Kitcheners Mob

Kitchener's Mob, by James
Norman Hall

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Title: Kitchener's Mob Adventures of an American in the British Army
Author: James Norman Hall
Release Date: October 29, 2006 [EBook #19655]
Language: English
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Kitchener's Mob

The Adventures of an American in the British Army
By
James Norman Hall

Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company The Riverside Press
Cambridge 1916
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY JAMES NORMAN HALL ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED
Published May 1916

TO TOMMY OF THE GREAT WAR WHO IS ADDING
IMMORTAL LUSTER TO THE NAME OF ATKINS

Note
This brief narrative is by no means a complete record of life in a
battalion of one of Lord Kitchener's first armies. It is, rather, a story in
outline, a mere suggestion of that life as it is lived in the British lines
along the western front. If those who read gain thereby a more intimate
view of trench warfare, and of the men who are so gallantly and
cheerfully laying down their lives for England, the purpose of the
writer will have been accomplished.
The diagram which appears on the front and rear covers of the book is a
partially conventionalized design illustrating some features of trench
construction mentioned in Chapter VI. For obvious reasons it is not
drawn to scale, and although it is a truthful representation of a typical
segment of the British line, it is not an exact sketch of any existing
sector.

April, 1916.

Contents
I. Joining Up 1
II. Rookies 9
III. The Mob in Training 17
IV. Ordered Abroad 39
V. The Parapet-etic School 55
VI. Private Holloway, Professor of Hygiene 69
VII. Midsummer Calm 92
VIII. Under Cover 108
IX. Billets 129
X. New Lodgings 144
XI. "Sitting Tight" 177

Kitchener's Mob
CHAPTER I
JOINING UP
"Kitchener's Mob" they were called in the early days of August, 1914,
when London hoardings were clamorous with the first calls for
volunteers. The seasoned regulars of the first British expeditionary
force said it patronizingly, the great British public hopefully, the world

at large doubtfully. "Kitchener's Mob," when there was but a scant sixty
thousand under arms with millions yet to come. "Kitchener's Mob" it
remains to-day, fighting in hundreds of thousands in France, Belgium,
Africa, the Balkans. And to-morrow, when the war is ended, who will
come marching home again, old campaigners, war-worn remnants of
once mighty armies? "Kitchener's Mob."
It is not a pleasing name for the greatest volunteer army in the history
of the world; for more than three millions of toughened, disciplined
fighting men, united under one flag, all parts of one magnificent
military organization. And yet Kitchener's own Tommies are
responsible for it, the rank and file, with their inherent love of ridicule
even at their own expense, and their intense dislike of "swank." They
fastened the name upon themselves, lest the world at large should think
they regarded themselves too highly. There it hangs. There it will hang
for all time.
It was on the 18th of August, 1914, that the mob spirit gained its
mastery over me. After three weeks of solitary tramping in the
mountains of North Wales, I walked suddenly into news of the great
war, and went at once to London, with a longing for home which
seemed strong enough to carry me through the week of idleness until
my boat should sail. But, in a spirit of adventure, I suppose, I tempted
myself with the possibility of assuming the increasingly popular alias,
Atkins. On two successive mornings I joined the long line of
prospective recruits before the offices at Great Scotland Yard,
withdrawing each time, after moving a convenient distance toward the
desk of the recruiting sergeant. Disregarding the proven fatality of third
times, I joined it on another morning, dangerously near to the head of
the procession.
"Now, then, you! Step along!"
There is something compelling about a military command, given by a
military officer accustomed to being obeyed. While the doctors were
thumping me, measuring me, and making an inventory of "physical
peculiarities, if any," I tried to analyze my unhesitating, almost
instinctive reaction to that stern, confident "Step along!" Was it an act

of weakness, a want of