WITH THE ENGINEERS. Simultaneously with the progress of the training of the new Kitchener infantry regi- ments for the great struggle wliich lay ahead, other recruits, drafted into different arms of the service, were as quickly and as steadily drilling and being made ready to assist the infantry when the time came. A story is told by General Sir Robert Baden-Powell that on one occasion, when he was visiting the Kaiser and wit- nessing, with his Imperial host, the great German manoeuvres, the Emperor Wilhelm said to him : "I cannot understand how- the English group their arms. You alwavs put vour artillerv to the right of the line, as being first in importance ; next to that you put your cavalry and your engineers; and, holding the least important place, the in- fantry. Now, in my army, we always put the infantrv first, and we regard all other arms as so many servants to the infantry." Sir Robert's witty reply was that the arms were placed in that order of importance — artillery, cavalry, engineers, infantry, etc. — because we grouped them alphabetically. This war has perhaps decided the truth of the Kaiser's statement that the infantry was the principal arm, and masses of foot soldiers the principal factors in the decision of battles, and that all other services were, indeed, auxiliary. Excellent advantage as N the possession of a preponderance of guns gives to an army, it is, after all, a mechani- cal advantage, easily reinforced and fairly easily replaced when lost. This is not the case with the personnel of the service, with the young and physically sound men, the supply of which is not inexhaustible. Yet the tremendous importance of the guns in modern warfare can scarcely be exaggerated, and Lord Kitchener and his lieutenants industriously began at a very early stage to create great artillery forces and prepare them for war. When we talk of "guns" we, of course, refer to cannon. People sometimes speak of rifles as guns, just as they speak of machine-guns, that is to sa}', Maxims, as guns. But the gun when referred to in the course of this article is the i8J pounder quick-firing cannon which is used by the Royal Field Artillery. There is another branch of the artillery — the Royal Horse Artillery (armed with a i,-?-pounder), and some confusion may arise in the mind of the reader, unversed in the ways of the Army, as to the difTerence between the "field" and the "horse." Both are, strictly speakine, horse artillery batteries. The Roval Horse Artillery, which is our crack artillery, employ a gun which is much liizhter than that which is to be found in 98 Kitchener s A nny the field. The gunners are, moreover, mounted on horses, as distinct from the gunners of the Royal Field Artillery, who have seats on the limber and carriage of the gun. The Royal Horse Artillery is in- tended for mobility and speed, and horse artillery batteries usually accompany cav- alry when they are engaged in distinct operations. I'nder the heading of Field Artillerv are included the larger guns, the howitzers and siege guns of all kinds, used in the field. A third branch of the artillery is the Garrison Artillery. These men are, as a rule, employed only on defensive fortress positions. For instance, all the great arma- ments of Gibraltar are worked by garrison artillerymen ; and in that fortress there are no field or horse artillery of any kind. Men of the garrison artillery are, however, occa- BRINGING UP THE GUNS. — A SMART BATTERY OF FIELD ARTIL 1 Kitchener s A niiy 99 moment exclude tlie Garrison Artillery, which was certainly strengthened by a number of new- men and by Territorial troops, even though the new men were enlisted on the same terms as the remainder of Kitchener's Army — namely, for the duration of ilie war or for three years — and although thev can, in truth, be included under the same head. We mav also pass over the heavier batteries and the more scientific branch of ariillerv, and CHMOND PARK. sionally employed with the heavy gun batteries in the field. Therefore, when we are consider- ing the new forces which Lord Kitchener created, we may for the MARCH. " ACTION 1 KONT I come to the Royal Field Artillery for our ex- amination of the training and substance of the new arm. The .A.rmy List gives us particulars of some 130 batteries' of Field .\rtillery, and to these musf bfe added the large number of reserve batteries of Royal Horse Artillery. The Kitchener recruit's intro'ductif)n to this branch of the .Army depended cither upon his expressed inclination for service with the gunners or upon his phvsical qualifications. Since the horses which draw the guns have quite enough work to do to get these weapons from place to place, it is obviously desirable that the men who ride three of the six horses constituting a gun team should be as light as possible. Therefore, for the drivers of the new artillery, short and Fight lOO Kitchener s A riny THE PREPARATOKV STAGES OK THE W OKK OF THE GU -1 men were chosen. For the gunners, a height standard, superior to what is re- quired for the infantry, is laid down, a higher standard of physique being neces- sary in men who have to lift weights, and must be necessarily called upon to perform heavier manual labour than their brethren of the infantry. A gun is drawn by six horses, the near- side horses being ridden, and the gun itself consists of the limber, the caissons, contain- ing the shells, etc., and the gun itself. That is only the roughest description, but it will probably serve the non-technical reader. In conversation with members of the fine body of men who joined the Artillery, I was impressed by the way thev had followed the events of the war, and especially the gallant work of the Royal Artillery. Certainly there was much to be learnt from the war which was being waged concurrently with their training, there were splendid examples to be faithfully followed. The Royal Horse and the Royal Field Artillery had figured in every one of the earlier en- gagements, and "every battery had done the work of six," to use the words of a General in commending the conduct of the regiment. The retreat from Mons had been accom- plished by the British A.my only with the aid and by the superhuman eflort of the Artillery. Gallant "L" Battery of the Royal Horse Artillery had served the guns to its last man, and by its devotion had suc- ceeded in holding in check the major por- tion of Von Kluck's advance regiment. In the dust of sum'mer, amidst the gales and rains of winter, the tireless batteries were constantly on the mo\e, the cracking whip of the driver sounded across the sodden fields of Flanders as the stained and discoloured Kitchener s A rmy lOI :ekies of artillery forming up to come into action. limbers swayed and bumped over ploughed field and ditch. There was hardly a little copse or wood in the North of France that the Royal Artillery had not utilised to hide their guns, to veil the presence of their precious weapons from enemy airmen who moved above them backwards and forwards with an inquiring- eye. Never an infantry charge developed but Artillery support had first made the assault possible. In one particular instance we were told in a despatch from the Front: — "For ten minutes the Royal Artillery shelled a patch of ground, their shells falling with extraordinary accuracy, and burst- ing with a precision which was almost mar- vellous. They made possible the assault which the Guards Brigade delivered at the expiration of that time." The same thing might with equal truth be said of every attack which the British Infantry delivered. Courage, precision, high technical skill, contempt for fatigue, and a heroism in danger and in time of trial beyond all understanding, these were the characteristics of the Royal Artillery, and these were the traditions which the new recruit assimilated as part of his training. Their enthusiasm in the technical detail of the guns, in the care of their horse teams, the saddling, harness, and the rest of it, was a thing to marvel at. It was natural that men and horses, both new to each other, and both equally new to work re- quired of a Royal Artillery Regiment, should not always see e3'e to eye. I think it was Rudyard Kipling who said in those days that, travelling over the countryside, he occasionally saw "men and horses argu- ing with each other for miles." No wonder. 1 know not what civilian work these horses had been engaged on, or where they were I02 Kitchener s A nii i ' FIELD ARTILLERY AT GLN DRILL NEAR WINDSOR. browsing on quiet summer pastures when the call of King and Country reached them, and they found themselves suddenly com- mandeered for war. But I know that these men — when I saw them, expert horsemen and finished artillery men — were, only a short six months back, packers and ware- housemen, clerks and salesmen, engineers and mechanics, and such like, in London, I Manchester, and other large towns, and small towns, too, for that matter. The war had only been six months old when a ware- houseman of W. H. Smith & Sons, the great newspaper distributors, gained a D.C.M. for conspicuous gallantry in Bel- gium, and a typist in the employ of George Newnes, Ltd., the publishers of the Strand Magazine and this periodical I am now A GUN UNDER rOVER. AN ARTILLERYMAN IS RECEIVING ORDERS BY TELEPHONE. Kitchener s Artny 103 writing, was mentioned in ilie despatclies of Admiral Beatty, and was also awarded the D.C.M. for gallant work on board the Tiger. So, doubtless, many other gallant gunners will be honoured when their day comes, for no work calls for greater bravery and single-handed pluck than that of the men behind the guns. Tiie earlier drill of the Artillery recruit, so far as physical exercises and squad drill were concerned, did not differ in any material degree from that which was the experience of the infantryman. For route marches there was no necessity, as he would not be called upon to walk, thoueh most of the recruits were exercised sergeant of his section. The recruit was to discover that, in addition to being the friend of man, the horse could also be a source of interminable trouble. Our recruit had assumed the cares and responsibilities which usually only come to the parents of young families; for his horse's temper, his cleanliness, his hunger or his thirst, were matters to which he was called upon to give his constant attention. The feet of the beast — and Providence had very unkindly en- dowed him with four — needed examination and picking; he had to be brushed with the right hand and steadied with the left; and for his toilet certain inflexible rules were laid down to which the recruit must adhere, THE ACTION OF SHRAPNEL EXPLAINED IN DIAGRAM. ^it^?