Tommy

by Richard Holmes

  Wellington would have recognised the regular army that emerged from Haldane’s reforms because, in many key respects, it had changed little since his day. The majority of men who enlisted as private soldiers were unemployed when they joined, and few even laid claim to a trade on their enlistment papers. One 1913 recruit admitted frankly that it was ‘unemployment and the need for food’ that encouraged him to join. John Cusack enlisted in the Highland Light Infantry when he was fourteen, telling the recruiting sergeant he was eighteen: urchins shouted ‘beef and a tanner a day’ as the recruits marched past, suggesting that that was why they had joined the army.68 His mother reclaimed him and took him home, but three weeks later he signed on again, this time in the Royal Scots Greys.

  What is striking about those pre-war regulars who have left some record of their motives is just how many were attracted by more than a full belly and a good pair of boots. Herbert Wootton recalled that he was:

  Very keen on becoming a soldier. I had two uncles, both regulars who had served through the South African War of 1899–1902. As a youngster I was thrilled with their stories. I became a keen reader of G. A. Henty’s books on war, and later read Rudyard Kipling’s books. I loved to be in the company of old soldiers.69

  R. A. Lloyd ‘had always wanted to be a soldier, and a cavalryman at that’.70 Frank Richards grew up in the South Wales coalfield, and his cousin David joined the army during the miners’ strike of 1898. But despite ‘all the Socialist propaganda’ he was ‘a rank Imperialist at heart’, and joined the Royal Welch Fusiliers because:

  they had one battalion in China, taking part in the suppression of the Boxer Rising, and the other battalion in South Africa, and a long list of battle honours on their Colours, and … they were the only regiment in the Army privileged to wear the flash. The flash was a smart bunch of five black ribbons sewed in a fan shape in the back of the tunic collar, it was a relic of the days when soldiers wore their hair long, and tied up the end of the queue in a bag to prevent it from greasing their tunics.71

  Uniform also helped attract R. G. Garrod. He was a junior clerk when he saw ‘a gorgeous figure in blue with yellow braid and clinking spurs and said to myself “that’s for me …”.’72 William Nicholson, whose grandfather had charged with the 13th Light Dragoons at Balaklava, ‘was attracted by the full-dress uniform of mounted regiments’, and joined the Royal Horse Artillery in 1911.73 John Lucy and his brother Denis went ‘a bit wild’ after their mother’s death and duly joined up.

  We were tired of landladies and mocked the meaning of the word. We were tired of fathers, of advice from relations, of bottled coffee essence, of school, of newspaper offices. The soft accents and slow movements of the small farmers who swarmed in the streets of our dull southern Irish town, the cattle, fowl, eggs, butter, bacon and the talk of politics filled us with loathing.74

  They were ‘full of life and the spirit of adventure …’.Joseph Garvey, too, was:

  obsessed with a desire to get out into the world … I was looking to the new life with joyful anticipation. Being fit, strong and athletic I could not see anything that would prevent me from enjoying the life of a soldier. So ended one phase of my life, and despite all the head shaking at my foolishness in throwing up a good job, I had no doubt in my own mind that I was doing the right thing.75

  Training was hard. John Lucy thought its strain ‘so hard that many broke under it’.

  The military vocabulary, minor tactics, knowledge of parts of the rifle, route marches, fatigues, semaphore, judging distance, shooting, lectures on ‘esprit de corps’, and on the history of our regiment, spit and polish, drill, saluting drill, physical training, and other, forgotten subjects were rubbed into us for the worst six months of my life … In time we effaced ourselves. Our bodies developed and our backs straightened according to plan … Pride of arms possessed us, and we discovered that our regiment was a regiment, and then some.76

  A man survived easiest if he set out to conform. Joseph Garvey joined the Scots Guards, and found himself on the sixteen-week-long recruits’ course at Caterham.

  The drill was exacting, no slackness was permitted on or off the square. I began to understand the reason for iron discipline and fell into line at once, and tried to make myself a good soldier. Handling arms was not easy the way they had to do it, but it soon became natural and at the end of the sixteen weeks I was quite ready to take over the guard duty …

  We proved to be a good squad and we passed out with credit. The Sergeant and Corporal were pleased with us.”77

  Cavalrymen had the added challenge of mastering horse as well as arms. ‘Each of the horses had a number,’ recalled R. G. Garrod,

  And mine was 52, and I suppose I then and there fell in love with her. She was under fifteen hands, had the heart of a lion, would try to jump anything possible and if a sword was cut down the side of her eyes would never flinch or run.

