Читать книгу Old-Soldier Sahib - Frank Richards - Страница 4

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At the end of three months I left Wrexham with a draft for Crownhill Barracks, Plymouth, where our regimental details were. I hoped that the time was not far distant when I would be under orders to proceed to South Africa, where my cousin David was still going strong. He seemed to enjoy the War and had been transferred to the Mounted Infantry. I had learned much during these three months, and as I had done several guards and pickets and was also considered an expert at rolling a top-coat I felt myself a pukka old soldier. There was quite an art in rolling a top-coat, which was strapped on the small of the back when parading in full marching order. Two or three men assisted in the actual rolling, but the art lay in arranging the coat on the floor or table beforehand.

Although the War was in its last stages, and casualties from enemy action were no longer serious, drafts were still being sent to our First Battalion, to make up for the wastage caused by sickness. A few First Battalion men also completed their engagements and were able to go home, but not many; because while the War was in progress time-serving soldiers, not only in South Africa but everywhere else, were kept with the Colours until they had completed their full reserve service, which meant thirteen years in all; or twenty-one years if they had re-engaged for that period; or seventeen years in the case of Section D men. No drafts, however, had gone to our Second Battalion in the East for some time. I may mention here that the Indian Government realized that as soon as the War ended large numbers of seasoned troops would be demobilized as time-expired, and untrained ones sent out to take their places; so they insured against too sudden a change by offering a bounty of £26 10s. to all men who had completed eight years’ service if they would take on for their twelve—twelve really meant thirteen, as in bakers’ shops. (They offered at the same time a three-months’ furlough to England, but that reduced a man’s bounty by £12 or so, so few men accepted it.) This wise move on the part of the Indian Government explains why so many old soldiers were still serving with the Second Battalion long after I joined it in India when the War was over.

Crownhill Barracks was about three miles from Plymouth, which I found a very lively place indeed. The middle part of the town was lined with pubs, many of which in the evening were full of sailors, soldiers, marines and prostitutes. Some of the pubs were never called by their proper names: there was one in a side-street, as I remember, which was known to all of us as “The Whores’ Canteen” and another had a name which even the prostitutes resented. Some of these women were young and good-looking and many of them had nicknames, but according to soldiers who had been stationed at Plymouth two years before there was not one of them now with one-quarter of the good looks that a girl called Klondyke Nell had; she had vanished mysteriously from Plymouth, and Union Street hadn’t been the same place since. They were always talking about this Klondyke Nell, but it was no use, she was never seen or heard of again. From all I heard of her she was in the same class as that Eskimo Nell who defeated Deadwood Dick and Mexican Pete in the famous ballad which bears her name; she certainly left her mark on Plymouth in the year 1898.

I was in many a scrap in these pubs. Affrays between men of the Regiment were fought out more or less according to the rules of boxing, but when we were scrapping with marines or men of other regiments with whom there was a feud that was a different matter: the buckled ends of belts were used, and also boots. Soldiers and marines were always at loggerheads. The Welsh Regiment had a particular feud with the marines and if a row started and the Welsh were in a minority we of the Royal Welch Fusiliers felt bound in honour to go to their support. The first I knew of the business was, one day in a pub, a man of the Welsh Regiment went over to a marine and said in a friendly sort of tone: “Pleased to meet you, Joey, let’s you and I together have a talk about old times.”

“What old times, Taffy?” asked the marine, suspiciously.

“That sea-battle long ago—I forget its name—where my regiment once served on board a bloody flagship of the Royal Navy.”

“What as? Ballast?” asked the marine, finishing his beer before the trouble started.

“No, as marines, whatever,” answered the Welshman. “It was like this. The Admiral wanted a bit of fighting done, and the sailors were all busy with steering the bloody ship and looping up the bloody sails, see? And the marines said they didn’t feel like doing any bloody fighting that day, see? So of course he called in the Old Sixty-Ninth to undertake the job.”

“Never heard tell before of a marine who didn’t feel like fighting,” said the marine, setting down his empty mug and jumping forward like a boxing kangaroo. In a moment we were all at it, hammer and tongs, and the sides being very even a decent bit of blood flowed: fortunately the scrap ended before murder was done, by the landlord shouting that the picket was on the way. We made ourselves scarce, friends and foes alike, sneaking down an alley at the back of the premises.

