Читать книгу Old-Soldier Sahib - Frank Richards - Страница 3

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Ihave some recollections of my father and mother but will commence my story in the year 1893, when I was left an orphan at the age of nine and adopted by an uncle and aunt who were living at Blaina, Monmouthshire. My Uncle, who was Welsh, was a twin-brother to my mother; my Aunt was also Welsh, and at the time of my adoption they had four children of their own, two boys and two girls. David was three years older than me, Evan was about the same, the girls were both younger. As the years rolled on more children arrived, but my Uncle and Aunt treated me exactly the same in every way as they did their own children: no boy could have had better parents than what they were to me. I was quite happy with my cousins and we always shielded one another in any scrape we were in; even to-day we still regard ourselves as brothers and sisters.

Blaina was a busy industrial town, with seven coal-pits, a large tinplate works, blast-furnaces and coke-ovens—all working regularly. In those days if a man or a boy was dissatisfied with his job he could always leave it and immediately get another. In fact, there was such a shortage of labour that one of the bosses of the blast-furnaces, situated just off the main road, used to stand on the road the greater part of the day, stopping tramps as they came along and begging them to sign on and start work at once. My Uncle was a roller in the tinplate works and earned very good money. He was fond of his pint but always looked after his home. He had never been to school in his life and could not read or write, not even so much as his own name. But he was shrewd about money and figures and could work out sums in his head quicker than we children could on paper. Nothing pleased him better than when my Aunt read something out of the paper to him which interested him: he would get it by heart and be able to repeat it very nearly word for word some days later. He could speak a little Welsh, but it did not come natural to him to do so.

My Aunt spoke Welsh as well as she did English, or better, and she could also read and write both languages fluently. She did her best to teach us children Welsh, but the little I learned as a boy I soon forgot in after life. My Uncle regretted his own lack of education and was always drumming in our ears the importance of attending school and never missing a lesson: the only time he ever severely chastised any one of us was when he discovered we had been playing truant. There was a school-attendance officer in the district, but he did not have the power at this time of summonsing the parents of a child who was absent from school: all he could do was to report the fact of the child’s absence to the parents and leave them to deal with the matter. Evan and I detested school; we were always thinking of the time when we would be twelve years of age and could begin real work. Between the ages of ten and twelve we must have been absent from school more times than we attended it; Evan and I used to keep count of the number of hidings we had from my Uncle and the number of canings we had from the schoolmaster during that period, but I for my part have forgotten the final score.

I can’t remember my Uncle ever going to Church or Chapel; I often heard him say that the men he associated with in the pub had a more genuine Christian spirit than the men who attended Church or Chapel. My Aunt was a little religious, however, and often attended Chapel on a Sunday morning, taking us children along. After dinner she would send us to Sunday School, which I also detested. Only twice did I go there and afterwards invariably played truant, going bird-nesting or roaming the mountains; and came home to my tea with a far better appetite than what I would have had if I had sat through Bible lessons. My Aunt often said that I was fast going to the Devil and when she found out, just before I began work, that I had ceased to say my nightly prayers she started to cry and said that she was afraid I was already in his clutches.

I left school and began work on the very day I was twelve. My first job was door-boy in a colliery. I had to be down the mine before seven in the morning and finished in the evening at five o’clock. My job was an easy one. I had to open and close one of the ventilation-doors for the hauliers and their ponies to pass through with their full or empty trams. I was paid seven shillings and sixpence a week. I worked two months as a door-boy and then got a job in the tin-works. This also was an easy job: with a bucket of grease and a brush I greased the cold rolls, as they were called, to prevent them from getting heated. The majority of the tin-workers did eight-hour shifts, but the boys and young women who worked at the cold rolls did twelve hours. My wages were now nine shillings a week. I never became an expert at this job and somehow managed to get more grease over my clothes in one day than what I could put on the rolls in a week. I had soon more or less ruined our kitchen chairs: when I returned from work and sat in one of them I found that I could not rise without bringing it up also, stuck fast to my backside. This job did not suit me at all and it also affected my health. More for the sake of my health than the furniture my Uncle and Aunt decided that I must go underground again.

A week or two later I was back in the pit working for a man in a stall at the coal-face, who paid me a weekly wage of eleven shillings, which was considered a high wage for a boy of twelve. The stalls were driven to left or right of the main headings. Although in the same seam of coal, some stalls were better for working in than others; some had a good roof overhead and coal easy to cut, while others had a poor roof and difficult coal. I had to work very hard at my new job, but I did not mind that. My buttie was an excellent man in every way and although sometimes he swore ferociously, he never swore at me or even grumbled at my work during the six years I worked with him.

