1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [97]
Cpl. G. R. Daniels, 12th (Bermondsey) Bn., East Surrey Regt.
I had just attained the rank of corporal and one day the RSM on the parade ground said to me, ‘I hear you can do a bit of spouting.’ I assured him that I was never lost for a word or two and he promptly detailed me the following morning to march with thirty men led by the recruiting band from the town-hall and halt at various points in the district. When people stopped to listen to the music I was to address the crowd in general about the need for men and at the same time my men were to go round individually and tackle likely recruits. I felt extremely cocky leading my contingent at the head of a first-rate military band as we proudly marched up Jamaica Road, but my return to quarters was a different matter. I had lost no less than twenty-five of my thirty men. They’d had the nifty idea that they could best find suitable recruits in public houses and they had fallen by the wayside!
However we did have some successes. We were all well used to wearing our khaki uniforms and puttees by now, except for one poor chap called Ben Pendry. He was a stocky little man with extremely broad shoulders and a torso that by rights should have been attached to much longer legs and nothing had been found to fit him in all the stock of clothing we’d received. Poor old Pendry had to parade every day in a black suit and bowler hat, but we even managed to turn this to advantage. We used to volunteer to attend evening recruiting drives where people made rousing speeches and lads who were willing to join up were invited to mount the platform and do it there and then. Pendry used to go along in his civvies and mingle as one of the crowd and when the speaker asked for volunteers, he would dramatically rush forward up to the platform to set an example. I can’t say how often Pendry enlisted in the army before he got his khaki. It must have been a dozen times!
Now that they felt sure that their long delayed departure for France must be fast approaching some soldiers found other constructive ways of passing their leisure hours. Several men of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders took advantage of a local schoolmaster’s offer to teach themselves simple French. He believed in learning by rote and he favoured kindergarten methods. He did not trouble these awkward pupils with the complicated rules of grammar and construction, nor did he confuse them with French spelling. He chalked up useful phrases in phonetics on the blackboard and the soldiers laboriously printed them into notebooks and learned them by heart to recite in ‘class’. It was quite a sight to see the husky Highlanders squeezed into desks designed for ten-year-olds and earnestly chanting parrot-wise:
Ji sweez onglay
Amee onglay
Jiday zeer
kelki shows a mongjay
They rather enjoyed it until they discovered that Onglay’ meant English, and took offence. There were a few other difficulties for the teacher found it almost impossible to understand the Scottish tongue of his pupils, and this problem was mutual. One of the soldiers remarked, ‘I can manage the French all right. It’s the English the master talks I canna understand!’
The soldiers were hoping very soon to be able to put their newly acquired linguistic skills into action, and to get into action themselves. As the spring days lengthened and there was still no sign of marching orders, impatience mounted. The 10th Royal Fusiliers invented a sarcastic parody of a popular recruiting song.
On Sunday they say we’ll go to Flanders,
On Monday we’re down for Nice or Cannes
On Tuesday we smile
When they hint at the Nile,
On Wednesday the Sudan.
On Thursday it’s Malta or Gibraltar,
On Friday they’ll send us to Lahore,
But on Saturday