The Amateur Army | Page 3

house, this time followed by six
men.
"These fellows are just recovering from whooping cough," he told the
householder; "they had it bad. We didn't know what to do with them,
but, seeing that you've had whooping cough here, I feel it's the only
place where it will be safe to billet them." And he left them there.

But happenings like these were more frequent at the commencement of
the war than now. Civilians, even those of the conventional middle
class, are beginning to understand that single men in billets, to
paraphrase Kipling slightly, are remarkably like themselves.
With us, rations are served out daily at our billets; our landladies do the
cooking, and mine, an adept at the culinary art, can transform a basin of
flour and a lump of raw beef into a dish that would make an epicurean
mouth water. Even though food is badly cooked in the billet, it has a
superior flavour, which is never given it in the boilers controlled by the
company cook. Army stew has rather a notorious reputation, as witness
the inspired words of a regimental poet--one of the 1st Surrey Rifles--in
a pæan of praise to his colonel:
"Long may the colonel with us bide, His shadow ne'er grow thinner. (It
would, though, if he ever tried Some Army stew for dinner.)"
Billeting has gained for the soldier many friends, and towns that have
become accustomed to his presence look sadly forward to the day when
he will leave them for the front, where no kind landlady will be at hand
to transform raw beef and potatoes into beef pudding or potato pie. The
working classes in particular view the future with misgiving. The bond
of sympathy between soldier and workers is stronger than that between
soldier and any other class of citizen. The houses and manners of the
well-to-do daunt most Tommies. "In their houses we feel out of it
somehow," they say. "There's nothin' we can talk about with the swells,
and 'arf the time they be askin' us about things that's no concern of
theirs at all."
Most toilers who have no friends or relations preparing for war have
kinsmen already in the trenches--or on the roll of honour. And feelings
stronger than those of friendship now unite thousands of soldiers to the
young girls of the houses in which they are billeted. For even in the
modern age, that now seems to voice the ultimate expression of man's
culture and advance in terrorism and destruction, love and war, vital as
the passion of ancient story, go hand in hand up to the trenches and the
threat of death.

CHAPTER II
RATIONS AND SICK PARADE
It has been said that an army moves upon its stomach, and, as if in
confirmation of this, the soldier is exhorted in an official pamphlet
"Never to start on a march with an empty stomach." To a hungry
rifleman the question of his rations is a matter of vital importance. For
the first few weeks our food was cooked up and served out on the
parade ground, or in the various gutter-fringed sheds standing in the
vicinity of our headquarters. The men were discontented with the
rations, and rumour had it that the troops stationed in a neighbouring
village rioted and hundreds had been placed under arrest.
Sometimes a haunch of roast beef was doled out almost raw, and
potatoes were generally boiled into pulp; these when served up looked
like lumps of wet putty. Two potatoes, unwashed and embossed with
particles of gravel, were allowed to each man; all could help
themselves by sticking their fingers into the doughy substance and
lifting out a handful, which they placed along with the raw "roast" on
the lid of their mess-tin. This constituted dinner, but often rations were
doled out so badly that several men only got half the necessary
allowance for their meals.
Tea was seldom sufficiently sweetened, and the men had to pay for
milk. After a time we became accustomed to the Epsom Salts that a
kindly War Office, solicitous for our well-being, caused to be added,
and some of us may go to our graves insisting on Epsom Salts with tea.
The feeding ground being in many cases a great distance from the fire,
the tea was cold by the time it arrived at the men's quarters. Those who
could afford it, took their food elsewhere: the restaurants in the vicinity
did a roaring trade, and several new ones were opened. A petition was
written; the men signed it, and decided to send it to the colonel; but the
N.C.O.'s stepped in and destroyed the document. "You'll not do much
good at the front," they told us, "if you are grumbling already."

A week followed the destruction of the petition, and