The pit I worked in was one of five owned by a private company. There was a head-manager who visited each of the five in turn. He was a deeply religious man who attended Chapel regularly; and the majority of the over-men, foremen and staff of the pits followed his example, to keep on the right side of him. It was noticeable that most of the good places in the pit were worked by men who were deeply religious, so men who had bad places found it advantageous to turn deeply religious too, and attend the Chapel where the manager worshipped. He noticed their presence and as soon as their bad stalls had finished they were sent to turn new stalls where the roof was good and the coal easy to cut. Stalls were rarely driven more than sixty yards; they were then cut by headings which were driven for that purpose. In one stall where we worked my buttie and I could always tell when the manager was down the pit and approaching us through the stalls on our left, because the man in the stall immediately on our left, as soon as he saw the manager with his staff approaching, would immediately strike up a hymn. By the time the manager reached his place he was working and singing like a demon. But although this man attended the correct Chapel and although the manager usually stopped for a few minutes’ earnest chat with him when he came by on his rounds, he never got the main heading which he was angling for, where more money could be made than in a stall. I never cared much for this hymn-singer; he was always grumbling at the boy who worked with him and calling him a lazy young hound. After working alongside him for nine months I came to realize how lucky I was to be working with a man who made no pretence at being a Christian but succeeded better than many of his deeply religious mates.

It was the custom at the dinner hour for a number of men and boys to collect together underground in one road. I enjoyed myself at these dinner hours, especially when a road-man who cleared the main headings of little falls of rubbish was present. He was an old soldier who had served in different countries and his wonderful yarns of India so enthralled me that I vowed that when I was old enough I would be a soldier and see this wonderful place which, he said, was a land of milk and honey. He was always telling us what a damned fool he had been to leave the Army, and that if he had his time over again he would enlist at once and not take his discharge until it was forced on him.

I was far healthier working underground than I had been in the tin-works. The air was quite good in the workings. The head-manager had the main airways kept in excellent condition, and saw that the roof and timber overhead in the roads were high enough to allow a pony to walk along without roughing his back. The miners were keen on sport, especially Rugby football. Pick-up games were frequent at the pitheads and the play though friendly was extremely rough. Blaina has always had a good rugger-team. About 1900 soccer was introduced, but rugger will always remain the miners’ favourite game, I believe. In agreement with the owners all miners took a holiday on the first Monday in every month: this was called “Mabon’s Monday” after the principal leader of the South Wales miners. Many matches that had been made for whippet-racing and rabbit-coursing came off on this day in the fields on the mountain-side. There was cock-fighting too, which was illegal and had to be arranged carefully with scouts put out to signal the arrival of the police. An occasional knuckle-fight also came off on the top of the mountain. I remember witnessing one bout from which much had been expected. One of the principals was a dashing fighter and the other was said to be a skilful man at fighting on the retreat. Both lived up to their reputations on that day. The fight ended in a draw seven miles from the spot where it had started. It was not customary to fight in a pitched ring, and the retreating fighter kept his face to his foe throughout the battle: he was a man so clever on his feet that he could have easily walked backwards, without stumbling once, from John o’ Groats to Land’s End. My cousins David and Evan were keen on boxing, and so was I; we were always practising together in the cellar of our house. David was too strong for us, but it was good practice.

I had well passed my fourteenth birthday when the whole of the miners in South Wales came out on strike. This was in 1898 and the strike lasted six months and, like all other strikes before or since, ended up in a victory for the coal-owners. A year or two before this the tin-works had closed down, and my Uncle had been working at various outside jobs for hardly a third of the money that he had been earning in the tin-works. He had never worked underground in his life and always said that he never would; and he never did. He was a very big man, weighing between fifteen and sixteen stone and as strong as an ox. A month after the strike began he got a job, rolling in some tinplate works about twenty miles from Blaina. He lodged there during the week and came home for week-ends. Luckily for the family, he was now earning sufficient money to provide for the whole household, and we were never short of anything during the strike. But the strike threw David out of work and he enlisted in the South Wales Borderers. My Aunt was terribly cut up about it. She wrote and told him that if he did not like the Army he was to let her know at once and she would find the money to buy his discharge. He wrote back saying that he was as happy as a trout and that he intended to complete the term of service that he had enlisted for, which was seven years with the Colours and five on the Reserve. I had a glorious time during the strike. Most of it I spent watching the sport on the mountain-side or playing marbles. I was considered a bit of an expert at marbles, and played with men old enough to be my father and grandfather too. The older men were even keener at the game than the boys. Very nearly every day that I played I made a copper or two by selling back the marbles that I had won to the men or boys whom I had skinned.

