On the King's Service Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

MUSTERING MEN

The War Office built Maryhill Barracks, Glasgow, to look exactly like a gaol, but these gaunt unlovely buildings, packed beyond endurance with men of the new army, were at least in some way in touch with what was happening elsewhere. Even in that first month of the war it seemed callous to be breathing the sweet, clear air of Braemar, or to let one's eyes linger on the matchless beauty of mountain and glen. The grey spire of my church rising gracefully among the silver birches and the dark firs, bosomed deep in purple hills, pointed to some harder way than that. Stevenson, who wrote part of Treasure Island here, called it 'the wale (pick) of Scotland,' but just because it was so we saw more clearly the agony of Belgium and the men of our heroic little Regular Army dying to keep us inviolate.

Up to the 10th of September recruits poured in in such numbers that it was hard to cope with the situation in the most superficial way. On that date the standard was raised, and, as though a sluice had been dropped across a mill dam, the stream stopped suddenly and completely. I suppose that was the object of the new regulation, but it caused misunderstanding, and to this day the spontaneous rush of the first month of the war has never been repeated. Beyond doubt the numbers were too great to be properly handled. Men slept in the garrison church, in the riding school, on the floor in over-crowded barrack-rooms, in leaky tents without bottoms to them. There were no recreation rooms. It rained a great deal, and once wet a man with no change of clothing or underclothing remained wet for days in his meagre civilian suit. There were too few blankets, no braziers, and the cheap black shoes of civil life were soon in tatters. Everybody became abominably verminous, and though the food was good enough in its way the cooks were overwhelmed, and it was often uneatable. Nobody was to blame, and in an astonishingly short time order began to emerge, but in those early days one enormous 'grouse' went up continually from the new army that was not yet an army, and those conditions were partly responsible for the fact that when the standard was lowered again the flow of recruits was so much less than before. This, the faculty for hearty grousing, in the army whimsical, humorous, shrewd, sometimes biting, never down-hearted, is evidently an old national custom, for Chaucer uses the word half a dozen times. But the aggravated discomfort of men soft from indoor life was really pitiful.

Before long all recruits except those for the Royal Field Artillery were sent elsewhere, and the barracks became a great depot for this arm of the service, with Colonel Forde in command. What marvels were done in those early days, and how hard pushed the country was, will be realised when it is understood that for months a body of men numbering never less than two thousand, and sometimes as many as three times that number, had only two field guns for training purposes, and that officers had to be sent out to the Expeditionary Force who had worn a uniform only for three, four, or five weeks....