VOLUNTEERING EXPERIENCES. HIS is an age of improvement. Most people try to improve their neighbours, some improve the occasion, a few are improving themselves. To me it is inexpressibly sad that even my Undergraduate friends are engaged in improvement of one kind or another. 'Twas not ever thus-but no matter! I trust that no one will accuse an Odd File like me of compassing or imagining any improvement in my readers. My friends know that I am incapable of such an act of treason. The present article being one, nominally at least, on Volunteering, it may appear to the captious critic that it is necessary to explain why men become Volunteers. But motives are proverbially difficult to fathom. A friend of mine once sold whelks off a barrow, alleging that he considered it a romantic occupation. Moreover, as Lopes J. has recently told us, motives have nothing to do with the matter. Let it be granted therefore, as Euclid says in his persuasive way, that a man is a Volunteer; and if he is not that he ought to be ashamed of himself. My own experiences were gained in the Volunteer Battalion of the Blankshire Regiment (Princess Beatrice's Own Bounders). You may know us by the B in our bonnets.* I fell a victim to the blandishments of a friend at an advanced period of an otherwise enjoyable evening, and before I had quite realised the • See G. O. 1886, 447b; Army Form 7286m, late W. O. Form 5378tpassim. state of affairs I had sworn to defend Her Majesty against all her enemies and oppressors whatsoever, and never to go on foreign service except in case of actual invasion. I was presently handed over to the Sergeant-Major, one of the most beautiful characters I have ever known. He had scarcely taught me to know my right foot from my left before he remarked, meditatively, "I have not had the pleasure of drinking your health yet, Sir." And then, still more thoughtfully, as he saw my hand stealing towards a waistcoat-pocket-"I'm a teetotaller, I am: it takes just twice as much for me to drink your health as it does for a man who drinks beer. Coffee is fourpence a cup." This appeared distinctly ingenious at the time, but the brilliancy of the idea was still more impressed upon me some months later. The battalion on a route march halted on a village green. On going to have a modest quencher at the inn, I heard the high-minded abstainer, who tossed off cups of coffee to my health, saying, "I'll have a pot of 'arf and 'arf, Miss; and just a dash of rum in it, my dear." Like other persons in authority the SergeantMajor had a knack of making unpleasantly humorous remarks at times. To hear him mutter, "He'd spile a brigade, he would," when some wretched recruit had turned to the left when he ought to have done the other thing, was calculated to make the rest of the squad understand what were meant by the horrors of war. Anon he would say "Charge bayonets ! Look at 'em all up and down anyhow, like a shiver the freeze round a apple garden t' keep little boys away!" I only recollect one occasion on which he so far forgot himself as to lapse into a compliment"You've slep next a soldier," said he to a recruit less dense than usual. In the early days of the Volunteer movement the Sergeant had instructed the Winchester boys in the mysteries of drill. The high spirits of these youths he maintained had affected his VOL. XIV. N nerves (save the mark) and permanently deteriorated his temper. His language was somewhat vehement at times, and, if a guarantee of his good faith, was certainly not adapted for publication. He used, after one of these outbursts, to say, "Never mind me, gentlemen, I'm only easing springs"-a simile derived from the trigger of the old rifle. Poor old chap! his springs are permanently eased now. Even his very funeral is. connected in my mind with the pathetically humorous. We sent a firing party to the grave, and the proceedings had, of course, to be rehearsed under the superintendence of another Staff-Sergeant. At a certain part of the proceedings our instructor bustled up like Mr Pancks, and remarked, in the most dismally matter-of-fact voice, "Here comes the corpse,-As you were! all together next time." And so on da capo. But it is not of drill-sergeants that I'm anxious for to sing, as the learned and ingenious author of the Bab Ballads has it. It will, I submit to my honourable readers, be convenient to consider the Volunteers according to their rank. As for the Colonel, one mentions him with awe. So far as I recollect, he never but once addressed a word to me personally, and then he only asked me, in tones of quite unnecessary vehemence, why I was wearing some strap or other on the wrong shoulder. It is not that nothing can be said about Colonels as a body. There was the stock-broking Colonel who gave the command, "The Battalion will change front, to right." And Mr Yates' friend, who said, "Right turn-as you were, Le- turn up Fetter Lane, you fellows." But I have been Orderly to the Commanding Officer before now, and know what it is to walk to a signal-station five miles off to make the flag-waggers find out how many men with blistered heels have fallen out during the day's march-all on account of the strap aforesaid. Even at our Battalion dinners we never refer to the Colonel directly. If we drink his health it is by inference, under the guise of—say, The unsuccessful Conservative Candidate for the Great North Road Division of Blankshire. Much the same considerations prevent me from shewing up our Majors. And as for my Captain, heaven forbid that I should draw his attention to me! Why he might use a choleric word and put me in "blanket fatigue" for the very next march to Brighton, and thus keep me folding those absurdly hairy W. D. blankets for an hour every morning. It follows, therefore, that I must treat of my comrades in the ranks, the 'brutal and licentious soldiery' with whom I have associated for so many years. All they can do is to fall back on pointed personality when they see this. The fearsome earnestness characteristic of the present age calls for "real work" from the Volunteers; and of late years the marches down to the Easter Monday Review have been increasing in severity. The Princess Beatrice's Own Bounders are naturally to the fore. We usually start on the Wednesday preceding Easter Monday, and march off with a hault courage into the infinite, trying, with more or less success, to live up to our helmets and Martini-Henrys. It is only when one has thus to spend the whole of several days and nights in close companionship with three or four men that the lower depths of humanity are disclosed. For it must be remembered that you do not choose your companions. You are stuck in between two men because one is taller and the other shorter than you are. You may be next a careless man, one who simply does not care whether he knows his drill or not, and who is quite content to get into his place at the third or fourth try, and only then because he is shoved into it. It is all very well for the poet to sing, "It's no matter what you do If your 'eart be only true," but the sentiment hardly applies to the operations of war. A little expostulation of a military and explosive kind does men of this tempera ment a lasting good. But even if a man takes pains it does not necessarily follow that he is of any use. I notice that your purely studious man is singularly inadequate in his results. Reading, Bacon says, maketh a full man. But, though fulness, no doubt, is an excellent thing, it is a means and not an end. A man might learn the meaning of every word in the best French dictionary, and thereby become acquainted with many things of which he had better have remained ignorant, but he would not know French. And so I have known men whose knowledge of the Field Exercise' was positively revolting. Men who could tell you the position of the Senior Major of the Battalion of Direction in any Brigade movement, or when and where a Sergeant-Major draws his sword; and yet at the caution "Fours" would be found dozing like any foolish maiden. Again, you may have a talkative man, who takes au grand sérieux the Volunteer song: "You will be careful to keep looking intelligently about you, "And when standing at attention He is always explaining that owing to the extraordinary tone of voice in which the Commanding Officer gives the word of command, not to mention the ridiculous rapidity of his utterance, it is impossible to know whether he said "Front form companies!" or Lock up there!" This man, after a 'Right-about form company!' is generally to be found in the supernumerary rank in hot altercation with the Sergeants. He has a supreme contempt for his Officers, and is * The milder forms of military expletives, like explosive bullets of less than a certain weight, are forbidden by the Geneva Convention. |