Most of the miners’ families had been for years dealing with the same grocer and butcher, whom they paid once a fortnight. During the whole of the strike the grocers and butchers allowed their old customers credit, trusting to their honesty to pay them back once the strike was settled and work in full swing again. Many of the customers did pay them back, but many didn’t, so quite a number of grocers and butchers went bankrupt in South Wales that year or the next. It was very hard lines on families that did not have shops to fall back on, but most of them lived very well indeed, especially those that possessed kitchen gardens. They generally managed to raise the wind to buy sufficient bread for the household needs, and if they occasionally went a little short of butter and cheese they never went short of meat. There were thousands of sheep grazing on the hills around Blaina, and a good many hundreds of these found a happy resting-place in the stomachs of the strikers and their families.

At this time the South Wales miners were not in the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain, though shortly after the strike was settled they joined it. The only money the strikers were getting was an occasional shilling from collections made for them in various parts of England. The parish granted no relief and even if it had done so it is very doubtful whether the strikers or their wives would have accepted it. People who took parish relief would have considered themselves disgraced for ever. South Wales was very proud and very independent and also very narrow-minded. Even the aged and infirm, and destitute widows, were treated with scorn if they accepted a little parish assistance, and I often heard it said, better to do away with oneself than go to the Parish. But I must admit that things have greatly changed since that date. I think it is Socialist propaganda that is responsible for the change. People, rightly or wrongly, have come to regard parish relief or Government relief as their natural birthright and something to fall back upon if things go wrong. In 1921 (and on several occasions since) the heads of households who were drawing a high scale of relief came to be voted heroes of the first water. This strike at last came to an end and I went back to work with my old buttie, who had gained about a stone in weight. One dinner hour I overheard him telling the old soldier that he was so fed up with mutton that he had informed his wife that if ever she brought any of it into the house during the next twelve months she could look out for squalls.

There were only two political parties then, the Conservatives and Liberals: the Labour party was as yet in its infancy. The only general election I can remember as a boy was the one that took place just before I left school. At this election Sir William Harcourt, one of the great Liberal leaders, had been defeated in the seat he had contested elsewhere. West Monmouthshire was a stone-wall certainty for the Liberal party, so the Liberal member for West Monmouthshire in the previous Parliament, who was again contesting the seat, withdrew his nomination and Sir William Harcourt took his place. During his electioneering campaign Sir William visited Blaina and gave a speech at the Market Hall which was applauded to the echo. Before he arrived at the Hall he rode in his carriage and pair for a good two miles through cheering lines of spectators. About a mile from the Hall some enthusiastic Liberals stopped the carriage and, taking out the horses, got between the shafts themselves and pulled their hero triumphantly along to the Hall. But my Uncle, who was a fervent Tory, and was wearing his party colours as conspicuously as possible, remarked as usual that the country was always a lot more prosperous under a Tory government than under a Liberal one. Sir William was returned by an overwhelming majority, which caused my Uncle to say that there were more damned fools in West Monmouthshire than even he ever suspected.

In October 1899 the Boer War broke out and David came home on a few days’ leave before proceeding to South Africa. He was in magnificent condition and was looking forward to active service as a glorious adventure. My Aunt now felt different about David being in the Army and told her neighbours that she was proud that she had bred a son who had gone to Africa to fight for his Queen and Country. Before the Boer War it was commonly believed in the village that any young man who joined the Army did so either because he was too lazy to work or else because he had got a girl in the family way. Hardly anybody had a good word for a soldier, and mothers taught their daughters to beware of them. The War had not been in progress a week before everybody became wonderfully patriotic, and soldiers home on leave were fêted like proper heroes. If a soldier walked down the main street of Blaina he was followed by admiring eyes and all who met him wanted to shake hands with him. Everybody sang “ ’Tis the Soldiers of the Queen, my lad” until they were blue in the nose, and another song, “Good-bye Dolly Gray”, about soldier-boys a-marching and the bugles calling and hearts breaking, was murdered right and left.

When the news came through that Mafeking had been relieved I remember that my Aunt was so overjoyed that late in the evening she made a huge bonfire with four old straw mattresses on some waste ground in front of the house. It turned into quite a celebration. The flames attracted all the people in the street and some from the adjoining street as well; patriotic songs were sung and some of the women said that if they had been given notice that there was going to be a bonfire they would have made a Guy of Lloyd George to improve it. One patriotic old lady caused a good laugh when she said that she would like to improve it still more by using Lloyd George himself. Lloyd George had made himself very unpopular by his pronounced pro-Boer views, and he was lucky to get away with his life when he addressed a meeting at a large hall in Birmingham. The crowd was after his blood and he only escaped by the skin of his teeth, under the protection of a strong body of police and disguised as an under-sized policeman. They would have torn him to pieces if they had got their hands on him.