^ IIME FUSE SHRAPNEL. — The shell, fired from gun at right against entrenched infantry, bursts about 3o yards in front of the latter and about t5 feet above the ground. The short lines indicate the zone covered by the bullets. PEKCUSSION SHR.\PNEL.— The shell, fired from gun at right against advanciiig infantry, bursts upon hitting the ground, throwing a shower of bullets at approaching men. It is also used against buildings, but is ineffective on soft ground. CASE (SHR.^PN'EL) SHOT.— Used at short range against cavalry. The shell bursts inin-.ed.ately .-.fter leaving the gun. At 200 yards range the Urteral spread is 25 yards. in good, smart tramps to shape theii muscles. Nor was there bayonet exercise, nor a great deal of time spent upon the rifle range. The business of the artillery driver was to get his gun to the appointed place in the shortest possible time, and the job of the gunner was so to lay and direct his fire that he could produce the greatest execution with the smallest expenditure of ammunition. To these ends the training of the artillery recruit was directed. Let us first take the case of the driver, ■with whom no time was lost in introducing him to his "two long-faced friends," as his horses were humorously described bv the or earn a sharp reprimand from his watchful sergeant. The orders were strict. " Vou must start brushing your horse at the off-hand right quarter, and progress steadily toward the head, moving your brush in a circular motion with the coat and against it. You must then cross to the near side of the horse (which is his left side) and brush him on top and under- neath, brush his legs, and finally add the last finishing touches on mane and tail. If he comes in wet from a parade" — and he mostly did in the early days of the Kitchener .Vrmv training — "he must be cleaned before this brushing commences." 104 Kitclic]ic)'s Army Half an hour before the infantry reveille sounded, the trumpets of the artillery were callinij the men to the stables or to the horse lines," which had to be cleaned and made tidy. The first attention to the friend of man took the shape of a rub down with a iiandful of straw and a quick brush over tail and mane. After that the horse must have his breakfast before the young Kitchener soldier could attend to the re- quirements of his own inner man. After parade and the removal of the harness, he must make a very careful inspection for galls and scratches, and report to his sergeant. More food, more water followed, before the recruit was dismissed to his own well-earned dinner. The same ceremony was gone through at night, when the horse was made snug till the following morning. Horses, like human beings, are unequal in temper, but woe betide the unfortunate recruit who so far forgets himself as to retaliate upon his too restless or obstinate charge. Kindness to your horse is the first order of the day in the artillery, and if there is any other strict injunction, it is that the animals shall not be fed without specific orders. Running concurrently with his tuition in the care of horses was another kind of training, which was even more start- ling. He had perhaps come into the Army with no other knowledge of a horse than that it had a number of legs and was of a certain shape, and figured in all the public statues erected to great military com- manders. He had not ridden a horse, though it seemed easy enough, and perhaps he looked forward to his first experience at the riding school with keen pleasure. He was a fortunate man if he looked for- ward to his second experience in the same hopeful spirit. He was taught how to mount. He was given a bare-back horse, inured to the awkwardness of young re- cruits, and a riding master, with a clarion voice and an eagle eye which detected every lapse of the apprehensive horseman, directed him to adopt certain attitudes which, from the point of view of the recruit. THE FIELD (HOWITZER BATTEKV) AKTILLEKY BRINGING THEIR HEAVY GUffl Kitchener s Army lOi \vere as unnatural as ihcy were uncom- fortable. "Keep your toes in, your clbo\\s to the side, and your hands down ; head up, chest out, and look to vour front," roared the riding- master. A very simple position lo take, you miyht think, but one which was forei^'n to all the natural desires of the younXET EXERCISE IN IIVDE PARK. The difficulty of creating 130 new batteries of artil- lery was great . The guns tiiem- selves could be readily cast, but the training ot men and officers — especially offi- cers — was a much more complicated business than get- ting ready the personnel of the infantry. In the first six months of the war the chiefs of the R.A. ac- complished won- ders — ■ how great Jthose wonders vwere history will ^testify. The Cavalry Gene r a l l v Is pe a k i n g, al- though reserye regiments were formed, and were IN IME COl RSE Ol- A MIMIC ISAIILF.. — A M .\l 1 1 1 N E-C. C N Ol- TilE IN POSITION ON A IIAY-RICIC. KOVAl. BEKIS I20 Kitcheners Arinv GETTING READY THE HORSES' MEAL : A |:l '^'l M \\ I III-, ell M I M ALiiiM- attaclied, for the purposes of administration, to existing cavalry regiments, no supreme effort was made to increase largely the force of cavalry at our disposal. Aeroplane and motor-car have greatly minimised the value of this dashing arm; the inventor of barbed- wire has checked its effectiveness in the charge ; never again can there be a charge of a Light Brigade nor can we witness decisive actions such as Frederick the Great secured with his famous cavalry ; during a long period of the war our cavalry were employed in the trenches as infantrymen. Our experience was duplicated in the German and French armies, and only Russia was able, during the winter, to utilise her cavalry to fulfil its proper function. For the cavalry recruit the riding school training was more thorough and more in- tricate than that which the young artillery- man experienced. The budding cavalry- man was taught to ride with his lance, and to employ that lance. He underwent, too, much of the training which the infantry- man was called upon to endure. He might still be profitably employed in making sudden raids upon an enemy's flank, but in the warfare which we experi- enced in the north of France and in Flanders, the enemy's flanks were protected on the one extremity by the sea and on the other by the Swiss frontier, and there was no opportunity, during the long period of trench war, to use our horsemen for the development of cavalry tactics. The lessons of the war taught the cavalry that, in addition to their own duties, thev must undertake duties which ordinarily were consigned to the infantry. At any moment the campaign might develop so tliat the employment of cavalry was impos- sible, and to meet this contingency the new cavalry unit learnt something of trench work, and added to their training a very complete' course of trench-digging. The necessity for this had been made apparent in the fourth, fifth, and sixth months of the war, when the cavalr\- held entrenched lines and beat back the enemy. The i6th Lancers lost the best of their men, and some of the best of their officers, not in the dash- ing cavalry charges with which their name is historically associated, but in the patient and trying work of the trench line in the region of Ypres. It was a cavalry regi- ment, the 5th Dragoons, which made a gallant^charge on foot and drove the enemy out of thei.r trenches. Throughout the war cavalry have per- formed infantry duty without complaint, and without in any way impairing tiieir efficiency as cavalr\'men. Trench warfare, however, was a condition of affairs not likely to last, and whilst the. Kitchener s A rmy 121 Government made the training of ca\air)' a secondary and even a teriiary consideration, men were trained to till up the j;aps in liie existing cavalry formation and to act as reserves against the time when the altered conditions of warfare would allow of the employment of this arm. The cavalryman's day's work began at the same time as the artilleryman's. The trumpet called him to stables with the same regularity, and it he only had one horse to look after, as against the two which the driver of the R.A. had in his charge, it was a different stamp of horse, requiring even more care and attention than the more robust draught horse of the artillery. Royal Engineers If the cavalr)' had to some extent lost its raison d'etre because of the scientific de- velopments of the last century, the corps of Royal Engineers had increased in import- ance from the very causes that had diminished the glories of the cavalry arm, which had touched its zenith in the mis- taken but glorious charge of Balaclava. The Royal Engineers is a title which covers a dozen different services. There is the field engineer, who constructs bridges and roads, who lays down pontoons and fixes field telephones and telegraphs, who plans and makes trenches and tortifications, who mines bridges and destroys railway lines — and builds them again when an opportune moment arrives. There is the engineer who operates those telephones and telegraphs. There is the engineer who is an expert in explosives; the engineer who can build; the engineer who can only de- stroy — you might go on to the end of this chapter, dividing and sub-dividing the duties, responsibilities, and qualities of this remarkable corps. Every engine of de- struction which science has given to us has been operated in the first case by the Engineers. The artillery, no less than the infantry, depend very largely upon the engineer's knowledge for their success. The cavalry must work hand in hand with him. The Army Service Corps is dependent upon him, and the Royal Army RTedical Corps, before it can set about its merciful work of suc- couring the wounded and caring for the sick, must first consult the engineering authorities. ■1 TROOPERS CLEANING UP HARNESS IN READINESS FOR AN INSPECTION. 