  She had to be groomed twice a day. ‘First sponge out eyes, nose and dock,’ wrote Private Garrod, ‘then pick out feet, then start to brush, using only the brush on the horse, while the curry comb, held in the left hand, was only used for cleaning the brush.’ He was reminded that horses were more important than men: ‘they could get a new man for 1/- a day, but a horse cost £40’.78 After passing off the recruit ride he was promoted to the first-class ride, with sword, spurs, rifle and the two reins of his double bridle. By the end of it ‘we were extremely well trained in horsemanship, doing attack riding, vaulting, which entails jumping off your horse at full gallop and leaping up again into the saddle. We took jumps with no reins and no stirrups, just with folded arms.’

  Most cavalrymen had only one horse to look after, but drivers in the artillery had two, and two sets of tack. William Nicholson was delighted to become an artillery signaller, ‘which put me on the battery staff and relieved me of my two sets of draught harness which was a great day for me’. Harness did not simply have to be clean, but polished, with leather and brasswork shining. Metalwork, like bits and chains, was unplated steel, and was burnished bright. Sometimes this was accomplished by shaking it up in a sack with old newspaper, but often there was no alternative to rubbing with the ‘burnisher’ – a piece of leather 3½ inches square, with interlocking links of chain sewn to one side that resembled chain mail.

  Recruits, like trained soldiers, lived in barrack rooms which housed between twenty and forty men, so that all the private soldiers in an infantry platoon or cavalry troop lived together. There were thirty-two in John Cusack’s recruit troop, with two old soldiers, Tom Hood and Chokey Bone, who showed them how to clean their kit and muck out. They lived in screened-off ‘bunks’ at the end of the barrack room, which gave corporals some privacy in trained soldiers’ accommodation. The barracks of the Cardwell era had separate wash houses and latrine blocks, and, though some had had water closets fitted subsequently, most Edwardian soldiers, like their grandfathers, relied on the spooneristically-named sip-pot. John Cusack and his comrades rose at 5.00 in the summer and 6.00 in the winter, and their day began with:

  emptying the enormous piss-tub outside our barrack room. Mucking out – breakfast – PT – first drill. 1100 – stables (changed into canvas) and groomed till 1200 – then fed them and went for lunch. 1400 square for rifle or sword drill. A long time to get prepared – little time for meal.

  Infantrymen did bayonet training with padded jackets and ‘rifles’ with spring-loaded plungers where the bayonets would have been, and cavalrymen fenced with blunted swords. ‘Sergeant Croft was a real brute,’ thought Private Richard Chant of the 5th Dragoon Guards. ‘When one was fencing him one could always be sure of a few bruises, even through the padded jacket. But after all Sergeant Croft made men of us in the drill he conducted, and we all sang our praises of him afterwards.’79 Training went on till 4.00, when it was time for stables again, then the ‘tea meal’ – lunch was still the main meal of the day – kit-cleaning and bed. Pyjamas were so rare that a man would risk bullying if he wore them. Most men
slept in a grey-back shirt and long johns, or gym shorts in the summer.

  Once a man had ‘passed off the square’ as a recruit and could ‘pass the guard’ – that is, satisfy the orderly sergeant at the guardroom that he was fit to be seen in public — then he could ‘walk out’ in his best uniform. Cavalrymen carried regimental whips and infantrymen regimental canes. As late as 1915 a puzzled New Army recruit at Aldershot found himself inexplicably rejected by the guard until he bought a Rifle Brigade cane.