The troops from the barracks found main-guard and pickets for six days of the week; the marines found them on the remaining day, which was Saturday. All drunk and disorderly prisoners were put in the main guard-room, where an escort came for them the next morning. The marines were bolder on Saturday nights than what they usually were, because there was not the same danger of being rushed away to the guard-room if they were found scrapping, as would certainly happen, whether they were drunk or not, if their opponents were of the same regiment as the picket. On Saturday nights also, soldiers were particularly careful when passing a picket of marines: there might be old enemies among them. The marine pickets always made the most of their one night in seven for paying off old scores.

The same sort of trouble occurred if Scottish and Welsh troops were in the same garrison together. We and the Highland Light Infantry were bitter enemies, I don’t know why—it was something handed down from bygone days. Some say that it originated towards the end of last century during a final for the Army Football Championship of India when the H.L.I., having scored a lucky goal early on against our chaps, kept their advantage by delaying tactics—kicking wide into touch whenever they had the ball. To this day, in the Battalion, these tactics are always greeted with the indignant cry of “H.L.I., H.L.I.!” and the expression has been adopted by other units and by civilians. We got on well enough with the Irish regiments, but the only Scottish regiment that I can remember us ever being friendly with was the Cameronians.

A good deal of rhyming-slang was used in those days. For example, a pub was a “rub-a-dub”, a table was a “Cain-and-Abel”, the wife was “joy-of-my-life”, the kids were “God-forbids” and so on. Beer was “pig’s-ear” or “Crimea” or “Fusilier”, but if a Welshman went into a pub where a Highland soldier was, of the regiment whose square was once broken by the Mahdi’s dervishes in the Sudan, he would sometimes ask for a “pint of broken-square”. Then he would have his belly-full of scrapping for the rest of the night, because this was an insult that the Highlanders could not forgive; they swarmed up at it like ants. If a man wanted a scrap and couldn’t think of a suitable insult, all he had to do was to turn his beer-mug upside-down on the bar as soon as it was empty, which meant a general challenge.

With the sailors of the Royal Navy we always got on very well. There was no sense of competition between them and us, as there was between us and the Marines or men of other regiments. What struck us most forcibly about the sailors was the comradeship between petty-officers and ordinary able-bodied seamen; they walked out and mucked-in together when taking an evening ashore just as if there was no difference of rank between them. Such behaviour was sternly prohibited in the Army. From the day that a man was made a lance-corporal he could no longer walk out or gamble or drink with a private, or allow himself to be addressed by a nickname except by his equals. If he forgot the responsibility that his stripe carried with it he was immediately crimed for “conduct unbecoming a non-commissioned officer” and would probably get a severe reprimand from the Colonel, and be reduced to the ranks again. It was not wanting to lose touch with my chums that always kept me from putting in for promotion (though a few of them lost touch with me by doing so) and I remained a private to the last, in spite of all temptations. It was at Christmas that most fighting was done at Plymouth, the same there as in every station I was ever in. Christmas always meant a damned good tuck-in, with plenty of booze and scraps to follow. On this day stern N.C.O.s winked their eye at everything: a man had to be raving mad before they would rush him along to clink. Men who had the money would get dixies full of beer from the Canteen; even the Provost-Sergeant winked his eye at it. During the afternoon, when the beer took effect, scrapping started and unpopular N.C.O.s made themselves scarce for the remainder of the day. It was the custom to take the battalion out for a fifteen or twenty mile route-march, two days later, to sweat Christmas out of them.

From Crownhill we made a move to Raglan Barracks, Devonport, not far away, where we formed a composite Battalion with details of the Welch Regiment, Gloucesters, Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry and Somersetshire Light Infantry. This battalion was commanded by Lord Mostyn, a Colonel of one of our Militia Battalions; the Adjutant and Regimental Sergeant-Major belonged to the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry. We carried out the usual drills together and went on a fourteen mile route-march once or twice a week. Each unit in its turn found quarter-guard, hospital-guard and main-guard. The main-guard was on the main road, not very far from the halfpenny bridge which divided Plymouth from Devonport. On this guard one sentry was posted over the house of Lieutenant-General Butler, who commanded the Western District, and another over the house of the Lord High Admiral, or whatever his official title was. This guard had to learn the distinguishing marks on the Naval Officers’ uniforms and give them the salute they were entitled to.

