Training for the Trenches
By
Leslie Vickers
BRITISH "TANK" IN ACTION
INTRODUCTION
Since the Great European War broke out, printing presses have been busy producing text books, handbooks and guides for soldiers. Military authorities and civilians alike have come to realise that this war has changed many of our old conceptions of strategy and that it has introduced conditions that are entirely unprecedented. New methods have had to be devised—sometimes on the field itself in the midst of the greatest difficulties—for meeting new and novel methods of warfare. Every deadly engine of destruction has called forth some new invention to cope with it. Soldiers have had to live and fight under conditions that to the lay mind, or to the mind of the military men of a few years ago, would seem to be impossible. It is reasonable to assume that the inventive genius of the world will be turned more and more in the direction of the problem of how to construct still more terrible machines of destruction. The next war, if there be one, is not likely to be any less fearful than the present, so that the soldier who is called upon to engage in it will require to know the lessons that have been learned in this war. The author hopes that from a fairly long training in England in preparation for work in France, and from some months in the trenches on the Western British front, he may be able to offer suggestions that will be of value to men who are training themselves with a view to becoming efficient soldiers. He sends this little book forth, not as a treatise on war, nor yet as a scientific handbook. He merely desires it to serve to bring home lessons that are sometimes too dearly bought. "Experientia docet" is the proverb that we used to write in our copy books, and he will feel that he is repaid if, from his experience, others are enabled to learn. While he trusts that there will be many veteran soldiers and instructors who will be glad to have this information in convenient form, he intends this little book primarily for the use of those who are civilians in the process of becoming soldiers.
L. V.
CHAPTER I. THE CIVILIAN AND THE SOLDIER
The change from civilian to soldier is one that is not easily accomplished. We soon find that there are many new conditions to be faced, many new and uncongenial tasks to be undertaken, and all sorts of strange and novel regulations to which we must render the strictest obedience. In civilian life we become thoroughly independent. We come and go more or less as we please. We do not usually ask the permission of any one if we wish to depart a little from our customary habits. Not since we left school have we answered to roll-calls to any considerable extent, and only in the summertime, "for the fun of it," have we done our own housekeeping and submitted to domestic duties. In civilian life we have been allowed to work out our own salvation, and if we have been part of a machine at all it has been a huge social machine in which we did not figure as a cog but rather as an attachment.
In military life things are all changed. We become at once cogs in the great machine. We have a definite work to perform. The smooth running of the plant depends on us. We lose much of our independence. We realise that other cogs depend on us, and, further, that there are many bigger cogs who drive us and whose bigness and authority we must thoroughly appreciate and recognise. In my own experience, after some years of being my own master to the degree that only the professional man understands, I found it much to my dislike to be obliged to get permission before I could leave the camp grounds for half an hour. A sentry with a fixed bayonet helped me a little in the appreciation of my new circumstances, and when in a few days' time I was the sentry myself, it did me the world of good and took the edge off my displeasure. Again it is not to the liking of the ordinary man to be told that he must rise at a certain hour, and much less is it to his liking to be told that he must be in bed at a certain hour after which talking is considered a misdemeanour and is punishable. But a few weeks of enforced early rising makes one give thanks for the pure fresh air of the small hours of the day; and a few days of hard physical exertion in the process of training makes a man glad to conform to the rule of early to bed, and gives him reason to class as a nuisance the man who talks after "Lights Out" and thus prevents him from sleeping.
In civilian life, too, a man usually chooses with scrupulous care his roommate or mates. In the army one may be placed in a tent or a billet with men who are by no means congenial, unless he is lucky enough to have been able to join a group of companions who form a unit. But even the experience of having uncongenial companions is not altogether without its compensations; for every civilian finds that he has need of rearranging his estimates of men when he enters the army. The sooner our own corners are rubbed off the better, and many of them are inevitably rubbed off when we are ten or thirteen in a tent!
The quality that is the salvation of the volunteer is his keenness. We volunteer because we are keen and we would be ashamed to be otherwise. The rules and regulations of army life are liable to try our tempers and our patience. There may come times when we question very seriously the wisdom of having "joined up." There may be occasions when we thoroughly despise our seniors and conclude that everything military was arranged for our oppression. Bit by bit we shall lose the conviction that we "know it all" already, and as knowledge increases within us, we shall appreciate more and more the knowledge and experience of those placed over us. Regulations and even red tape will be seen to have a wise purpose, though, to the end of our days, we may long for some official scissors to cut it.
The change from civilian to soldier is produced in one way only—The Learning of Obedience. This is the first and last lesson. The civilian is only obedient in certain ways and to a limited extent. The soldier is obedient in every way and to any extent, even to death. It would be wrong of me to indicate that "the habit of implicit obedience" comes easily to the average man. It is difficult to acquire. But it is the "sine qua non" of a good soldier and must be acquired. It is the heart of the system. Obedience is given to some one by every rank in the army, from the highest general to the humblest private.