122 Kitchener s A rmy A TARPAULIN RAFT BUILT BY THE gTH NORTH STAFFORDSHIRE REGIMENT AT HASTINGS. IT IS CARRYING SIXTY-TWO MEN. A Let us deal first with the young field engineer, the knowledge he is called upon to acquire and the method of his training. He differed very little from the blue-suited infantryman in the early days of his train- ing, and it was only when the earlier stages had passed, and when the infantryman was addressing himself to the business of attack and defence, that the engineer recruit moved by another road to his appointed end. That he had to build bridges, learn the value of strut and stay, acquaint himself with break- ing strains, and accomplish wonders with pontoons, huge flat-bottomed boats carried on wagons, we know. The growth of the Boy Scout movement has familiarised us ,1 ^^^^^^^^^^^. 1^ HI Hjj^^" -^kL B Ivju^^^^^^^^^^^^^H ^^ Tpr ' '^•v,- * Ml -^T^^^^ •^Oi*. ^S 1 ^^^^^ P ■ ■■1 * ~3H^H^^^IIv!^^^l -^- MKN OF THE ROYAL ENGINEERS BUILDING A PONTOON BRIDGE. Kitcheners Army 123 CHILLY WORK. — BRIDGE CONSTRUCTION OVER A HALF-FROZEN SI REAM. with the method of building miniature bridges for crossing little streams, and it is not necessary in a work of this character to go into details as to the technical difficulties which the recruit had lo overcome. \\'e may dismiss, too, the case of the Royal En- gineer "driver," who brought the pontoons and the field telegraphs and the various impedimenta of the corps into action, for his training was very similar to that which has been described in the case of the driver in the Royal Field Artillery. The engineer recruit must learn as much about artillery as the gunner of that regiment knows. He must add to that a certain technical knowledge which the gun- A PRACTICAL LESSON IN BRIDGE-BL'ILDING. — EXPLAINING FIRST STEPS TO RECRUITS. 124 Kitcheiiers Ar7ny BL'iLDlNG A BRIDGE AT BRANKSOME. — CARUVING THE PILES TO THE STREAM. porary character; whilst the floating bridge is that which is laid down, often under fire of the enemy, and is a rough wooden roadway, supported by pon- toons (flat-bot- tomed boats whicli are carried on wagons), casks, ordinary boats or rafts. There are other bridges which are intended to cover the gaps in an existing bridge whicli has been broken at one Ipoint. There were certain rough methods of calcu- ner is not asked to acquire. In the bridge work his knowledge was complete. The fixed bridge, rest- ing on the bot- tom ; the flying bridge; the float- ing bridge, built on pontoon, cask, boat, or raft, were the A B C of his craft. He must learn to work out the buoyancy of boats or rafts by mathematical cal- culations. H e must know the minimum space for camps, and the most efTective cover for artillery. The bridges which engineers are called upon to create may be roughly divided into three kinds. The fixed bridge, which rests on the bottom on a trestle or pile. This variety of bridge is one used to replace temporarily important bridges which have been destroyed on the line of march, and its creation is a matter of davs and sometimes weeks. The flying bridge is one of a more tem- DRUING LS lllE I'lLES Wllil A MONKEY AND TACKLE. lalion which the recruit had to carry in his head. \ bridge which would take infantry in fours, crowded, would carry field guns, howitzers, and ordinary wagons. He had to learn when one type of bridge could be used with advantage, when another was wholly unsuitable. If the bottom of a stream could be touched across its entire width, a trestle bridge was the most Kitcheiur s A rmy 125 economical melhod of bridging. If a float- ing bridge was to be employed, he had to work out its buoyancy in pounds. 15ridge building was a science which called into employment all his mathematical know- ledge. All these things the new Royal Engineer had to know. He learnt, too, the subtle difTerences between gun-cotton, dynamite, and gun- powder, and had certain tables fixed for him as to the amount of each which might be employed in the demolition of buildings or bridges. To make sure, he was taught to use 50 per cent, more in the face of an enemy than in ordinary circumstances. The exact quantity of gun-cotton to destroy a wall, a pier, an arcli, or a girder he committed to memory. None of the grim possibilities of war were left untouched by his instructor. " If the guns have to be abandoned, destroy them," said the calm engineering officer, discussing the matter with the same placidity as if he were a professor of psycho- logy laying down academic premises. He detailed the correct way of destroying a gun. "You will load it with shell, pack vour gun-cotton charge behind it, and fire. Put two pounds of gun-cotton for a 3-inch gun, and double the charge for every inch of calibre over ,"; inches." Gun-cotton was of no use against wire entanglements, and heavy explosive shells aimed at these obstacles merely made them worse by creating pitfalls under them. PULLING THE f F.NTIiF. SPAN OF A IKIUGE INIO POSLflON. "When you're looking out for fords," his instructor went on, "remember that cavalr\- want 4 feet and infantry 3 feet. Guns want 2 feet 4 inches." It was an interesting course, unlike any other in the world, fascinating to the tyro, and destined to be not only immenselv helpful to him in his Army career, but to assist him materially in ordering his thoughts when he returned to civilian life. The recruit did not know, until he had been made acquainted with the fact, that if you multiply the breadth, the depth, and "the velocity of running water by 9,000, you dis- cover in your sum the gallons that pass in twenty-four hours. If you wanted to secure an idea of the velocity, you had but to throw a floating object into the stream, watch how- many feet it drifts in a minute. If it drifts 6, 6 is the velocity figure. And there was much more that the en- gineer recruit had to learn ; to indicate only one or two subjects suggests a rough idea of some of the training which he went through. The breaking strain of rope, the gradient of roads, the tying of knots, the scientific handling of huge bulks, the mathematical precision which attaches to the building of modern fortifications; of these things he must have a working knowledge, and that working knowledge must be instilled into his mind in the first few months of his service. The Royal Engineers is largely made up of mechanics, and men who possessed anv trade were care- fully drafted so that their civilian knowledge might be of the greatest service to the Army. A farrier presenting him- self for enlistment at one of the re- cruiting offices would be very unlikely to find himself in an in- fantry regiment. A working elec- t r i c i a n with a [knowledge of telegraph and telephone instru- ments would also find the letters R.E. attached to his name. It was easier for the pro- verbial camel to 126 Kitchener s A rmy get through the eye of a needle than it was for a trained mechanician to reach the in- fantry regiments of the Army, unless, of course, he expressed a desire to serve in that capacity. The telegraphists of the Royal Engineers were strengthened largely by men who were drafted from the General Post Office, and it may be news to many that the experts engaged at Army headquarters were, in the main, men of a great racing staff. In every bic post office division there is a movable body of men, who travel from one race- course to another to deal with the immense amount of telegraphic correspondence which arises out of betting, &c. These comprise some of the most expert workers in the service — men who can handle hundreds of thousands of messages in the shortest time. he could say with truth that he was quali- fied to describe himself as a competent "engineer." There was no limit to the length of a telephone or telegraph wire which the Royal Engineer could lay at a gallop. The wire was carried in big reels and was paid out as the wagon went forward at full gallop. Caught up by the horsemen, and thrown clear of the road, it was fixed with extraordinary rapidity by the men who fol- lowed behind, to tree, post, and fence — whichever offered the best advantage. It is seldom necessary to lay more than ten miles of new line in one day, for armies do not progress at any very rapid rate, and temporary "air lines" are only necessary to connect the shifting headquarters of the various staffs. All the time thev are I MEN OF THE CYCLIST CORPS AT EPSOM PARADING AFTER A HEAVY FALL OF SNOW. Though they were not enlisted for Kitchener's Army, and, indeed, came into the strength of the Army department in quite an unusual way, they were valuable additions to the new strength of the Royal Engineers. The men who could lay telegraph lines at full gallop across a country were neces- sarily trained in the service, but engineer officers were agreeably surprised to find that, even in this expert work, their new- men were able to make almost as good a showing as the more experienced members of the corps. This was part of the training of the Royal Engineer recruit. He concen- trated till he became a specialist in his job ; he learnt to w'ork swiftly but thoroughly; and there came a time in his training when operating, other branches of the Royal En- gineers are repairing the main lines which are usually operated in time of peace, and can be easily put in working order pro- viding the destructive enemy has left the posts standing. There was no shortage of instructors. The great engineers of England, the archi- tects, the master minds who create towns, the brilliant railroad workers who have laid their lines across the wastes of Africa and South America, the builders of bridges, the diggers of wells in arid places — all these came forward to offer their assistance to the overworked headquarters' staff, and by lecture, example, and personal tuition, succeeded in developing the raw material. Kitcheney s Army \ 2 27 THE lOTH SERVICE BATTALION OF THE ROVAL WARWICKSHIRE REGIMENT AT SIGNALLING INSTRUCTION. The recruitino^ officers found the trades unions of Great Britain of invaluable assist- ance. A man might describe himself as a bricklayer or as an engineer, as a farrier or a forge hand, in a light-hearted moment, when he was no more than a labourer or an assistant to the skilled workers of these trades. A trade union card, however, solved all difficulties, and the trade union card, properly attested, brought men into the engineers to a rate of pay much higher than they could have enjoyed in an infantry regiment. Britannia was no niggard in point of payment. She paid fair wages to all, and offered the voung mechanical stu- dent privileges which he could not have secured in civilian life. She took the tech- nical students from the schools and put them in the Flying Corps, to nurse the motors and to assist in the work of recon- struction. She took a large number of these for the R.E., and gave them no cause, even from the sordid point of view of wage- earning, to regret that thev had taken the step which made them Army men. Alen with a knowledge of telegraphy were made welcome. The hundreds of voung men who made wireless telegraphy their hobby, Britannia found instant employment for. The Royal Engineers, with their port- able masts and their flying aerials, furnished the Army with this means of communica- tion. Though not actually attached to the Royal Engineers, one of the new Kitchener battalions of infantry was specially designed to render valuable assistance to R.E. in preparing their field fortifications. This was a navvies' battalion, to which Mr. Ward, the Labour leader, and Member of Parlia- ment, was a p p o inted as Captain. Mr. Ward himself, i n his younger days, had been a soldier and had fought in tile Egyptian c a m - paign, and his position as head of the Navvies' Union made his new appointment of peculiar value. A MOTOR-CVCLIST AT SEMAPHORE PRACTICE. 