The British Army from Within — Context and Discussion

the case of a two-battalion regiment, one battalion is usually on foreign service while the other is domiciled in England, and the home battalion feeds the one on foreign service with recruits as needed to keep the latter up to strength. A notable exception to this rule occurred in the case of the Norfolk Regiment a few years ago, when the first and second battalions met at Bloemfontein, one outward bound at the beginning of its term of foreign service, and the other about to start for home.

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 thoroughly into condition, while weaklings are picked out and marked down for future reference. “Falling out” on a route march without good and sufficient reason means days to barracks for the offender, at the least, and “cells” is a possibility.

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 attention to his barrack-room; he is restricted, in a way that would not be possible in the cavalry or artillery, in the way in which he employs his leisure hours, and parades are made to keep his hands out of mischief, as well as to train him to thorough efficiency.

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 way in which a man of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry will view a given situation, and the view adopted by a man of the East Surreys, for one is “reet Yorkshire,” while the other is Cockney all through. Dialects and regimental slang combined make the language of the one almost unintelligible to the other, and, while each arrives at precisely the same end by slightly varying means, each claims superiority over the other.