When we have learned obedience we need to learn discipline—for the two words do not mean exactly the same thing. Discipline may be of two kinds. First of all there is Self-Discipline. This includes the restraint of selfishness; the cultivation of the spirit of comradeship, generosity and thoughtfulness; the cultivation of habits of moderation in smoking, drinking, etc.; and the elimination of those vices that tend to rob us of our strength or impair the clearness of our thinking. Then there is, secondly, Army Discipline, which includes obedience, thoroughness, common sense and resourcefulness. This question is dealt with at length in military handbooks and needs few words from me.
The point to remember is that training for modern war is a serious business, not to be entered upon lightly, nor regarded as a "cinch." A man must first of all be fit in body to be able to withstand the many physical hardships that he will be sure to encounter. Then he must be fit in mind to provide him with the imagination and the resourcefulness that he will certainly be called on to show. His heart must be strong not only in the opinion of the surgeon but in the opinion of those who judge his "all-round manhood." He must be trained in such a way that he will be able to stand not only the physical but the nervous strain as well. A visit to the hospitals in England and France will provide the spectacle of row after row of beds containing men who have never been wounded but whose nerves have gone to pieces in the strain of modern warfare.
Remember to take your training seriously—it pays.
CHAPTER II. HEALTH
Benjamin Franklin once said, "Be sober and temperate and you will be healthy." This is in the main true and is excellent advice for the soldier. But there are ills that are liable to affect the fighting man in spite of his temperance and sobriety and of these we must speak.
The health of men in the army is, on the average, much better than that of individuals outside of it. This is due to many causes chief of which is the fact that only healthy men are admitted to the army. Then the out-of-door life, regular and wholesome food, sufficient exercise and "early to bed and early to rise" tend to keep him well. If he enters the army fit, he must make it his business to remain fit and it will be well to remember that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." To preserve good health is his Duty for only thus can he become an efficient soldier. If the bodily resistance is weakened, man becomes prey to the millions of germs that are to be found in the air and even within his own system. When he is healthy the body is able to keep them in subjection, but once let him permit his system to run down and these armies of microbes will attack him with all their forces.
Now let us begin first of all with Bodily Cleanliness. No soldier can come on parade unless his face and hands be clean. Shaving, though sometimes a bore, is an excellent method of keeping the face clean and fresh. It tends to smarten a man, and officers are not slow to pick out the careful from the slovenly soldier. We used to reserve the unpleasant tasks of the camp—latrine duties amongst others—for men who would not keep their hands and faces clean. But there are other parts of the body to which it is just as necessary to apply cleansing methods regularly even though no military punishment follows the violation of the rule. First of these that I would mention is the
Teeth. Soldiers, I find, are very careless in this matter till the first thing you know is that someone is absent from parade because of the toothache. On one occasion in the trenches, when we were very short handed, an officer had to leave us for a week to go to the hospital with a badly abscessed tooth due entirely to neglect. Cleaning the teeth night and morning freshens the mouth and makes food taste better. An excellent custom is to rinse the mouth after every meal, and while this may often be inconvenient it can be done if a soldier remembers to wash his mouth out with the first sip of water every time he takes a drink. If the teeth are allowed to get very bad a man's digestion suffers and he falls ill. This robs the army of part of its fighting strength, a result which every soldier has an interest in avoiding.
Figure 1. Showing use of natural cover by soldier lying down.
Hair. No better advice can be given to the soldier on this subject than "cut it short." The shorter the better, for when it is short it is easy to keep clean both from body dirt and vermin. In this war soldiers have almost invariably had the clippers run completely over their heads. Soap and water are as good for the head as for any other part of the body.
Trunk. It is not always possible for soldiers to get a shower or plunge every day, but a small sponge carried as part of the equipment will help a good deal. In France, where the water was scarce, we had to make it go a long way. When the enemy permitted, I used to get my regular morning bath with the aid of the sponge and about a saucerful of water. I felt like a canary during the process and wanted to chirp and flap my wings. Soldiers should be encouraged to go in swimming whenever circumstances permit. To go in swimming was not a military order in my regiment, but we used to take the men to the sea and then ask who wanted to go in. About eighty per cent of the men would volunteer. Then we would tell off the remaining twenty per cent for vigorous physical exercises and after ten minutes give them the choice of continuing or taking a plunge in the sea. They all went in! Men's objections to water usually come from habit and they soon learn to appreciate its refreshing power.
Feet. "An army marches on its stomach"—metaphorically, but it marches on its feet, literally, as every poor infantryman knows. And it has to do a good deal of marching in war and in preparation for war. "Route Marches" and "Hikes" are very popular with the training staff as the soldier will find, and they are usually planned by the men who ride horses! So important did we consider the care of the feet that we used to have "Toe Parades" twice a week with the Doctor in attendance. Men with neglected feet were considered as candidates for cookhouse garbage duty, and were promptly assigned to this task. In the first place feet must be comparatively clean—soap and water recommended! Then they should be free from corns. This is not so
Impressum
Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 01.02.2014
ISBN: 978-3-7309-7995-2
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