128 Kitcheners Army The Navvies' Battalion was made up of those brawny men, the hardest-muscled of our citizens, who are engaged in peace time upon road construction, the rougli work of building railways, bridges, etc. Many of these men were much older than the average soldier, but the British navvy is accounted quite good at fifty. As trench and fortification builders, the Navvies' Battalion was an invaluable acquisition to the British Army, and the man who first had the idea of its formation deserves much credit. Even as the new units of the Artillery could talk with pride of the work of their corps in the field, so might the young en- gineer speak of the work which the Royal Engineers had accomplished during the present war. The annals of the corps are filled with incidents of unselfish devotion to duty. The officer who was shot dead after making three attempts, and the last suc- cessful, to destroy a bridge under the enemy's fire; the sapper who continued, thougji wounded, in repairing a barbed-wire entanglement under heavy fire ; the heroic corporal who destroyed yet another bridge though shot at close range — these are only typical instances where the men of the corps have shown a total oblivion to danger in the performance of their duties. The "Kitchener Engineer" learnt much on parade ground and workshop, but he imbibed the spirit of the corps from the daily example which the "old" Engineers were setting him. VISUAL TRAINING. — THE MEN HAVE TO DISCO\-ER A SUPPOSED GERMAN MACHINE-GUN WHICH IS MARKED ON THE MAP. Kitcheners Army I 29 LXIVEKSUV AND rUULIC SCHOOLS AMBLl.ANCli COKl'S ON A y'lELD DAV Al KI'sOM. CHAPTER V i---.TME TRAINING OF THE R.A.M.C. RECRUITS, -ARMY SERVICE CORPS. THE NAVAL BRIGADE. knowledjje were work for which that of the VIZ., Amongst the first to answer tlie call of Lord Kitchener for men were the young students from St. Bartholomew's, St. Thomas's, Guy's Hospital, and all the other great hospitals throughout the country, young men whose medical education was not yet completed, but whose experience and most valuable for the they gladly volunteered, Royal Army IMedical Corps. These young men were quick! v drafted to the new medical formations grouped about the great military hospitals at Aldershot, Woolwich, Xetley, Portsmouth, York, Dublin, and Edinburgh. Aldershot was naturally the most important of these training centres, for this is the ad- ministrative heart of the Medical Service. Possibly the standard of the Royal Army Medical Corps was never so high as it was in the six months following the outbreak of war, for a large proportion of the new acces- sions to its ranks was made up of young medical students, who came straight from the hospitals to give their services to the New Army. Although the short musket r^' service was dispensed \\ith (since, at any rate theoretic- ally, we were fighting a civilised nation, and the musketry course was only included with a view to the R.A.M.C. man's self- protection when Britain was engaged in war with savage tribes), the new R.A..M.C. recruit went through very much the same training as the infantrv soldier. At first his training was designed to fit him to deal effectively and immediatelv with wounded cases in the field. He learnt stretcher drill, arranged to familiarise him with the carriage of wounded. He was taught how to lift and carry the sick and maimed, how to break step so that there was no unevenness of motion, and how to move expediliouslv with his stretcher to the jioint where he was required. He attended many classes, where he was lectured on the various physical parts of the wonderful and complicated human body. The lectures were not chosen hap- hazard or at the whim of the instructors, but followed a course laid down in the R..'\.M.C. manual. Ilic theories of nurs- ing were thoroughly discussed. .A. rough outline of physiology, including the loca- tion of bones and important arteries, was given bv surgical lecturers. "The Manual of the Roval .\rmv .Medi- cal Corps" ga\e the awe-stricken recruit some idea of his responsibilities. He was i30 Kitchener s A rmy told there that he was responsible in peace and in war for the nursing of the sick, the dispensing- of medicines, charge of equip- ment, making requisitions for fuel, light, provisions, and all supplies and repairs, tin cooking and expendiliu-e of diets, the custody of patients' kits, tiie cleanliness of the hospital and its surroundings, and for bedding, linen, and clothing. When he nnide acquaintance \\ith the Armv regulation stretcher he learnt some verv useful things. "There are forty-six ways of lifting a wounded man," said the cynical officer, directing one stretcher squad at Aldershot, "and fortv-five of them are wrong. The onlv right wav of lifting the wounded is the one I am teaching you now. It has never been improved upon, and I have no great hope that vou will succeed w here the ^ledical Council has failed." One man at each end of the stretcher, with a leather sling over his shoulders, the loops at the end supporting the handles of the stretcher poles, and a man on each side rendering what support they could by grasping the poles in the centre, made a stretcher part\-. l"he two bearers must not THE 1ST s li FIELD AMBLLANCE PRACTlitt •NDED MAN BEING BROUGHT IN, SUPPORTED ON I WO RULES PLACED BETWEEN A COUPLE OF P.ICYCLES. walk "left, right, left," and they were taught that the step advo- cated in a popu- lar song offered less distress to the wounded occu- pant. In other words, they were told to "shuffle along." For several days in succes- sion I watched thf drilling ot thr stretcher scjuad go forward on the barrack scjuare. Some of the men were told off to act as wounded soldiers, grinning a little uniasilv at first ;is thev read the injuries thev were suDDosed lo have suffered, neatlv detailed on 4 ^ 1 Kifchcju 'r's .1 nn \ ' 13^ tu tile huitoiis (ij tlieir ' LAND MOISTED HRIGADF. jiF. mkeman's lift." of a corporal. lirst aid to the .inee with the carLls attaciied jackets. 'I'iien, under the criiicali\ watchful eve four recruits would render "specimen case," in accord- injuries described on the label. Once again there was dinned into ilieir ears the only proper way of lifiiui^- the "suflerer" on to the stretcher, "L'nder no circumstances," reiterated the instructor, "must you lift a wounded man 1)\- his arms; you must not dra"' him into any uncomfortable position in order to sa\e the stretcher bearers a little exira exertion. The wounded part itself — panicuiarly if a bone is alTected — must be grasped firmly by one of the bearers while ihe lifting- pro- cess is going on." And in other spheres of his work, the recruit was taught there was onlv one wav to do things — the " Armv wav," long-pro\en to be the best. The R.A.M.C man learnt the most etTective methods of stopping bleeding, of applying splints, bandages, and dressings. The \oicc of the instructor came again, telling him that C|uick aclion and efficiencv must mark all that he did. "Every soldier going into action carries a field dressing, consisting of a triangular bandage, safety-pins, and antiseptic dress- now a SOLDIER IS REMOVED FROM THE HATTLKFIKLD. HIS WOCNDS ARE NANDAGED, AND HE IS THEN SECCKELY STRAIM'ED ON TO THE HORSE. 1^' Kitchener s A inny ^,1^ ^. n -=;^%^a^SvS1 •\ — ' r III* ^^i^fliSiiJutM:^^ NO. 2 FIEI.U AMIU l.ANCE OF Til A R.A.M.C. HOSPITAL IN THE FI D' 1 Kitckencrs A rmy 00 , \I, ARMY MEDICAL CORPS ON PARADE. lOWING THE KITCHEN AND COOKING FACILITIES '34 Kiichenci's A n/i i TRANSFERRING ^npeed was severely controlled — the maximum being 12 miles an hour. Now and again the driver, especially t h e driver of the leading vehicle, was unable to suppress his in- clinations for a j o V - r i d e, and would put on a spurt, and if he was left to his own initiati\e he would at times increase the speed of the train to 18 — 20 miles an hour : but when one bears in mind the rough pa\e of the French roads it does not require a very vivid imagination t o picture the rolling and swaying ot t h e ungainly vehicle, w h i c h was often piled with goods to a maxim imi height. The result was that the officer ifi charge of the train maintained a sharp vigilance, and suppressed joy-riding with a stern hand — a restriction, by the way, which was needed. Upon reaching the camp the whole of the vehicles discharged their con- tents and pulled away ready for the next run. This being the first war in which mech- anical transport (other than steam) had been used, the trainin"- of this section of Kitchener's Army had necessarily to be based upon actual experience gained in France. The instructors were men who had passed through several months' hard duty at the Front, and had been carefullv selected for their ability to keep their motor going, reducing repairs and breakdowns to a minimum, and establishing their capability to effect serious repairs with speed. Each road train included two travelling work- shops, where roadside repairs might be effected, but heavy repairs and general over- hauling were carried out either at the camp or at the base as opportunity permitted. The routine comprises the carrying by mechanical transport of both commissariat and ammunition, which is divided into two OFFICERS OF THE AKMV SERVICE CI distinct sections. 