The old-time term, light infantry, has little meaning at present as far as difference in the stamp of man and the weight of equipment carried is concerned; one infantry battalion is equal to another in respect of “lightness,” except that some Highland battalions, recruiting from districts which provide exceptionally brawny specimens of humanity, obtain a taller and weightier average of men. Varieties of equipment in the old days made infantry “heavy” and “light,” but the modern infantryman is kept as light as possible in the matter of equipment in all units. Certain battalions possess and are very proud of distinctions awarded them for feats on the field of battle. Thus it is permitted to one infantry regiment, including all its battalions, to wear the regimental badge both on the front and the back of the helmet in review order, also on their field-service caps, to commemorate an In the “review order” or full dress of modern infantrymen—and in fact of all British soldiers—there are certain buttons and fittings which serve no useful purpose, and soldiers themselves, even, sometimes wonder why these things are worn. The reason is that, in old time, all these fittings had a use; the buttons on the back of the tunic supported belts which are no longer worn, or covered pockets which no longer exist. There is a reason also in the officer wearing his sash on one shoulder and the sergeant his on another, and in the same way there is a reason for every seemingly useless fitting in a soldier’s review uniform—it perpetuates a tradition of the particular battalion or regiment concerned, The actual spirit in which the infantryman views his work is a difficult thing to assess. One noteworthy example of that spirit is the case of Piper Findlater, who, wounded beyond the power of movement at Dargai, sat up and piped—an amazing piece of courage and coolness under fire. Yet that same Piper Findlater, invalided home and out of the service, could display himself on a music-hall stage, an action which was incomprehensible to the civilian mind. But, to the average infantryman, there was nothing incongruous in the two actions—one was as much the right of the man as the other was to his credit, and Findlater was typical of the British infantryman. Under the present system, each infantry regiment is divided into two or more battalions. Under the old system, each battalion was distinguished by a number, but the numbers have been abolished in favour of names of counties or districts, and two or more battalions form the regiment of a county or division of a county. It is very seldom that The infantryman is fitted for what constitutes the greater part of his work, when the season’s “training” is over, by what is known as “route marching.” In this, a battalion is started out at the beginning of the route-marching season on a march of a few miles, in light order—carrying rifles and bayonets only, perhaps. The distance covered is gradually increased, and the weight of equipment carried by the men is also increased, until the men concerned are carrying their full packs and marching twelve or fourteen miles a day. Service conditions are maintained as far as possible, so as to make the men fit for long marches at any time; by this means the men’s feet are hardened and the men themselves brought The work of the infantryman is less complex than that of any other branch of the service: he has to be trained to march well and to know how to use his rifle and bayonet. Principally, given the physical endurance for the marching part of the business, he has to learn to shoot, and the simplicity of his duties is compensated for by the thoroughness with which he is taught. Then, again, discipline is of necessity stricter in infantry units than in other branches of the service; the cavalryman, with a horse to care for as well as himself and his arms and equipment, and the driver or gunner of artillery, with “two horses and two sets” (of saddlery) or his gun or limber to mind, is kept busy most of the time without an excess of discipline, but the infantryman in time of peace is concerned only with himself, his arms and equipment, and his barrack-room—a small total when compared with the cares of the man in the cavalry or artillery. By way of compensation, the infantryman is made to give more A brigade of infantry, consisting of four battalions, looks a perfectly uniform mass of men on, say, a service, dress parade, but intimate knowledge of the characteristics of the men in each battalion reveals a world of difference; each regiment has its own traditions, and each battalion differs widely from the rest in its methods of working, its way of issuing commands, and its internal arrangements. There is a standard of bugle calls for the whole Army, but practically every infantry battalion infuses a certain amount of individuality into the method of sounding the call. The buglers of the Rifle Brigade, for instance, would scorn to sound their calls in the way that the East Surreys or the York and Lancaster battalions sound theirs, and conversely a York and Lancaster or an East Surrey man would smile at the bugle call of the Rifle Brigade battalion. The districts from which men are recruited, too, account for many little peculiarities in the ways of different battalions. There is obviously a world of difference between The spirit of the British infantryman, with very few exceptions, consists mainly in his belief that he is a member of the best company in the very best battalion of infantry in the service. As for his particular arm of the service, he points with pride to the fact that he comes in from a march and gets to his food while the poor cavalryman is still fretting about in the horse lines, and he has no two sets of harness to bother about after a field day. He slings his equipment on the shelf and goes off to his meal when the field day is over, while the poor gunner is busy with an oil rag, keeping the rust from eating into his gun and its fittings until the time comes to clean it. Thus the infantryman on his advantages, and with some justice, too. But in the barrack-room the cavalryman and artilleryman have the advantage. They can make down their beds and snooze when work is done, Another favourite form of exercise, in which the infantryman is indulged with what appears to him unnecessary frequency, is kit inspection. At first