Politics are a farce—one has only to look at the way a man like Lloyd George goes up and down, or Ramsay MacDonald. He’s the same man all along, namely a politician; but when I recall Lloyd George as the Guy on Mafeking night, and then again Lloyd George at the time of the so-called Khaki Election, in December 1918, when nothing in reason or out of it was too good for the Hero who had won the War and who would hang the Kaiser (if we gave him the necessary authority) as a sacrifice for the sins of the world—well, it makes me do a grin. And Ramsay MacDonald, the “pro-German” and pacifist, whom patriotic people were desirous to burn as a Guy during the War, succeeded Lloyd George as the Saviour of his Country—this time not from the Germans but from the Reds. Personally, though I have lived ever since the War in a part of the country which has been severely hit by industrial depression, and have suffered severely from it myself, I can’t help agreeing with my Uncle that a Tory government is likely to bring more prosperity with it than what a Liberal or Labour government ever brings. And in spite of all the Socialist propaganda that goes on about me I remain a rank Imperialist at heart: I am afraid I must have a kink somewhere.

I was growing into a tall, skinny lad and in 1900 I visited a recruiting-sergeant who lived a few miles away. I did my best to convince him that I was over eighteen years of age, but he would not believe me. He told me to clear off and pack twelve months’ dinners in my belly, and then perhaps I would be big enough around the chest to pass the doctor. I waited another twelve months and meanwhile put on a lot of weight for a growing youth. I was now seventeen and a half years of age and big enough, I thought, to join any regiment in the Army. The war in South Africa was still in progress. I did not go to the recruiting-sergeant who had sent me away before but to Brecon Barracks, thirty miles off. The recruiting-sergeant there told me that I would pass the doctor in a canter; but he was disappointed when I told him that I wanted to join the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He did his best to persuade me that the South Wales Borderers were the finest regiment in the service—he wanted to know whether I had never heard tell of the Defence of Rorke’s Drift. Well, then!—but all in vain, and he finally enlisted me for the Royal Welch Fusiliers. (My Aunt was disappointed too when she saw that I was not in the same regiment as David.) The reason I insisted on joining the Royal Welch Fusiliers was that they had one battalion in China, taking part in the suppression of the Boxer Rising, and the other battalion in South Africa, and a long list of battle-honours on their Colours; and also that they were the only regiment in the Army privileged to wear the flash. The flash was a smart bunch of five black ribbons sewed in a fan shape on the back of the tunic collar: it was a relic of the days when soldiers wore their hair long, and tied up the end of the queue in a bag to prevent it greasing their tunics.

I passed the doctor with flying colours; the only comment he made was that I was a finely built lad but looked extremely youthful for my years. For instead of putting six months on to my age I had put on eighteen months: I was determined this time that if I was big enough I would also be old enough. The recruiting-sergeant never questioned my age and no birth-certificate was required. If I had only been big enough the first recruiting-sergeant would not have questioned my age either: he would have been only too glad to pocket the fee that recruiting-sergeants received for each man they enlisted who passed the doctor.

I arrived at Wrexham, North Wales, which was the Depôt of the Royal Welch, and my first night at the red-brick Barracks I spent in the receiving-room. The following morning I was examined by the Depôt medical officer and on the 12th April 1901, I was a full-fledged soldier of His Majesty’s forces—His, not Her, Majesty, because Queen Victoria had died that January, to the great and genuine grief of her people. I was given a rifle, a bayonet, and white buff straps with two white pouches which would hold about fifty rounds apiece. I then drew my soldier’s kit from the Quartermaster’s Stores, which consisted of one greyish-black top-coat, cape and leggings, one suit of scarlet, one suit of blue for drill and fatigue purposes, boots, shirts, socks, and other small necessary articles too numerous to mention. Every six months a man was entitled to a new pair of boots, and every twelve months to a new suit of scarlet, but he had to wait until he had completed twelve months’ service before he was entitled to a proper scarlet tunic of more expensive cloth than the serge he got at first. He also was then issued with a busby, the tall fur head-dress reserved for Guards and Fusiliers. The ones issued about this time could have done with a little hair-restorer, but they were very light to wear. (An officer’s busby, which was known as a “bearskin”, cost some twenty or thirty pounds, I believe.) At the Depôt we wore forage-caps^[1] for all parades.