1 was informed that each division comprises 320 motor vehicles divided into two trains each of 160 cars. For the most part these are vehicles of the heavy type, such as motor lorries of 5 tons capacity. The supply of ammunition and commissariat is carried out every day, and the principle is as follows: — • The officer in charge of the mechanical transport receives indication of the nearest railway station from which the supplies can be transferred. This distance varies; Kitchener s Army '47 to-day it may be 15 miles, to-morrow it iii;i\- be 30. The Commanding Oflicer, however, knowing the speed possibihties of his train, can gauge how many miles he can cover in the time allotted. The railway station varies also. To-day it may be a big ter- minus or junction possessed of miles of sidings; but to-morrow it mav be just an ordinary village station with only one short siding, but in each case the procedure is the same. it is not easv for the ordinar\- ci\ilian to ~l! V RESERNE DEPOT. DEI'TFORD. realise how tremendous is the task of satis- fving- the mvriad needs of an armv such as we have now' in the field. An official descriptive despatch gave a staggering glimpse of the mammoth sup- plies that our Army in France and Belgium swallowed up. The vastness of the work of maintaining the Army mav be gauged from a few figures. In one month there were issued to the troops: — 450 miles of telephone wire; 570 telephones; 534,000 sandbags; 10,000 lb. of dubbin for boots; 38,000 bars of soap; 150,000 pairs of socks, and ioo,o<^)() pairs of boots. In ten davs the number of fur waist- coats given out amounted to iiS,i()(}, while during the same period 315,(^75 flannel belts were distributed. The way that insignifi- cant items mount up where large numbers of men are concerned is shown by the fact that the weight of the axerage weekly issue of vaseline for the feet is ii\e tons, and that of horseshoes 100 tons. The same despatch loiulied on the lar- ranging variety of articles needed for different branches of the service. Broadly speaking, it told us, the Ordnance Department sup- plies the .\rmy with all the clothing, ('(luip- ment, arms, am- munition, tools, a p p 1 i a n c e s, machinerv, and expendable mate- rial that can be re(]uired, f ro m g u n s weighing man\' tons to tin-tacks. In a word, it is the Military Univer- sal Provider. Some idea of t h e complexity of one side of the work of the A r m \- Service Corps c a n b e gathered by re- ference to the official "V'ocabu- lar\- of Stores," w h i c h corre- sponds to the price-list of a large shop, and contains 50,000 separate items. Stocks of 50,000 different articles have to be procured, transported, stored, and issued to the soldiers in the field ! The war brought to the ixjlours men from every station of life, and it is a notable fact, which I have verified from a dozen different authoritative sources, that whereas the voimg men of England who were drawn ifrom the better or the middle classes were content and indeed desirous of being in- cluded in the infantrv masses which were I4S Kitcheners A rmy IN FULL FIGHTING ORDER AND EQLIPPEl) FOR EVERY EMERGENCY. -THE BK '!'' THIS GRAPHIC PORTRAYAL OF EVERYTHING AN INFANTRYMAN CARRIES ON ACTU'E SERVICE WILL ASTONISH MAW WHO HAVE >^LV JACKET SERVED OUT TO OUR 1 ROOPS IS AN ADDITIONAL ITEM ^^ Kitcheners A rmy "'f DIER'S BURDEN IN THE FIRING-LINE PICTURED EROM A I'O Z. Copyright, llhititriitcd London yews. ' \ IE IDEA OF THE QUANTITY OF ARTICLES INCLLDED IN THE I :Ollr>n;N I OF A SOLDIER OF THE LINE. THE WINTER GOATSKIN SON IMEs HE CARRIES ALSO EXTRA RATIONS AND FUEL. Kitchener s A riiiy FULLY-TRAINED MEN OP Kl I ( IIENKK s AUMV KEADV 1 OR illK FRONT. forming, men of the labour cla-ss had verv definite views as to the ijranch of the service in wJHcli their \vori^ ■-SI*Mt^*L^ '^^^^/^^■ii k >■ i K r ( ■ -A ■n r^ V ;. Bi • f I ^ A itc/icncr s . / /v;/^ 157 T OKNCHURCH. a s . sometlnni; was beinj;' con- iributc-d to tlie lumiiKin cause. The makers of motor-cars and motor - cycles were so heavil\- engat^ed t li a t many of them were obhged to cease supply- ing civilian cus- t o m e r s alto- gether. Sheffield, instead of manu- facturing silver- plate goods, worked s e \' e n days a week to provide the Army with its bayonets and its steel- ware; \\'ol- mingham provided small arms and high ex- plusives; the mills of I 1 udderstield and Dewsbury worked at full pressure to clothe the .Vrmy warmly, liven ladies' dress- makers were hard at work on soldiers' uniforms — you might take the railway guide of England and go through all the great industrial towns, and sav of each: "This did something to help forward the great cause." " We owe," said a member of the Russian commission which visited lingland in the course of the war, "a very great debt of gratitude to industrial England. It is amaz- ing that, with the .\rmy she is putting in the field, with the great Xavv she supports, and with the calls which are made upon her in her oversea wars, that she is able to con- tinue to be as she is- power in the world." the greatest industrial The Man who Planned it The man to whom Great Britain is indebted for the accomplishment of this A liUGLE COMPAW, ;|;D Ol'ICEN VRfOUIA's RIM.ES, l'RAcn.MN(. IN Kli IIMONH PARK. verhampton was bus\- dav and night preparmg great stocks of leather for harness, saddle, and eciuipmenl ; the fac- tories of Northampton turned out iiimdrcds of thousands of pairs of boots; Bir- miracle is Lord Kitchener; it was not only to his genius for organi.sation that the raising of this new .Army was possible, but what is e\en of greater moment, it was Lord l\iiclu-ner who at the very outset saw 1^8 Kitchener s A rniy .AT IHK DOL'HI.l:. — l-.AKLV MOKXING PllVSR.M. IRAIMNG. what the war meant for tliis ccnintry, with "a gigantic conception" of what military only our little Regular Army at her dis- requirements would be necessary to see the posal. It was Lord Kitchener who quickly thing through, and the Spectator very truly formed what Mr. Bonar Law aptlv termed observed: "Other men and lesser men, 1 illfflliinfl SOON TO BE MADE SAILORS.— " RAW MATERIAL" ARRIVING Al lUK tiaslAL PALACE. Kitchener s A rmv 159 N.WAL HHIGAOE KlXUfllS lOWMING W Al I IIK IKVSIAI. l'\L\(l., even though the\' niiyht liave had enouj^h onl\' lo small iiiihtary action, and that there- imagination to see what migiit and fore ail we could be expected to do, and all ought to be done, \\ould in the emer- we could do, since we were imprepared from gency have been daunted by the task the military point of view, was to send before them. Thev would have argued abroad a comparati\ely small but efficient that it was too late to trv anv new svstem. Expeditionary Force, and to keep that force that we were committed to great naval but thoroughly equipped and thoroughly well AS ON HOARD SHIP. — THE HAMMOCKS IN WHICH IMF. MliN SLEEP. i6o Kitchener s A rniy supplied willi mt-n. It is probable thai no siatesinan on either bench would have attempted to do more than keep up the lixeditionary Force and develop the Terri- torials. Happily, it seemed otherwise to Lord Kitchener. The departure of the first instalments of the lixpeditionary {""orce ap- peared to leave the military cupboard almost bare. The reserves of equipment and of rifles were, we will not say exhausted, but dangerously reduced by mobilisation. The condition of our arsenals showed that the Government had never contemplated or pre- pared for a great improvisation of troops, and had been content to shape our military policy wholly on the idea of a moderate- sized Expeditionary Force. Faced with such a situation, Lord Kitchener's was indeed a gigantic, nay, a glorious, concep- tion, and one worthy of the best traditions of the nation. "To resolve, as Lord Kitchener did, that he would not hear the word ' impossible,' but that at one and the same time he would keep the Expeditionary Force going, double the Territorials, and raise a new Army on a scale to which the history of war affords no parallel, was worthy of Chatham himself. We cannot say more." It must always be borne in mind that not only had the two millions of men required to be found by voluntary enlistment, but equipment of every conceivable description had to be made. "Men more flightv and with less strength of judgment," continued the Spectatnr. "miglu have argtjed : ' It is no good to "think of beginning to manufacture machines, to manufacture rifles six months hence. The war ma\- be over by then. What we must do is to concentrate upon the needs olf tne ne.xt six weeks.' Lora Iviicliener was fortunately a man capable of taking long views. He was not depressed. He made up his mind that the w'ar would be a long war, and therefore it was worth while to prepare machinery which would only begin to give practical results six months hence. He was not content with wild efforts at jerrybuilding, but determined that his corner-stones should be well and truly laid. Accordingly he began the tremendous task (jf arraying the manhood of the nation for war, and of developing, organising, and exploiting its great commercial resources for the provision of rifles, machine-guns, great guns, ammunition small and great, clothes and equipment, bayonets and swords, and all the thousand things needed by an army from huts to tents, from water- proofs to field-glasses, from saddles to motor-cars. The Roman Senate thanked their General because he had not despaired of the Republic. Well may we thank ours because last August he not only did not despair of the Republic in the abstract, but also did not despair of the Republic's power to give us men, and also of its power to improvise the equipment for those men. Once more, — ' a gigantic conception,' and one which the country is not likely to forget." I have so far dealt only with the men of Ivitchener's Army. W^hile thev were being trained, our Territorial Army and our Yeomanry had welcomed the chance of proving their worth. In the next and con- cluding number I will tell the story of their rally to the flag and how the Empire made use of them at home and abroad. AT THE CRYSTAL I'ALACF..