1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [92]
Now that Kitchener’s Army had been licked into shape and equipment was trickling through, training was more intensive. There were night exercises at least once a week and they were not beloved by the troops, divided into companies, one to ‘attack’ the other, stumbling across dark countryside to some unknown rendezvous and not infrequently losing their way. The night on which novice guides led them on a compass bearing was not easily forgotten by one half-Battalion for the guides had omitted to allow for the difference between true and magnetic north. It was a night of torrential rain and the unfortunate Tommies were obliged to wait in the inadequate shelter of a hedge until the error was corrected. This took a long, long time and, as one unfortunate observed, ‘It’s hard to say how long we were held up – perhaps an hour, perhaps two – but I do know that, as we stood there in the downpour, everyone had ample time to reflect on how much he was enjoying himself.’ When they finally arrived hours late at the barn they were supposed to ‘capture’, the ‘enemy’ who held it had long ago succumbed to cold and boredom and they were all fast asleep. Their opponents were in no mood to wake them gently and the free-for-all that ensued was not precisely the ‘attack’ their Commanding Officer had had in mind.
But with the arrival of weapons, training was becoming more sophisticated and more interesting.
Pte. Η. N. Edwards 6th (Bristol City) Bn., Gloucester Regt.
I joined the machine-gun section when we were at Danbury. At first we only had two machine-guns, and one of them was an ancient old crock. They reckoned it had been used at the Battle of Omdurman! But it had been converted to fire 303 ammunition and it weighed a ton. We all tried to dodge carrying that one because it weighed at least ten pounds more than the other. That was the worst side of it – humping round and carrying these heavy guns and tripods. The glamour side was firing them and we were very proud of ourselves when we got to that stage. But first we had lectures and we had to study and learn all sorts of things, which was easy enough if you had some knowledge of mathematics. But I always remember one occasion when we were learning the use of the clinometer. Now, this simply means that if you’re carrying out direct fire, you put this thing on the gun, and you move it, and it registers so many degrees up, so then you can work out how far your bullets will go parabolically. So the officer who was instructing us took us through it a few times and then he left us to practise working it out. He said, ‘Carry on, Sergeant, will you?’ And Sergeant Mawley looked absolutely baffled and said, ‘I’m very sorry, sir, I don’t think I can do this. I’m a greengrocer in civil life.’ I always remember him saying that! He didn’t know anything about mathematics at all. Poor chap, we simply roared with laughter.
In the well-organised peacetime army it took three years to train a soldier to the standard of full-fledged efficiency which the men of Kitchener’s armies, grappling with every conceivable shortage and difficulty, were now expected to approach in a mere eight months. But they were men of a very different stamp from most pre-war recruits, drive by poor circumstances or unemployment to enlist. The majority of Kitchener’s men had joined up for very different reasons. They were fitter and stronger, they were enthusiastic and keen to learn, and the standard of intelligence was generally high, for the rank and file was made up of men from every stratum of Britain’s rigidly structured society. And they were doing well.
Many were professional men who had been encouraged to enlist in the first heady wave of recruitment and it was a matter of annoyance to some in authority that there were numbers of men serving in the ranks who might have been more usefully employed as officers and, since Commanding Officers were reluctant to weaken