[1]

In 1903 or 1904 the forage-cap was discarded in favour of the Broderick, as it was called, which was like a sailor’s cap with a small piece of red in front, over which was worn the regimental badge. We thoroughly detested this new cap, which the majority of men said made them look like a lot of bloody German sailors; but we much preferred it to the poked cap which followed it, introduced, I think, by Lord Haldane. When this cap first appeared the men said that the War Office was being run from Potsdam. They were rotten caps to carry in a man’s haversack.

I was shown to a whitewashed barrack-room overlooking the Square, where there were twelve other recruits and two old soldiers who had been abroad and were called “duty men”. A corporal who had served sixteen years in the Regiment was in charge. A man called Toombs showed me the way to fix my straps for drill purposes and also told me what cleaning tackle I would require: I could buy it at the dry-canteen. He taught me how to fix my black kit-bag and top-coat on the rack over my bed and how the straps should hang on the pegs above the head of the bed. After he had given me a few further instructions and hints he said in an old soldier’s manner: “Well, youngster, when I first enlisted I had to watch what other men did and nobody gave me any hints or instructions about my straps or kit in any way. From now on you want to keep your eyes skinned and you’ll soon drop into the hang of things.” Toombs had just completed three months’ service.

During the evening Toombs showed me around the grounds of the Barracks, in which there were relics of former wars that the Regiment had taken part in. Outside the Guard-room hung a large ornamental bronze bell which dated from the Burmese War of 1885, and in front of the Officers’ Mess was a field-gun which had been captured during the Crimean War by Captain Bell, V.C., an officer of the Regiment. When we were outside the Canteen Toombs said he was sorry that he could not take me in to have a drink, as he was stony-broke. Although young, I knew how beer tasted and was fond of a glass now and then. I told him to lead on and he could have a drink at my expense. I had about fifteen shillings and after a couple of pints he borrowed five of them, saying that he hated to see me paying all the time. It was my first appearance in a military wet-canteen, and everything seemed strange, including the weakness of the beer. Several men got up and sang songs, sentimental or comic ones, which were loudly applauded, but when one of the old soldiers out of my barrack-room rose to his feet to give one he was clapped and cheered to the echo. Toombs turned to me and said, “Now, youngster, you are going to hear a singer who in my opinion is second to none in the whole of the British Army. Before he has done singing I think you will agree with me.” I did not expect to hear an opera-star but I did think that I was going to hear a singer out of the ordinary deliver a really classy song. I was sadly disappointed: the old soldier had a voice which resembled two rusty tin cans being slowly rubbed edgeways together. He sang a long ballad with a short chorus which was taken up with great gusto by the company present. I have heard some pretty far-fetched songs during my life but this was the king-pin of them all. It was called “The Girl I nearly Wed”. I can only remember the tail-end of one of the later verses, which ran:

I wake up sweating every night to think what might have been,

For in another corner, boys, she’d stored the Magazine,

The Magazine, a barrel of snuff and one or two things more,

And in another corner, boys, was the Regiment forming fours.

The chorus, four times repeated, was: “She was up the bleeding spout.” When he finished, the singing was so rapturously applauded that he was forced to give an encore, which he did with The Ballad of Abraham Brown and the Fair Young Maiden, which was something to bring a blush to the cheek of the most hardened prostitute that ever lived.

In the midst of this song, not all the words of which I understood, two men raised their voices in argument, but immediately became quiet when the temporary chairman roared at them: “Order there, you lousy bastards, or I’ll come over and knock hell out of the both of you. Have you no respect for music?” The chairman, who was a duty-man, was handy with his dukes, Toombs said, and wouldn’t allow any nonsense.

The Canteen opened at noon for three-quarters of an hour, and again from six to a quarter-past nine. At stop-tap Toombs and I were quite sober, which made me remark that one could drink a great many glasses of this sort of beer without feeling the effects of it. “You are quite right,” he replied, “that old bastard in charge of the Canteen has been using the water-can on it to some order to-day. But if I’m not on duty to-morrow evening I’ll take you around the town, where a man can get a decent drink of beer, though it costs double what it does in Barracks.” (Beer was only three-halfpence a pint in the Canteen.) We walked out in the town the following evening, each with his regimental swagger-cane without which we were not allowed through the gates, and coming along the road Toombs said that we would visit a pub where a few respectable clean skirts frequently called. He said that he was quids in with one of them and that she generally had a companion with her whom he could introduce to me. Up to then I didn’t know what women were—that is, to have sexual intercourse with them—but my companion, who was four years older than I was, knew all about them, or so he thought, and told me during the course of the evening that he enjoyed nothing better in the world than a nice bit of skirt. I was so innocent that I honestly did not know what he meant by “respectable clean skirts”, but I did not give my ignorance away: I pretended to be as knowing as he was.