The first time I was posted as a sentry over the Admiral’s house, I noticed two small boys on a flat roof at the end of it; they had clay pipes and a bowl of soapsuds and were trying to beat each other at making the largest bubble. I became so interested in the game that I hardly noticed the approach of two civilians until they were a few yards away from me. They were both typical Devonshire farmers, the elder having mutton-chop whiskers and the younger being a burly, slow-looking man. They seemed to be even more interested in the boys than I was, but the boys were so excited in the competition that they never once looked down. The three of us stood watching for a few minutes together until I threw my rifle to the slope and prepared to march to the end of my beat and back. As I left them I told them that I wouldn’t have thought it possible that soap-bubbles could provide so much excitement and that it would have been possible for the Lord High Admiral and his Staff to have passed my beat without me noticing them. They both burst out laughing, but even their laughter did not attract the attention of the boys who went on blowing bigger bubbles than ever. I marched to the end of my beat and as I was retracing my steps I was surprised to see the two farmers halfway through the front-door of the house. About ten minutes later one of the servant-girls, with whom I became very friendly afterwards, came out. She told me that the farmers were the Admiral and his son-in-law, a Commander in the Navy, the grandfather and father of the boys, and that they were both still laughing at what I had said.

The principal Medical Officer of the whole of the Western District was a Surgeon-General nicknamed “Mad Jack”. Men who had been admitted to the station hospital said that he was not a bad sort, but they all swore he was stone mad. The chief trouble seemed to be his familiar way of talking to the men. There were a number of sick and wounded men from South Africa in the hospital and whenever he visited the wards they were in he would smile and say, “My poor South African heroes!”; but when he entered the venereal ward he would smile and say, “My poor Plymouth heroes!” In each case he would ask them how their wounds were healing. Hospital-guard was popular: we were allowed a liberal supply of bread and cheese and hot cocoa for supper by the hospital authorities, and most of us were hungry-gutted youngsters.

I fired my recruits’ course of musketry at Tregantle Fort, about six miles from Plymouth and not far from Eddystone Lighthouse. I proved to be a good shot and three months later when I fired my duty-man’s course with the company I became a marksman. With the exception of one year, when I missed it by three points, I kept my marksman’s badge throughout the whole of my soldiering. A duty-man’s course of musketry had to be fired once a year. At this time twenty-one rounds were fired at two hundred yards (seven standing, seven kneeling and seven, rapid, lying), fourteen rounds at three hundred yards (seven kneeling and seven lying) and seven rounds each (lying) at five hundred, six hundred and eight hundred yards. At two hundred yards we also fired seven rounds (standing) at the head and shoulders of a man on a target which was exposed for three seconds and seven rounds at “the running man”. This target was mounted on a trolley and pulled across the butts at a fair rate until it disappeared out of sight. Money prizes were awarded, ranging from a sovereign to half-a-crown, but were abolished a few years later. A marksman generally won a money-prize and was also entitled to wear the crossed-rifles on his sleeve. A first-class shot came next to a marksman, followed by a second-class shot; lowest of all was a third-class shot. At the Tregantle range firing would often be held up for half an hour or more owing to a fishing fleet sailing too close to the shore; this was to protect the boats from casualties which the third-class shots were likely to inflict.

During the night it was easy to smuggle anyone into Raglan Barracks but they had to be out before dawn, because by day escape was impossible. The barracks were three storeys high and surrounded on one side by a very high wall; on the other, facing a common called the Brickfields, ran a stone wall about seven or eight feet in height with iron railings sunk in the top. Sometimes girls were brought into the barracks at night over these railings and sent out over them an hour before dawn. The room I was in, on the top storey, was only partly occupied at this time—six of us and the Corporal in charge. The Corporal had a bunk of his own partitioned off at the end of the room. At about half-past eleven one night the Corporal and another man from the room brought in a young lady whom they had picked up in town. She had only just begun in her new profession and was half-drunk. The Corporal, who was an old soldier and a happy-go-lucky chap, took her into his bunk and slept with her. He intended to get her out of barracks before dawn, but in case he did not wake up himself any one of us who happened to be awake at the time would give him a call.

Reveille was sounding before the Corporal or any one else of us woke up; it was now impossible to get the lady out of barracks. The Corporal told us not to breathe a word to the men in the other rooms about the matter; he would get her out as soon as dusk set in. Once a day the Company Officer inspected the barrack-rooms, but it was very rarely that he entered the bunks of the N.C.O.s in charge. The Colour-Sergeant was a very stout man and only paid a visit to the upper storey when he came around with the Company Officer. In case the Officer did go into the bunk the girl would be hiding under the bed; for N.C.O.s in charge of rooms did not fold up their beds in the morning like the men did. Our only difficulty was what to do about sanitary arrangements. The sanitation was situated on the ground floor and the young lady wanted to know what she should do if she had a call of nature.