— DRILLING ON THE FAMOUS FOOTHALL GROUND Kitchener s A rmy 161 WESTMORLAND AND CUMBERLAND YEOMANRY AT FIELD MANCEUVRES. CHAPTER VI HOW THE TERRITORIALS ANSWERED THE CALL— SPECIAL REGIMENTS THE TRAINING OF THE NEW OFFICERS. Few people in England, and nobody on the Continent, fully realised that all the time Kitchener's Army was in course of creation yet another force, already in being, was growing by the side of it, employing exactly the same methods of training, and differing so little in appearance as to be mistaken by the uninitiated for the regular soldier. This was the Territorial Army. We may hope that when the war is over some method will be discovered for hon- ouring the men who not only went will- ingly to the service of the country, but had for many years been devoting their spare time to preparation for the in- evitable conflict. Evolved by Lord Haldane when he was Minister of War from the old Volunteer Army, the Territorials numbered roughly, on the outbreak of war, some 10,000 officers and 250,000 men. They had been attending camp, some of them for many years, were conversant with all the drill, ceremonial and practical, associated with military training; but since they had not been working together continuously, it was inevitable that they lacked something of X the moral and the tone of the professional soldier. Their mobilisation came at an opportune moment. The order arrived at a time when the annual camps were break- ing up, and the Territorials had only suffi- cient time to go home and arrange their affairs before they were again speeding back to the point of concentration. This time the mobilisation had a new and stern significance. No longer was it the annual outing, to which city men went with a feeling that, however hard they might work, they were going to get a lot of fun out of their ex- perience ; but it was, they knew, to the grim work of real war that they would be asked to direct their attention. The Call to "Imperial Service" This view of the business at hand was more than confirmed when Lord Kitchener called for volunteers for service abroad. Under the terms of his enlistment the Territorial does not undertake to serve out of the British Isles, but no sooner had the question been put to him tiian he gave- his answer, and it was an answer practically l62 unanimous. T li e ^vhole of this splen- did force — half- trained, it is true, hut well equipped and armed and complete in every respect with its ar- tillery, enfjineers and medical ser- vice — offered itself for duty at wliat- ever point Lord Kitchener thoujjht t h e Territorials might serve their •country best. General Bethune, the commandant of the Territorial force, is one of the strong- est men who has occupied that posi- tion, and it has been due to his energetic and fearless man- agement of the force that it reached the point etficicncv at which we found it Kitchener s A rmy THE INNS OF COURT OFFICERS TRAINING CORP of the outbreak of war. How would the at Territorial force be employed ? That was THE HANTS REGIMENT HALT BV THE ROADSIDl* Kitchoier s A rmy i6 Tl, devil's own ") TRAINING IN TEMPLE GAKUENS. the question which every mnn was asi:sf'^--- . '-^v^-^'^^er^-^ Empires met . Lithe and active Indian troops, sinewy Austra- lians, those pink and white Terri- torial boys — now growing hard of thew and mahog- any of face under cloudless skies — these, with a sprinkling of regular troops which had been left for the pur- pose, began to make hard the way of the in- vader. It is not my purpose in this publication to de- scribe the first great Turkish attack and the disastrous consequences which attended our enemy on that occasion. It is sufficient to say that the Territorial proved himself upon that field to be a first-class figbting man, worthv of his high calling. In Malta great events were going for- ward, in which the Territorial took his part. Malta is on the high road to the East, one of the busiest "roadways" of the world, and it gained in liveliness from the fact that V A FIELD TELEPHONE OPERATOR OF THE GLOUCESTER TERRITOIUALS COMMUNICATING INFORMATION TO HEADQUARTERS. Doubtless from Malta he saw all the preparations which were being made for the bombardment of the Dardanelles; since the preparations for liiis, one of the decisive and certainlv one of the most brilliant achievements of the war, must have been made at this great naval base. The Territorial who found himself at Gibraltar had less excitement, and was even denied the fun which in normal times ot peace could be found in an occasional visit I/O Kitchener s A rmy to the Spanish terri- tory across tlie neu- tral ground. 5pecial Regiments Associated with llie Territorial movement is a large number of Yeomanry regiments, all of which volun- teered for service in other lands. It is not too much to say that the Yeomanry of Eng- land were amongst the best trained of the purely volunteer troops. In the main these forces are made up of countrvmen, healthy, vigorous dis- ciples of outdoor life and field sports, and having a lifelong ac- quaintance with that "friend of man " who is the terror of the cavalry recruit. It is a notable fact that a Yeomanry regiment was the first of the Field-Marshal Sir John French. If it was Territorials engaged in the great war, its the first, others soon followed. Not all the services having been specially referred toby Territorials were taken for service in India OFFICERS OF THE BEDFORDSHIRE REGIMENT SNATCIII^ THE CIVIL SERVICE RIFLES, I5Tl^ A itcheiiers A rmy 171 jeinjT fit to take their place in the fighting inc, the names of the London Scottish, the Artists' Rifles, the Honourabite Artillery Company, and the SufTolk Regiment occur to me. Of tlie Honourable Artillery Company, which stands first Territorial corps by reason of its ancient beginnings, much has been written. It is the pride of the Com- pan}', which includes infantry units bearing the same relation to the Territorial batta- ions as the Brigade of Guards does to the infantry of the line, that it is ready at all times for war. • This is probably not quite accurate in fact, though it is certain that the discipline and the efficiency of the Corps are of a very MY OF LONDON. ON A ROUTE MARCH. 1 72 Kitcheners Army THE SECOND BATTALION OF ll OS The units I have mentioned rendered an excellent account of themselves, and the following were also spoken of in General French's third despatch : — The Northum- berland, Northamptonshire, North Somer- set, Leicester, and Oxfordshire Regiments of Yeomanry, and the Hertfordshire and Queen's Westminster Battalions of Terri- torial Infantrv. "The conduct and bearing of these units under fire," said Sir John French, "and the efficient manner in which they have carried out the various duties assigned to them, have imbued me with the highest hope as to the value and help of the Territorial troops generally." Everybody has heard of the exploits of the London Scottish, whilst a company of the 4th Suffolk Regiment, a Territorial corps recruited entirely in Ipswich and the neighbourhood about, did splendid work at the taking of Givenchy. Indeed, this ex- ploit may be described as one of the most brilliant feats of the war. The enemy had come down, driven out the troops who held the trenches to the east of the village, and had seized upon the village itself, organis- ing it for defence. The German advance had been so unexpected and his success so imforeseen, that for the moment it seemed that he would jeopardise the whole of the British line. An army corps which had been in reserve was hurried forward to grapple with the situation, and in the mean- time the Manchester Regiment and a com- pany of the 4th Suffolks delivered a furious counter-attack in face of outnumbering odds, and, in spite of the fact that they were met by a most terrible concentration of rifle and machine-gun fire, they seized one end of the village and held their position until the relieving corps came up to complete the German discomfiture. It is in reason that there should be an inequality of efficiency in regiments which have only one opportunity in the course of a year to exercise together. Much depends upon opportunities for meeting, upon whether the corps has already acquired some traditions, and generally upon its com- position. Some regiments are especially favoured in that all tlie companies are drawn from a restricted area. In other cases there are company headquarters at towns wide apart, and, save at the annual training, men have no opportunity of meeting and har- monising one with the other. It is because such regiments as the Kitchener s Anny ^Th DON SCOTTISH IN TRAINING. London Scottish are recruited in one city, and the members of the corps meet g;eneraliy once a week, that tiie regiment has ahvavs been a coherent force. Corps which con- sisted of scattered units suffered in conse- quence ; but the war brought them all together, and such of those as were regarded by the War Oflice as likely and suitable men for active service were put to the real hard work of training which distinguished Kitchener's Army in its preliminary stages. The active service Territorials — that is to say, the men who were ear-marked for work in France — had the advantage of the THE LONDON SCOTTISH LINING UP FOR ROI.L-CAI.L AFTER THEIR MEMORABLE CHARGE AT MESSINES. 174 Kitchener s A rmy 2\D BATTALION LONDON SCOTTISH MAUdllNT, DOWN LLDGATE lill L IN rilK I OKI) .\LAVOR S PROCESSION. Kitchener troops in tlial they had a thorough grounding in one side of ^.oldiering. Thev knew their weapons, thev knew how to march; the elements ol drill had already been mstilled into them; and they started their work a month ahead ot their great rivals. For this reason ihey were employed earlier, and, long befoie Kitchener's .