We had been in the pub about an hour, sitting in one of the side-rooms, when in walked two young women, who greeted Toombs in a friendly way and asked to be introduced to me. After a drink or two Toombs was soon in deep private conversation with the one of them who, he had told me when we were out at the back together, was his own bit of goods. She was a married woman whose husband was away working and only came home every other week. I was soon paired off with the other one whose husband, so she said, was also absent from home. Her conversation pleased me very much and when, just before dusk, she said that she would be glad to go out for a breath of air, I volunteered to accompany her. The room was certainly getting stuffy. She whispered to her companion and a few minutes later, by arrangement, they left the pub together. We followed about twenty yards behind until we were on the outskirts of the town, where we paired off again. We walked a little further and my lady-friend then suggested a rest. We went off the road into a field, and my companion with his lady went on another fifty yards before settling down in the same field. The respectable clean skirt soon found out how innocent I was: we had not been resting more than a minute before she began to kiss and caress me. I laughed and told her to stop it, and made a half-hearted attempt to get away from her which only made her kiss and caress me more. In less than no time I had lost my senses and also my innocence. I have been with many women since then, some cold and some warm, but though it may have only been that she was the first, I fully believe this one was the warmest of them all. About an hour later I was brought back to my senses by Toombs shouting: “Come on, youngster. Just time enough to get back to Barracks.” I parted from my lady-love, promising to meet her on the following evening, when she said that she would not have her companion with her. As we hurried back to Barracks Toombs said I was a lucky devil to drop on such a lovely clean skirt, and that he and several other men had tried to walk her off but there was nothing doing.

Toombs was a good friend to me. He taught me to recognize the various bugle-calls that were continually sounding from Reveille to Last Post, and also warned me of the usual tricks that are played on recruits. For instance, he told me that if ever I made my bed in the evening before going out for a walk in the town I was to examine it carefully on my return in case it had been “set”. The bed was an iron cot, supplied with biscuits (straw-filled mattresses), blankets and a couple of rough sheets which were changed once a month. The cot was in two halves, one of which was made to slide under the other, to allow more space in the room by day. The two halves could be disconnected and then balanced together in such a way that they held up until the owner tried to lie down: then they collapsed with a crash and his backside got a nasty jar. My bed was set for me on my third night and I spotted it at once. I then played a trick on the trickers by once or twice pretending to be just about to sit down on it, and then remembering something and putting off my intention. Finally, when I was undressed, without saying a word I lifted off the bedclothes, connected the two halves again securely, put the bedclothes back, got in between them, and was soon fast asleep.

One of my fellow-recruits when he had only had two days of service was called up by an old duty-man and asked whether he knew where the Guard-room was. When the recruit proudly said that he did, the old soldier asked him, for a favour, to go to the Sergeant of the Guard and beg him for a lend of the whitewash brush. Off went the recruit, but presently he returned and said that the Sergeant wanted to know what the brush was needed for. “To whitewash the Last Post, of course,” the duty-man replied with a solemn face. The Sergeant of the Guard then informed the recruit that he would require a special brush for that purpose; maybe he could get it at the Quartermaster’s Stores. But the store-man there sent him on to the dry-canteen, and the dry-canteen sent him on to the Canteen, and from there he was sent to the Married Quarters, and then on to the Sergeants’ Mess; and that was as far as the joke carried him, because all the Sergeants burst out laughing in his face. This was the oldest joke in the Army, but there were always new recruits to play it on.

Toombs soon left with a draft for Plymouth. He told me how sorry he was that he could not pay me back the five shillings he had borrowed from me. I told him to forget it, but months after, when I met him at Plymouth, he insisted on paying me in full, saying that he had just had a good win at cards. Toombs passed out of my life when he went to South Africa and I have never seen him from that day to this. During the rest of my time at the Depôt I met my lady-friend pretty often and we had some delightful evenings together. I was sorry when I had to say good-bye to her; but I soon forgot her.