One man suggested bringing up a tub but this suggestion was turned down; if one had been brought up it would have been noticed by the men in the other rooms who would have smelt a rat and perhaps investigated. Another man had a bright idea: the spare tea-bucket! The orderly man could take it down that night as soon as she was gone, and clean it. We all thought this was a wonderful solution, with the exception of the orderly man who thought it was a rotten one; but we appealed to his sporting instincts, and he finally promised to do the job. Each room had two tea-buckets, one in use and the other in reserve. Our pair, unluckily as it turned out, happened both to be brand new. It was the orderly man’s duty to take the tea-buckets down to the cookhouse before breakfast and again before tea. The cook put the numbers in whitening on each room’s bucket so that each room would receive its proper one.

The Company Officer inspected the room in due course, with the Colour-Sergeant, and everything passed off all right. The Corporal did not mind any one of us in the room visiting the girl during the day and neither did the girl. In the course of the morning the Corporal was warned that he would be on picket in the town that night, which meant that he could not be there to assist her over the railings. He told us to do so for him as soon as darkness set in. The evening came, and we told her to get ready; we gave her an army top-coat to cover her dress and a forage-cap to put on her head in case we met anyone going down the stairs or crossing the square. She had come into barracks this way too. But she threw the coat and cap back at us, saying that she enjoyed barrack-life with so many nice young men about and that she was not leaving that night, and that if we got rough with her she would scream the barracks down.

About midnight the Corporal returned and we explained the situation to him. He also tried to persuade her to go, but in vain. In the end she promised to leave the following night. We again successfully appealed to the orderly man to carry on the good work. The Corporal now had the wind up; if the girl had been found in the room he would have been court-martialled and reduced to the ranks, with a stiff term of imprisonment thrown in. She remained there all the following day, hiding under the bed during the Company Officer’s inspection, and receiving visitors. When night came, however, she kept her promise and we got her safely over the railings. It would have been very awkward the following day if she had not gone, as it was the day for the inspection of barrack-room utensils: every utensil in the room, including both tea-buckets, had to be laid out for the Officer’s inspection, and it was the orderly man’s duty that day to polish the tea-buckets bright enough for a man to shave in. During the inspection of our room the Officer complimented the Corporal on having the two brightest tea-buckets he had seen that morning and said that they were a credit to the man who had cleaned them.

In the afternoon, when it was time to take the bucket down to the cookhouse for the tea, the orderly man found that he had cleaned both of the buckets so well that he was unable to decide which of them had been used for another purpose. No bloodhounds that ever followed a trail could have ever sniffed harder than what we seven then did; the buckets were passed and repassed around and we sniffed every inch of the inside and outside of them. One man was so hot on the scent that he got his head fast in one of the buckets through trying to get his nose as near to the bottom of it as he could; when we released him he said he was not sure, but he thought that was the bucket in question. We gave the problem up as hopeless; there wasn’t a vestige of smell in either of the buckets. We cursed the orderly man for doing his work so well and for not thinking of putting a small nick in the bucket; and he cursed us back for not having thought of the nick ourselves. He took one of the buckets down to the cookhouse and brought it back to the room filled with tea. Then he poured out each man’s portion in his basin. We all again gave an exhibition of sniffing that would have taken some beating, but in the end the tea went down untasted.

The Corporal was very pally with one of the cooks, who was also an old soldier, and revealed to him the secret of the buckets. The cook did a grin and promised to see to the matter. The following morning one of our buckets was taken down to the cookhouse, and another sent back in its place, not quite so new, but very welcome. We drank our tea this time without sniffing and during the afternoon the same thing happened with our other bucket. We had a great weight off our mind, and what happened to the rooms which now had our tea-buckets we did not care; they were probably congratulating themselves on having brand-new tea-buckets instead of their old ones; for “what the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve”, and also “no name, no pack-drill”.