sight, it would seem that the circumstance of an officer inspecting the kit and equipment of his men is not one which would cause an undue amount of trouble, but the reverse of this is the case in practice. Each man has to lay down his kit to a regulation pattern; at the head of the bed, on which the clothing and equipment is laid out, the reds and blues and khaki-coloured squares represent much time spent by the man in folding each article of clothing to the last half-inch of size and form, prescribed by the regulation affecting the way in which kit must be laid down for inspection. Then come the underclothing, knife and fork, razor, Prayer Book and Bible, brushes, and other odds and ends with which every man must be provided. If any article is deficient from the official list, the man is promptly “put down” for a new article to replace the deficiency—and for this he has to pay. The upkeep of a full kit is most strictly enforced, and, Kit inspection counts as a “parade,” and not as a “fatigue.” The latter term is used to imply all kinds of actual work in connection with the maintenance of order in the battalion, and varies from washing up in the sergeants’ mess to carrying coals for the barrack-room or married quarters. To each unit, as a rule, there is a coal-yard attached, and from this a certain amount of coal is issued free each week for cooking purposes, while in the winter months a further amount is allotted to the men to burn in the barrack-room stoves. If the allowance is exceeded—and since it is a small one it is usually exceeded—the men club round among themselves to purchase more, at the rate of a penny or twopence a man. The fetching of this extra A roll is kept of all men liable for fatigue duty, and each man takes his turn in alphabetical order in the performance of the various tasks that have to be done. As these tasks differ considerably in nature and extent, it follows that the alphabetical way of ordering the roll is as fair as any, though artful dodgers, getting wind of a stiff fatigue ahead, will get out of doing it by exchanging their turns with those men who would otherwise get an easier task. As a rule, sergeants’ mess fatigue is one of the least liked, except on Sunday mornings, when it releases the man who does it from church parade—of which more later. For the actual housemaid work of the barrack-room, a roll is usually kept in each room, and the men of the room take turns at “orderly man,” as it is called. This involves the final sweeping out of the room after each man has swept under his own bed and round the little bit of floor which is his own particular territory. It involves the care of and responsibility for all the kits in the room while the remainder of the men are out at drill, and also the fetching of all meals and washing up of the plates and basins after each meal. The orderly man of the day is not supposed to leave the While guard duty is kept as light as possible in mounted branches of the service, it is allowed to assume large proportions in the infantry. In a cavalry regiment, the “main guard,” which mounts duty for twenty-four hours and has charge of the regimental guard-room and prisoners confined therein, is composed at the most of a corporal and three men, but in the infantry the main guard of a battalion consists of a sergeant, a corporal or lance-corporal, and six men, providing three reliefs of two sentries apiece. Guard duty is done in “review Certain men in infantry units—and in fact in all units—are excused from the regular routine of duty in order to fill special posts. Noteworthy among these are the “flag-waggers” or regimental signallers, a body of men maintained at a certain strength for the purpose of signalling messages with flags, heliograph, or lamps, by means of the Morse telegraphic code, and also with flags at short distances by semaphore. Bearing in mind the average education among the rank and file, it is In order to maintain the signallers of a unit in full practice and efficiency, the men are excused from all ordinary parades for a certain part of the year; during manoeuvres they are attached to the headquarters staff of their unit and carry on their work as signallers, not as ordinary duty-men. The wagging of flags is only a part of their duty, for they have to learn the mechanism and use of the heliograph, since, when sunlight permits of its use, this instrument can be employed for the transmission of messages to a far greater distance than is possible even with large flags. Lamps for signalling by night are operated by a button which alternately obscures and exhibits the light of a lamp placed behind a concentrating lens. The practised signaller is as efficient in the use of flags, lamps, Another course of instruction which carries with it a certain amount of exemption from duty in the infantry is that of scout. The practised scout is capable of plotting a way across country at night, marching by the compass or by the stars, making a watch serve as a compass, military map-reading—which is not as simple a matter as might be supposed—and of making sketches in conventional military signs of areas of ground, natural defensive positions, and all points likely to be of interest and advantage from a military point of view. The work of the signaller has been going on for many years, but the training of scouts is a movement which has come about and developed almost entirely during the last twelve years, which, as the Army reckons time, is but a very short period. It may be anticipated that the practice of scouting and the training of scouts will develop considerably as time goes on. Needless to say, the orderly-man is excused all parades during his day of duty as such. Only in exceptional circumstances are cooks taken for The duty-man affects to despise the man on the staff, but this affectation is more often a cloak for envy. “Staff jobs,” as the various forms of employment in a unit are called, generally mean extra pay; in nineteen cases out of twenty they mean exemption from most ordinary parades and from a good deal of the ordinary routine work of the unit concerned; in almost all cases they mean total exemption from fatigues. Under these circumstances it is not to be wondered at that the secret ambition of the average infantryman at duty, when he has relinquished all hope of promotion, is to get on the staff. |