The Depôt staff consisted of a colonel, an adjutant, a few young officers, a sergeant-major, drill-sergeants and corporals and about a dozen old soldiers. One of the old soldiers, called Pond, had over twenty-one years’ service. It was said that during the first twelve months of his soldiering he and another man had deserted from Dum Dum in India where the First Battalion were stationed at the time. They had made their way for over a thousand miles towards the North-West Frontier, when Pond’s pal died. Pond buried him and then made his way back to the nearest military station and gave himself up. He was tried for desertion and served a term of imprisonment. After he came out of prison he turned over a new leaf and proved himself a model soldier. After he had completed his eight years with the Colours he was allowed to make it twelve years and later to extend his service to twenty-one years. He had lately completed his twenty-one years but had been allowed to extend his service for another four years. In 1914 when I rejoined the Regiment as a reservist Pond was still pottering about the Depôt. By that time he had completed thirty-five years’ service, and the true facts of his early adventure had been forgotten: it was now believed that he had deserted on the North-West Frontier and gone with his pal through Afghanistan, eventually surrendering to the British Consul at Jerusalem. He was a moody old chap who would never speak of his experiences in India or anywhere else, and it was seldom that he opened his mouth to speak to a recruit at all.

In summer Reveille was blown at half-past five, in winter at half-past six. As soon as the bugle sounded from the Guard-house the Corporal in charge of our room would shout: “Show a leg, get out of it, open those blasted windows and down with that sip-tub!” If any man rolled over a few times before getting up, the Corporal would seize hold of his bed and pitch him out on the floor. Each recruit took his turn as orderly man for the day. His duties were to draw the rations, bring the food from the cookhouse and wash up the plates and basins after meals; he had also to take the urinal tub away in the morning and bring it up again in the evening, the tub being placed on the landing just outside the door. The tub was always very full on the morning following pay-day and that day’s orderly man had to have assistance to carry it down. A man’s daily rations consisted of one pound of bread, three-quarters of a pound of meat, vegetables, tea and sugar. We lived, dined and slept in the same barrack-room, which we had to scrub out twice a week with hot water and soap.

Our first parade was before breakfast, for forty-five minutes. The last quarter of an hour consisted of violent exercise, such as running with knees up like the high-stepping carriage-horse of that period. That gave us such an appetite that most of us used to consume our entire pound of bread for breakfast, at the risk of feeling equally hungry at tea. Immediately after breakfast a few men were told off to scrub the tables, while others dry-scrubbed and cleaned the room before going on the second parade. The pay was a shilling a day, from which was deducted threepence a day for messing and a halfpenny a day for washing. Out of this threepence a day was found for extras, which on week-days consisted of about an ounce of butter a man, to do for his breakfast and tea; on Sundays we had liver and bacon for breakfast, or two boiled eggs. A corporal was generally in charge of the mess-book and the extras were bought from the dry-canteen. Every corporal that I can remember managed to get the mess-book in debt at some time or other, which meant dry bread for breakfast and tea until it was back in credit again.

The washing was done by the wives of the corporals and old soldiers who were married on the strength of the Regiment and living in barracks. We were only allowed to send shirt, towel and socks to the wash, which the married men collected once a week. Men and wives married on the strength of the Regiment were called the “married crocks”. One had to have five years’ service and be twenty-six years of age before one could get married on the strength. A regular number of married men were allowed in each regiment and an application to get married on the strength had to be presented to the Colonel. If the regiment had its required number of married couples it was a case of patiently waiting until a vacancy occurred. The married men on the strength were generally men who intended to do their twenty-one years, or more if they could. They were allowed free quarters, coal and light, and their wives and children also drew daily rations. A man who married off the strength had to keep his wife out of his own shilling a day; she lived outside barracks and he inside, and they met whenever they could, but officially she did not exist. I can only remember two men who got married off the strength; both went to India, where they had to serve seven years before they returned to England. Seven years is a long time for a young married couple to be separated; much could happen in that time.

We were paid five shillings a week and settled accounts with the Colour-Sergeant on the last day of the month. I can’t remember during the whole of my soldiering at home ever stepping forward to sign my accounts at the end of the month without finding a considerable deduction made for barrack-room damages. The monthly deductions sometimes ran to a shilling a man: they were supposed to cover the loss of barrack-room utensils, plates and basins, and the supply of soap and floor-cloths for scrubbing the rooms. Barrack damages were always a mystery to soldiers serving at this time. I once ventured to ask the Colour-Sergeant at the pay-table for an explanation of them. He obliged me with a list of things which had been supplied my own barrack-room, enough to stock one of Woolworth’s stores if they had been introduced into England at this time; and yet the only new utensils that had come to our notice during the month were a fourpenny black-lead brush and a bar of yellow soap. I knew it was useless to make a complaint to the paying-out officer or company officer; the Colour-Sergeant would have explained that though it might be so that my room had incurred few damages that month, the other company rooms had been exceptionally unlucky, and that, as usual, the money was being made up by the whole company contributing the same share. I always believed, but could never prove it, that the colour-sergeants and the men in charge of the dry-canteen, where the barrack-room articles were bought, had a perfect understanding. No doubt they settled their accounts once a month and drank to the health of Barrack-room Damages.