During the latter end of 1901 or early in 1902 King Edward and Queen Alexandra paid a visit to Plymouth and Devonport. They were present at the launching of a new battleship at Devonport Dockyard which Her Majesty christened The Queen. There was a grand procession down Union Street, with troops lining both sides of the road to keep the crowds back. Their Majesties had a wonderful reception, with cheers rolling from one end of the route to the other. There were none in the crowd who cheered more sincerely than the prostitutes did. They had turned out in force to witness the procession, forming pickets all along Union Street. Their Majesties were riding in an open landau and the Queen looked very youthful for one of her age, and very lovely also. King Edward was a jovial-faced man, very popular with the rank and file of the Army. He knew the history of every regiment and was said to be the greatest living authority on details of military and naval uniform. He had already won two Derbys and was also supposed to be very fond of a gamble at a game of cards, like the majority of his loyal troops. The Royal carriage had just passed the spot where I was standing when a member of one of the prostitute-pickets wriggled through the troops in front of her, and shouting “My Father, my Father” started running after the carriage, which she had just failed to catch. This girl, who was called Leaky Minnie, was not quite right in her head. She was always telling her friends that her father was a Lord, but when she got drunk a Lord was not important enough for her: she then told them that it was either a Duke or a Prince that was her father. On this occasion the sight of the King must have played on her mind already stirred up by gin and patriotic feelings. The troops were taken by surprise, but a couple of men grounded arms and rushed after her. They caught her before she could catch hold of the back of the carriage and handed her over to the civilian police. She was never seen in Plymouth again and although her friends made enquiries they could never find out what had become of her. There was no mention of this incident in any newspaper the next day.

This winter we did a number of route-marches in full marching order through the villages surrounding Plymouth. Any man who fell out was punished the following afternoon by having to march for two hours in full marching order around the large barrack square. In the middle of January 1902 about twenty of us chosen from the different units of the battalion commenced a sixty days’ course of signalling under a signalling-sergeant of the Gloucesters. He was assisted by an old signaller of our Second Battalion who had been invalided home from China. As I found out later a signalling-sergeant always considered himself lucky if at the end of a sixty days’ course he could pick out five men from a class of twenty who were likely to make decent signallers. This class proved no exception to the rule. I was greatly interested in this course, but the majority of the class had put their names down for it only because for the time being they would be getting out of drill-parades and guards and pickets.

It was while I was on this course that I committed my first crime. “Crime” in the British Army is a word that covers all offences from desertion or murder to being two minutes late for parade or failing to polish up one’s cap or collar-badges to the satisfaction of the Company Officer. My crime was as follows. As I was now not doing drill-parades I had poured some rifle-oil down the barrel of my rifle, which was the correct thing to do when it was not in use. My company commander was a captain belonging to the Royal Engineers Militia, and in the course of one of his weekly tours of the barrack-rooms he happened to pick hold of my rifle and squint down the barrel. The oil had dulled the grooves of the rifle and the Captain, who did not know the difference between a dull rifle bore and a dirty one, exclaimed: “Colour-Sergeant, this rifle is in a filthy condition. Have a look down the barrel!” The Colour-Sergeant obediently squinted down the barrel and agreed with him, because he was just that sort of Colour-Sergeant. If the rifle had been in a deplorable condition of rust and dirt and the Captain had said it was remarkably clean, the Colour-Sergeant would have agreed with him exactly the same. I was on parade at the time, and when I came off the Colour-Sergeant informed me that I was a prisoner. This expression, which was officially abandoned during the Great War in favour of “accused” merely meant that I was charged with some offence: it did not put any restrictions on my movements. He warned me to appear at the Company Orderly Room the next morning to answer the charge of having a dirty rifle.

The following morning I appeared in front of the Company Commander. He told me I should be ashamed of myself for leaving my rifle in such a dirty condition in the barrack-room and then asked me what I had to say for myself. I said that the rifle was dull, not dirty, and that I had only been following Musketry Regulations for the proper care of arms when not in use. He did a sarcastic grin at my explanation and said that he would punish me lightly by fining me one shilling, which it would cost to have the rifle cleaned by the Armourer-Sergeant. This pretended kindness made me angrier than what I would have been if he had said nothing but “Seven days confined to barracks”. I told him I would not accept his punishment: I was not going to pay a shilling to have a rifle that was not dirty cleaned by a special process. He was surprised by my obstinacy and put me back to be tried by the Colonel. Officers commanding companies could give no higher punishment than seven days confined to barracks. Punishment higher than this was awarded by the Colonel, who could sentence a man from eight days confined to barracks up to twenty-eight days’ cells. If still more severe punishment was called for it was awarded by a District Court-martial. If a man was not satisfied with his company commander’s punishment he had the option of being tried by the Colonel; if he was not satisfied with the Colonel’s award he could claim to be tried by a District Court-martial. It was very rarely that this option was claimed; a colonel always awarded a harder sentence than a company commander, and a District Court-martial sentence was harder than a colonel’s.