-\rmy had sailed for France, half-a-dozen Terr[- lorial units had made their mark in the field. The criticism has been passed that the Territorial did not mix readily either with the Kitchener soldier or with the Regular. But this is a view which was ratlier based Kitchener s A rmy IS upon ilie attitude of the two anus in pre- war daj's than on the situation which the w-ar revealed. It was an unfortunate fact that, by the system in vogue before the war, tlie 'I'erri- torials were only identified with liie regi- ment whose name they bore by the fact tluit they wore the same badge and that tiiey were called fifth or sixth battalions of tiiat regiment. Communion between the Regular and the Territorral- there was not. It was not due on the one side to apathy, or on the other to lack of interest. It merely was that there existed no channel of communication between the regular battalions and their amateur friends. This is a condition of affairs which, one can confidently hope, will be remedied at the con- clusion of the war. Another Territorial battalion to which refer- ence should be made is the Artists' Rifles. The Artists' Rifles enjoyed the unique distinction of being converted on the field of battle into an officers training corps. Classes were formed from chosen men of the regiments, and these, under able instructors, were detailed for actual work in the trenches, examined upon their ob- servations and upon the knowledge they had ac- quired at first hand, and were drafted with commis- sions to various regular regiments serving at the front. It says much for the high standard which the .Artists' Rifles have been able to maintain for many years that a Terri- torial regiment should enjoy the honour of supplving from its private members commissioned officers for the Regular Army. To sum up the achieve- ments of the Territorial Force, it can be said that thev showed a remarkable efficiencv and a zeal and patriotism bevond nil praise. lerritorial units were scattered all over the world; they were brought to face the Turks in Egypt, to hold the marches of the wild Indian border; they were thrown into the sodden trenches of iHanders; they guarded the railways of England, and were amongst the watchers of the coast who kept our shores against sur- prise raids. At home and abroad, un- ostentatiously and thoroughly, they worked with a will at whatever task was assigned them, and they earned for themselves, their regiments, and the Territorial movement a fame which will not die so long as the memorv of the war lasts. SCOUTS OF THE HERTS YEOMANRY LOCATING THE ENEMY. I / Kitcheners Army It should be recorded that, just as in the case of Kitchener's Army, the Territorial Force received admirable help from em- ployers. Every man of the Territorial Army was, one is safe in saying, in re-^Lilar and fairly well paid employment. The majority were men with wives and families, upon whom would devolve a great deal of hardship by the withdrawal of their breadwinner. It was the employer of labour, with his svstem of half salary or even better, who saw that the men of the Terri- torial Army went to their far-off duties with the happy feeling that their wives and families were well provided for. Here, too, a tribute should be paid to the queen's WESTMINSTERS MARCH FROM LONDON TO WATFORD. — THIO ARMY SERVICE CORPS SECTION OF LONDON TERRITORIALS RETURNH' Kitcheners Army PDTOGRAPH SHOWS THEM FALLING IN AFTER A SHOKI' HALT work of the Territorial Committees, who, acting under the Lord Lieu- tenant of the county from whicli the baltaHon was drawn, did so niucii, not only in assislin<;- the bat- talion to fit itself for ser- vice, but in guarding the interests of the men while they were at the Front. In some cases — indeed, in many cases — these Terri- torial Associations spent large sums of money upon the battalions. Not only are we indebted to the Territorial Committees for the efficiency, but for the very recruitment of the men. At the outbreak of war recruiting for Territorial battalions was one of the features of an electric month. That recruitment, in\ve\er, was more or less li CAMP AT SALISBURY PLAIN AFTER BIVOUACKING ALL NIGHT. z I7cS Kitchener s A rmy THE artists' rifles MARCHING PAST THE SALUTING POINT AT A REVIEW BY H.M. THE KING. MAN Stopped when the urgent need became apparent for bringing the Kitchener masses into line. There could be no longer any diffusion of effort, and the attention of recruiters was concentrated upon bringing service battalions into existence. .A-fter the Regular battalions on foreign service had been relieved, and after the defences of Egypt had been strengthened and the fitter Territorial battalions placed in the field. General Bethune might with justice have said : "The Territorial Force has done its share; it is now the turn of Kitchener's Army." The Training of the Officers I have reserved to the last this very important chapter on the training of the officer. That it could be left to the end of this publication is due to the fact that the training was identical both in Kitciiener's Army and in the Territorial regiments. I do"not purpose following the young officer who was joining such technical corps as the Roval Engineers or the Royal Field Artillery, or any of the associate Territorial ' batteries. These corps call for special qualities and special knowledge. The young officer who was gazetted to the 'artillery branches must be well up in mathe- matics, and must, did he wish to be of any value to his new service, possess an aptitude for the work which he was undertaking. For him, too, it was necessary that he should be trained very much the same as a cavalry recruit is trained in THE artists' RIFLBS PARADING PREPARATORY TO THEIR THREE DAYS'I Kitchener s A rmy 179 IK MRMBRRS OF THE RF.GIMENT ll.AVK HKKN CIVF.X COMMISSIONS IN THE REGLI.AIi I OliCKS. II 10 ALDEKSIIOT, WHERE TIIEV WENT FOR IKAINING A 1 EASIER. the riding school ; for, even if he were an accomplished rider, he was to learn that the Army way differed in a very considerable degree from that happv-go-lucky method of riding with which he was familiar. We will leave the artillery officer to his gun drill, to his trigonometry and his wonderful cal- culations, rmd we will deal with the Kitchener oiificer proper — that is to say, the voung man who applied for a com- mission and was drafted to one of the infantry battalions. We may also dismiss the old infantry officer who had left the Army and in some cases had gone abroad, who re- turned at the first hint of war to offer his sword to the War Office. He found himself, even though he were a subal- tern when he left the ."^rmy, promoted to a rank above his wildest dreams in times of peace; and upon him lay the authority of establishing the "spirit" of a regiment. In the Continental armies there are cadres — skeleton forces of non-commissioned officers and officers — around which new formations may be grouped. These form a nucleus or a skeleton for new troops. In the British Army no cadres existed. Yet such was the spirit in which we met this war that, hardly had the new recruits begun to form, than cadres appeared as if by magic, and the new-born regiment dis- covered its routine. Two thousand officers were called for It the beginning of the war, and 20,000 men applied for commissions. Since then more than 50,000, and probably fSo Kitcheners Army THE LONDON RIFLE BRIGADE IN CAMP. nearer 100,000, new officers were absorbed although one may imagine many officers into the Army. The qualifications neces- secured commissions after the outbreak sary and the tests, both social and of war, and secured them without any educational, which were applied in time preliminary examination or without any of peace were heavy and searching, and, other credentials than the recommendation THE BISHOP OF LONDON HOLDING A SERVICE IN THE CAMP OF THE LONDON RIFLE BRIGADE. Kitchener s A rmy i8i of the head of a pubHc school, supported or endorsed by an ofiicer of the Army (generally one commanding a regiment or depot), there were surprisingly few misfits admitted to the regimental messrooms. When the young officer received an in- timation that he had been gazetted to a regiment, he was instructed to report him- self on a certain day to the officer com- manding, and he was given a warrant, which is equivalent to a railway ticket, to proceed to his destination. His introduction to his new colonel was often, for the officer recruit, hurst and at Woolwich the courses which are set for applicants for commissions were continued as though nothing was happen- ing. The leisurely preparation of the young Sandhurst boy, not for the war but for the conditions which would follow the war, illus- trated the calm confidence of the British people, and was, in fact, the evidence of "Business as Usual" in the .\rmy. A second system was found at the great universities and public schools which had oflicers training corps attached. Here voung men paiil fairly large fees and SURREY YEOMANRY WATERING THEIR HORSES. a very trying and embarrassing experience, for he was conscious in many cases that he was wholly unacquainted with the customs of Army life. He was a fortunate man if he came straight from an officers training corps, for then at least he would have had a grounding in the rudiments of his craft. Whilst war was in progress several systems of officers training were going on. First, and most important, was the training of the officer who was intended for con- tinuous service with the Army — that is to say, after the war was concluded. At Sand- supported tiiiMiiselves during the process of their training, until they reached the point of proficiency at which they might be recommended for admission to some of the crack corps of the Army for the duration of the war. Their instruction included all that the recruit private learned, including a verv complete training in the use of arms. In addition, there were long lectures on tactical and strategical sui)jects, field operations and tactical schemes. In other words, the would-be officer was taught methods for attacking or defending certain l82 Kitchener s A rmy positions and was given command of wholly mythical troops, and was expected to manoeuvre those troops on a sham battlefield to the satisfaction of his mentor. Field sketching and reconnaissance work were part of the curriculum. The would-be otificer who, if he were a down, so that his chief to whom he com- municated his report would be able to read without any risk of mistake, the presence of swamps, woods and defensive positions scribbled on the roughly made map. The instructor did not spare him, and he must make long marches and endure the dis- University man, would have at least some comforts which he would be asked to knowledge of drawing, was sent to reduce endure when he was attached to a regiment the topography of a strange country to and had to handle men paper. He must be a perfect judge of distances, must, with the aid of his com- pass, be able to trace the direction of roads and the character of railways, must set A\ OXI-ORD LIGHT INKASTUVMAN BOUNDING A HUGLE CALL. Moreover, the coming ofificer was required to gain a working knowledge of military law. Military law differs very little from civil law, save that it imposes punishments for offences which are un- known in the civil code. That a man who shamefully casts away his arms or abandr ns his position in the face of the enemy, or commits acts of treachery tow.'irds his comrades, is liable to the penalty of death, he knew. But it was the minor crime and its exact importance, togeiher with the punishment which should be awarded, which puzzled him a ittle. "Crime" in the Army is a term applied to any lapse or failing on the part of a private soldier. It is a crime not to shave ; it is a crime to be absent- minded and fail to carry out an order. Slack- ness and slovenliness; absence beyond the allowed hours of leave ; impertinence to a superior officer, by which is meant a non-commissioned ol^cer; talking in the ranks; wear- ing long hair after being w-arned to have it cut : all these things are in military jargon "crimes," each calling for a dif- ferent form of punishment. 