  Men spent hard-earned money in order to look extra smart. Experienced cavalrymen bought overalls (tight trousers) of superfine cloth which clung to the leg, had fine leather stitched to the tops of their issue boots, bought chrome-plated spurs and had coins fitted to the rowels to make them jingle. The weekly church parade in full dress was a ritual no less striking than a Zulu war dance or monastic mass. A large garrison like Aldershot, Catterick or the Curragh might see a whole brigade in the same church, and even the irreligious were stirred. ‘The uniforms were wonderful, wonderful,’ mused Richard Chant, ‘could such a thing happen that they all came back again, but I’m afraid it’s all wishful thinking.’ But, he added, ‘should my memoirs be read by anyone, believe me, each man was proud of his regiment, be it Cavalry, Royal Horse Artillery, Royal Field Artillery or Infantry.’80

  Regimental pride went deep. Recruits had the lineage of their regiment, its battle honours, regimental days, and quasi-masonic practices drilled into them. Soldiers in the Queen’s Royal Regiment, for instance, would know that theirs was the senior English regiment of the line, as such junior only to the Royal Scots, the 1st of Foot. ‘First and Worst,’ opined Queensmen to Royal Scots, who made clear their disagreement, with boots and belt buckles. Raised in 1661 to garrison Tangiers, the North African enclave brought to the English crown as dowry by Charles II’s wife, the Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza, the regiment was once nicknamed ‘The Tangerines’. The Queen’s bore Catherine’s cipher of two ‘C’s interlaced within the Garter on its colours, and continued to carry a third colour, with the cipher on a green background, long after all other infantry regiments in the army had been reduced to two colours. Its

  Paschal lamb badge and the name of Colonel Piercy Kirke, who commanded it at Sedgemoor in 1684, then gave it the nickname ‘Kirke’s Lambs’, an ironic reference to its less than lamb-like gentleness to West Countrymen captured fighting for the Duke of Monmouth. By the time of the First World War it was often known, because of the lamb and flag on its badge, as ‘The Mutton Lancers’, or, in Cockney slang, as ‘The Pork and Beans’. Members of the East Surreys spoke of it as ‘The Other Surrey Regiment’, which is precisely what Queensmen called the East Surreys.

  From 1837 to 1881 the regiment marched passed the saluting base to a tune called The Old Queen’s, which included part of the national anthem. In 1881 this tune was played when 1/Queen’s paraded before Queen Victoria at a review at Aldershot. The queen asked whether special permission had been given for use of the national anthem, adding, unamused, that unless it had, the practice must cease. No authority could be found, and so for a short time the regiment made its feelings clear by passing the saluting base without music, earning the nickname ‘The Silent Second’. In 1883 Lieutenant Colonel Kelly-Kenny, then commanding the 1st Battalion, wrote to the Portuguese embassy explaining what had happened, pointing out the regiment’s connection with the House of Braganza, and asking if a Portuguese air could be used. The result was the fine march Braganza, actually a free adaptation of the air O Patria, the Portuguese national anthem at the time. Soldiers inevitably put words to it:

  Here we come, here we come

  Bloody great bastards every one …

  Officers, in the post-prandial conviviality of a dinner night, accompanied the band with a more genteel version:

  I absolutely do refuse

  To be ordered about unless I choose …

  The Queen’s Royal Regiment’s battle honours began with ‘Tangier 1662–80’, and included scores of others, from ‘Dettingen’ to ‘Corunna’, ‘Cabool 1842’, ‘Sobraon’, ‘Sevastopol’, ‘Pekin 1860’ and ‘South Africa 1899–1902’. On 1 June 1794 a detachment of the regiment had served as marines aboard Lord Howe’s flagship Queen Charlotte at his victory over the French of Ushant, and this was commemorated as the regimental day. HMS Excellent, the naval gunnery school on Whale Island, Portsmouth, inherited the traditions of Queen Charlotte, and there was a strong connection between the regiment and HMS Excellent, with an annual cricket week. Regimental treasure included a huge silver wine cooler, officially the Jerningham-Kandler wine cooler but known, to generations of irreverent young officers, predictably preoccupied by some of the female figures embodied in its rococo decoration, as ‘The Flying Tits’.

  In 1902 1/Queen’s won the Punjab Open polo tournament, and five officers commemorated it with a silver horse statuette: two were wounded and two killed in action during the First World War. Another trophy, the Army in India Efficiency Prize, was won by 1/Queen’s in 1905. The competition required all soldiers in a battalion, except those actually in hospital, to compete. It was so savage, including a thirty-mile march in full kit (one veteran believed that he carried 150lbs in all), and with a variety of tests, that some men died. The event was not repeated, so the battalion was allowed to retain the trophy. Hardened drinkers took comfort from the fact that 2/Royal Welch Fusiliers, the runners-up, lost five men on the march, all of them teetotallers.81