If any civilians had been present when I was marched into the Orderly Room in front of the Colonel they would have taken me for the most dangerous desperado in the whole of the British Army. The quarter-guard always provided an escort for prisoners and I was marched into the Orderly Room between two men who carried unsheathed bayonets by their sides with the points sticking upwards. The Captain gave his evidence and by the time he had finished it would have taken the Armourer-Sergeant at least a week to restore my rifle to working condition. I then replied to the charge. I was foolish enough to suggest that in fairness to me the Colonel should examine the rifle himself. I had by this time removed the oil from the barrel and cleaned it until it almost hurt the eyes to take a look down. The Colonel told me coldly that I was insolent. He awarded me eight days confined to barracks and added that I must pay for the cleaning of the rifle. I flushed red with anger at this injustice: I had a difficult job to restrain myself, bayonets or no bayonets, from slugging the Captain one on the jaw and kicking the table up over the Colonel.

I was now a defaulter, or “on jankers” as the troops called it. Every time the bugle sounded the Defaulters’ call, unless I was already on parade, I would have to answer my name at the Guard-room and be marched off with the other defaulters to do some fatigue or other, in or about the barracks. Defaulters also had to parade every afternoon in full marching order under the Provost-Sergeant, who for one whole hour marched them backwards and forwards over a space of ground no more than ten yards in length. The old “shoulder arms!” was not yet abolished, and carrying our rifles at the shoulder with bayonets fixed numbed the middle finger and made the right arm ache unbearably: the bayonet seemed to make the rifle twice as heavy. At the end of this hour, which was no joke, we had to show our kit, which we carried in our valises. If any man was short of any article he was tried for the crime on the following morning and generally given an additional three days confined to barracks. Between six o’clock in the evening and Last Post the bugle sounded the Defaulters’ call every half an hour and at every call the Defaulters had to answer their names to the Sergeant of the Guard. They were not allowed in the Canteen at noon, though they could visit it between eight and nine at night, with an interruption at half-past eight of going to the Guard-room to answer their names. The Defaulters concluded their day by falling in on staff-parade outside the Guard-room at Last Post: this was when the Regimental Sergeant-Major took the reports of the Orderly Sergeants and the N.C.O.s who had been on duty in the barracks during the evening. During this eight days I was more fed up with the Army than I was during the whole of my soldiering. It was the injustice that made me feel so sick.

On the day I completed my sentence the Militia Captain left us and one of our own regimental officers, Lieutenant Maddocks, took charge of the Company for the time being. He proved himself as much of a gentleman as the Militiaman had been a pig. Before the Militiaman left he had ordered my rifle to be taken to the Armourer, and I was given another one in its place. Later I found out that my rifle had not been to the Armourer at all: it had been taken to the store-room of the Company and put in oil with the other spare rifles—according to Musketry Regulations for the care of arms when not in use. We signed our accounts for the month an hour or two before we were paid out. As I was about to sign mine I noticed the sum due to me was a shilling less than what was due to the other men. The Colour-Sergeant reminded me of the shilling deducted for the cleaning of the rifle. I refused to sign. I said it was a damned robbery. But he threatened to make me a prisoner for using foul language to an N.C.O., and at the same time warned me that, if I did not sign, the Commanding Officer would have another bang at me. I was at last old soldier enough to realize that I was up against it. I signed. But I swore to myself that if ever I dropped across the Captain or Colour-Sergeant in civil life I would call them to budget over this affair.

I had been on the signalling course for six weeks when I was warned for a South African draft. After passing the medical officer I reported to the Signalling-Sergeant, who wanted to know where I had been. He was not aware until I told him that I was down for a draft and that I was proceeding to Blaina on a forty-eight hours’ leave the following morning. He then began to swear and curse and said that I would see no Africa until I had completed my sixty days’ course. I knew very well that once a man commenced a course he had to complete it, though the instructor could use his own judgment at any stage of the course and return any of the class to duty who either could not or would not learn. I badly wanted to go to Africa. I pleaded with the Sergeant to let me go. Our class had dwindled down to ten, the others having all proceeded to Africa. I pointed out to him that he had let them go without a murmur. “Yes, that’s right,” he replied, “and if you had been as dull as what they were I’d have let you go without a murmur too. But only you and Mills, of your regiment, are ever likely to make signallers, and in you two I shall have at least something to show that my work has not been in vain.” He went to the Adjutant, who had my name struck off the draft. Another man took my place, and I cursed myself for having got on so well with the course. At the end the Sergeant recommended Mills and me for a further course of instruction at Aldershot; but we never went, because the details of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, who were now over six hundred strong, were put under orders to relieve the Devons at Jersey in the Channel Isles.