'IMi e young officer was merely learning the theory of it all. 1 le would not be called upon to award punishment imtil he had had a very considerable experience in regi- Kitclujiers A rmy iS. HANTS CYCLISTS, LED BY CAPTAIN LOW. mental work. It was the company officer who marked the man's defaulter's sheet. Nor would he be asked to grapple with the involved question of the soldiers' pay. Yet for a would-be officer, the preparation of military accounts was not the least important of his duties. He must make himself completely acquainted with the soldier's kit and his method of carrying it. He must learn from wise instructors something of the complexities of a soldier's mind. Mostly was he taught that there was a time for everything, and that he would best gain the confidence of his men and inspire their respect by a certain aloofness, a certain remoteness, save in extraordinarv circum- stances. "I want you to understand," said the speaker at one of the lectures I attended, "that if you go inio tiie Armv with the idea of introducing some new method or some new system for improving its character, you are going to have a very unpleasant time. If you go to work ostentatiously to gain the confidence of your men, you will merely arouse their suspicion or their contempt. British soldiers do not want motiiering, they want leading; and to be led properly they must have complete confidence in their leader. All soldiers have grievances: it is their legitimate possession. And if you wander round looking for grievances vou will find six in every tent, providing there are six people sleeping there. The more people who live in the tent, the more grievances you will find. It is an Army saying that to ' grouse ' is the soldier's privilege. "You must, too, be careful in dealing with Kitche7ters Army MEMBERS OF THE INNS OF COURT OFFICERS' TRAINING CORPS (the "devil's own") PRACTISE SIGNALLING IN Lincoln's inn fields. THE ROVAL SCOTS FUSILIERS IN TRAINING NW a non-commissioned officer. Remem- ber that he knows a great deal more about the business of soldiering than you do or than vou will for a very long time. He will salute you and pav you everv mark of respect, but for ([uite a while his mental attitude towards you will be one of derision and pity. Remember that if vou catch a non - commissioned officer napping once, you must keep the fact to your- self. The joyous impulse to correct the N.C.O. before his men, if given way to, will induce him on some future occasion to correct you by inference, because you may be sure that for every mistake he makes you will make twenty. Do not be familiar with the non-commissioned officer in order to gain his approval, because the result will be the reverse to what you desire. Remember that it is vour business to maintain the discipline of the regiment, and the best disciplined regiments are invariably the best fighting regiments. "You have to set your mind on arriving in the trenches, where you will be all men together, so firmlv established in tiieiresicem and regard, that if you were suddenly reduced to .,iii Kitchener s A r^ny iSq the rank of a private and tliu men were called upon to elect their otiicers, I hey would elect you among lliem. Soldiers do not want you for your geniality, and they will not prize you for your graciousness. They recognise that it is your business to lead, and to show them the way in or the way out whenever circumstances call upon you for the exercise of your judgment. If you fail them in their hour of need, or show weakness at a moment when strengtii is re- quired of you, you are linislied and done with. "Remember also that the soldier's highest term of praise is : ' Mr. So-and-so is a gentleman ' ; and let that always be in your mind when you are on leave and you are meeting soldiers of every kind at the corner of every street. Wiien the soldier salutes you, will you please remember that he is not saluting Mr. Johnson or Mr. Brown, nor is he saluting the well- cut uniform you wear, but he is saluting the King's commission which, in theory, is neatly folded up in your breast-pocket? The salute to the oflicer is a I .INGSTOKE. SCOUTS OF THE hekts yeomanry at work. A A 1 86 Kitchener s A rmy salute to the King, and if you fail to acknowledge that salute, or take it as for yourself, you are acting carelessly, not alone to the soldier whose salute you have ignored or only carelessly acknowledged, but to the King whose commission you carry. "One other point I would make, and that has reference to your behaviour in the field. It is expected of you that you will be brave under all circumstances; but you have also to remember that the Government has taken a lot of trouble with you, and will be paying you a much larger salary than it pays to he was gazetted in the glory of print, he at least went to his new comrades well founded in wisdom. Between theory and practice there is a very wide gulf, and the young officer might find some difficulty in applying ail the wise sayings which had been instilled into his mind to the actualities which he found around him. The consensus of opinion, both in Kitchener's Army and in the Territorial Army, was that the new officer who had come forward was of first-class quality. And here it may be said that the Army chiefs had to exercise the very wisest dis- MAXIM GUN SECTION OF THE NORTHUMBERLAND HUSSARS. the private soldier in order that you should carry out certain duties. Unnecessary ex- posure is not heroic but foolish. Always remember that once you are dead you are no use in the Army. A famous "French General of the Napoleonic war spoke of an officer who had lost his life in a particularly foolhardy expedition that he had ' deserted to heaven.' I would like vou to keep that in your minds." I have given this little condensation of a lecture to illustrate the moral training of the young aspirant of the officers training corps. When his commission arrived and cretion in granting commissions to men. The tradition of the British Army is that the ranker does not inspire confidence. It is equally true that the British soldier is more exigent even than his Prussian foe- man in his demand for the "well born." The great public schools of England con- tributed almost to their last man to the call for officers. The Universities were denuded of students to provide additional men for that corps. Over 7,000 Cambridge men, new and old, were serving with the colours in February, 1915, and Oxford had sent as many. The technical and science colleges, Kitchefiers A nii \ - 187 -m^, ,^ ■fti ^.v AUSTRALIAN CAVALRY AT THE SPHINX. — BRITISH TERRIIORIALS HAVE ALSO BEEN SENT TO EGYPT. like those at Birmingham and at Durham, have been responsible for large drafts to the Royal Engineers, as well as to the line battalions. When the new officer came from officers training corps, or when he was graduated from such units as the Artists' Rifles in the manner I have described in a previous chapter, it was all smooth sailing for the Board of Selection. Tiie difficultv came when papers of recommendation arrived, endorsed by the head of a school, and recommended other than by officers com- manding training corps. The commission was often granted, and the young man, who was an absolute tyro to the .'\rmy, was sent to a battalion to drill in the recruits' squad and gradually to reach the same stage of efficiency at which his men were aiming. It is a matter for national pride that we made THE CAMP OF THE BRITISH TROOPS, INCLIDING TKRRH ORL\LS, ON I HE TLRKISH SIDE OF IHR SUEZ CANAL. 1 88 Kitcheners Army TERKUORIALS HAVE BEEN SENT TO REPLACE REGULAR TROOPS IN EGYPT, MALTA, GIBRALTAR, AND INDIA. THE ABOVE PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS SOME OF THE MEN ON ACTIVE SERVICE OVERSEAS. very few mistakes, and that of the enormous numbers of officers who joined, a remark- ably small number proved to be useless for the purpose. The Government was most generous in its treatment of new officers, granting them a liberal allowance for their kit and giving them pay on a scale which enabled them to live fairly comfortably without drawing upon their private incomes or upon the incomes of their relatives. It helped considerably to maintain the proper spirit in the Army that the war had been a subalterns' war, and that the junior officers had distinguished themselves and gained honour in the performance of their duties. The splendid young men whose names were constantly occurring in the lists of decorations awarded by the King urged the new officers forward in a spirit of emulation. The new officers took themselves and their work very seriously indeed, and their task was made the smoother by the knowledge that, if they were new to the game, so also were the soldiers they were called upon to command. They grew up side by side, officer and man, tackling their difficult and dan- gerous jobs with an admirable regard for all that depended upon them. They imbibed the traditions of the regi- ment to which they were attached, and grew immensely jealous of those traditions. The Kitchener officer and the Territorial officer were worthy of theii men. No higher praise than this cotild be besto\\ed. THE END THE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW. Series 9482 '-'Cso,„ a '"s-^ ^^^^' \T \^" ^V^< H .W^N