After breakfast, we recruits did two drill-parades of forty-five minutes each, with a fifteen-minute rest after each one. The third parade of the morning, which lasted an hour, was in the gymnasium; and by the time the physical-drill instructors had finished with us, the majority of us were hungry enough to eat a brass monkey, tail and all. If we had any money for a pint or two in the Canteen, the beer would make us hungrier still, and many a day I felt that I could have eaten the whole of the men’s dinners in my room. At a quarter to one the dinner was brought from the cookhouse. It was either a roast, an Irish stew or a curry stew, with occasionally a small portion of currant-pudding as a dessert. It was the orderly man’s job to make it out on each man’s plate as equally as he could. One or two men assisted him, with the remainder of the men in the room standing around the table and looking on with roving eyes and hungry bellies. After the plates were all filled and the dixie emptied, the orderly man would say, “If you are all satisfied, charge!” Although all the dinners had been made out as equal as possible, there would be a charge at one of the plates which seemed to have a fraction more on it than the remainder. The rule was that the man who first laid his hands on it kept it, but it sometimes happened that there was a dead-heat. This generally produced a fight and the victor took the spoils. The Corporal and the two old soldiers were rarely in the room when the dinner was made out; if they were, they never interfered with our charge and were delighted whenever a scrap took place. I had one in my first week over a bit of roast which another recruit took a fancy to; but boxing practice at Blaina with Evan and David (David had now become middle-weight champion of his battalion in South Africa) had put me well above the average in skill. I knocked my opponent out almost at once and from then on I was left severely alone; indeed I never again had the necessity of scrapping with a man of my own regiment, and did not go about picking quarrels.

We did two more parades in the afternoon: on one of these parades we were occasionally lectured on the history of the Regiment and had all the battles which were emblazoned on the Colours fought over for us—and some that were not, such as the Battle of the Boyne which, taking place in a Civil War, did not count as a battle-honour, and Bunker’s Hill, where the Regiment fought gallantly, but lost four-fifths of its strength charging in the heat in full equipment up a difficult hill against American sharp-shooters. The battle-honours we were taught to be most proud of were: Minden, where the Regiment was in the front-line when six British infantry battalions drove twice their number of French cavalry off the field; Dettingen, where King George II fought in person; Albuera, where our men stormed the heights, as part of the famous Fusilier Brigade; Corunna, where our Second Battalion were the last troops to embark after the victory; Waterloo, where the commanding officer moved the square up out of the reserves on his own initiative and was himself killed; and Inkerman, the “Soldiers’ Battle” as it was called, in the Crimean War.

Every Friday afternoon we had to do one hour’s saluting-drill, which every one of us detested, from the time we began to learn it by numbers. N.C.O.s, representing officers, were stationed at different points around the square, around which we marched four abreast with about ten or fifteen paces’ distance between each four. When we were so many paces from an N.C.O., the left-hand or right-hand man of the four would shout “Up!” and each man would bring his hand smartly to the salute, and keep it there for so many paces until the command “Down!” when the hands were brought smartly to the side. Any man who was judged to have been slovenly in his saluting was punished with an extra hour’s saluting-drill after the parade had been dismissed. I never did this extra hour myself and always considered it the most childish and degrading punishment of all. I have often seen one solitary man going through it under charge of an N.C.O. Since the other N.C.O.s had been dismissed, the man had to walk around the square saluting the trees which enclosed it.

At night, we had to stand by our beds at nine-thirty when the Orderly Sergeant came around the rooms and took down the names of absentees. At ten-fifteen the bugler sounded “Lights out” and every light was extinguished. After a man had been in the service six months without an entry in his regimental conduct-sheet—the company conduct-sheet was only for light offences—he was entitled to a permanent pass which allowed him to stay out of barracks until midnight, when he would answer his name to the Sergeant of the Guard. If a man was late a lot depended on whether he was on friendly terms with the Sergeant of the Guard, who might let him get away with it even if he came in at two o’clock in the morning, or who might, on the other hand, report him as “absent until reporting himself at 12.05 a.m.” if he was just beaten at the gate by the last stroke of midnight. Men did not have enough of money to square the Sergeant of the Guard, but I daresay it could have been managed if they had.

My own length of service did not entitle me to a late pass, but Toombs put me up to the trick of getting over the brick wall at the back of the Barracks, with the assistance of a handy tree, and spending the night with my fair charmer. I never failed to be back in my bed by reveille, to start another day as a younger soldier should, running around the parade-ground with my knees up to get an appetite for my breakfast.