  If the Queen’s could boast a longer history than most regiments, there was nothing genuinely unique about it, for the old army was a rich repository of history (real and invented), traditions and artefacts, making regiments social organisms as distinctive as Scots clans or Native American tribes. We must, though, guard against uncritical assumption that the sheer visibility of the regimental system, reinforced most poignantly by cap badges engraved on headstones in Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries, means that it was the main reason for men fighting. It certainly mattered hugely to pre-war regulars, especially to officers and senior NCOs, who might spend the whole of their working lives in the same peripatetic community, soldiering together from Catterick to Calcutta and from Kimberley to the Khyber. Herbert Wootton, a pre-war member of the Royal Horse Guards, told me that he fought for ‘the Regiment and its traditions, also my comrades’.82 Alan Hanbury-Sparrow was a thoroughly committed regimental officer – ‘I always felt it my duty to be with 1/Royal Berks at the front’ – but felt that the value of the regimental system diminished as the war went on. ‘The casualty lists put an enormous strain on these traditions,’ he wrote. ‘I became increasingly cynical about their value.’83

  There were some things men were less proud of, for, as Frank Richards described it, ‘booze and fillies’ were a constant preoccupation for regular soldiers. It was a hard-drinking army: in 1912–13, 9,230 men were fined for drunkenness, and this does not include the many more given drills or other punishments by officers or NCOs. Lieutenant George Barrow, a cavalry officer carrying out a brief attachment to the infantry in 1884, found himself serving with the 88th Foot, the Devil’s Own, then properly known as The Connaught Rangers. ‘Drink was the besetting sin of the Connaught men,’ he wrote.84 In the dimly-lit regimental ‘wet canteen’ men could buy weak beer known as ‘swipes’: ‘one could drink a great many glasses of this sort of beer without feeling the effects of it’. Men drank steadily and sang songs of studied and refined vulgarity, such as ‘The Girl I nearly Wed’:

  I wake up sweating every night to think what might have been, For in another corner, boys, she’d stored the Magazine, The Magazine, a barrel of snuff, and one or two things more, And in another corner, boys, was the Regiment forming fours.85

  Philanthropists and reformers had done much, over the previous thirty years, to ensure that soldiers had some alternative to the ‘wet canteen’. The ‘Garrison Institute Coffee Shop’ and ‘Sandys Soldiers’ Home’ offered heat, light and daily papers, and cheap ‘char and a wad’
(tea and a sandwich).86 The Army Temperance Society encouraged men to give up alcohol altogether, and there was a strong thread of religious Nonconformity and temperance running through the army, especially amongst NCOs. But they were never more than a respectable minority, mocked as ‘tea busters’ or ‘bun wallahs’. Many soldiers would go to great lengths to get alcohol, whatever the risks. When the 11th Hussars arrived in France in August 1914 two zealous troopers discovered that the huge cotton warehouse that housed their brigade also contained the BEF’s rum casks. Their binge cost them three months’ imprisonment apiece.

  Men brawled drunk, and they brawled sober. Within the regiment they were encouraged to settle matters with their fists, but when dealing with outsiders ‘the buckled ends of belts were used, also boots’. John Lucy’s Royal Irish Rifles had an ‘old and sworn enemy’ in a nearby English regiment, and he noticed how: ‘The Englishmen in our own regiment forgot nationality and beat up their own countrymen in the supposed defence of the honour of their chosen corps.’87 The Essex and Bedfordshire Regiments had a feud dating back to the Boer War, when an encircled Essex patrol had allegedly not been rescued by the nearby Bedfords, who were just falling in for church parade. Percy Croney, who served in 12/Essex, knew that: ‘when an Essex man sees a Bedford badge, in memory of that patrol he must call: “Thou shalt not kill,” and the Bedford man, in honour of his regiment, must fight.’88 Pubs in garrison towns were the scenes of large-scale inter-regmental fights. ‘Christmas always meant a damned good tuck-in,’ wrote Frank Richards, ‘with plenty of booze and scraps to follow.’ Inter-regimental brawls were common. Highland Regiments could be provoked (though for no easily-discernible historical reason) by asking for ‘’arf a pint o’ broken square’; a member of the York and Lancaster Regiment would respond vigorously to a cheery greeting of ‘The Cork and Doncaster, I presume’; and ‘scholars’ made insulting translations of high-sounding Latin mottoes and then ducked to avoid the bar stool.