Kitcheners Mob | Page 6

evidence
through worn soles and tattered uppers. Adopting this sight test, he
eliminates more than half the platoon, whereupon, by a further process
of elimination, due to the fact that he has only sizes 7 and 8, he selects
the fortunate twelve who are to walk dry shod.
The same method of procedure is carried out in selecting the braces.
Private Reynolds, whose trousers are held in place by a wonderful
mechanism composed of shoe-laces and bits of string, receives a pair;
likewise, Private Stenebras, who, with the aid of safety pins, has
fashioned coat and trousers into an ingenious one-piece garment. Caps
and puttees are distributed with like impartiality, and we dismiss, the
unfortunate ones growling and grumbling in discreet undertones until
the platoon commander is out of hearing, whereupon the murmurs of
discontent become loudly articulate.
"Kitchener's Rag-Time Army I calls it!" growls the veteran of South
African fame. "Ain't we a 'andsome lot o' pozzie wallopers? Service?
We ain't never a-go'n' to see service! You blokes won't, but watch me!
I'm a-go'n' to grease off out o' this mob!"
No one remonstrated with this deservedly unpopular reservist when he
grumbled about the shortage of supplies. He voiced the general
sentiment. We all felt that we would like to "grease off" out of it. Our
deficiencies in clothing and equipment were met by the Government
with what seemed to us amazing slowness. However, Tommy is a
sensible man. He realized that England had a big contract to fulfill, and
that the first duty was to provide for the armies in the field. France,
Russia, Belgium, all were looking to England for supplies. Kitchener's
Mob must wait, trusting to the genius for organization, the faculty for
getting things done, of its great and worthy chief, K. of K.
* * * * * *
Our housing accommodations, throughout the autumn and winter of
1914-15, when England was in such urgent need of shelter for her
rapidly increasing armies, were also of the makeshift order. We slept in

leaky tents or in hastily constructed wooden shelters, many of which
were afterward condemned by the medical inspectors. St. Martin's Plain,
Shorncliffe, was an ideal camping-site for pleasant summer weather.
But when the autumnal rains set in, the green pasture land became a
quagmire. Mud was the great reality of our lives, the malignant deity
which we fell down (in) and propitiated with profane rites. It was a thin,
watery mud or a thick, viscous mud, as the steady downpour increased
or diminished. Late in November we were moved to a city of wooden
huts at Sandling Junction, to make room for newly recruited units. The
dwellings were but half-finished, the drains were open ditches, and the
rains descended and the floods came as usual. We lived an amphibious
and wretched existence until January, when, to our great joy, we were
transferred to billets in the Metropole, one of Folkestone's most
fashionable hotels. To be sure, we slept on bare floors, but the roof was
rainproof, which was the essential thing. The æsthetically inclined
could lie in their blankets at night, gazing at richly gilded mirrors over
the mantelpieces and beautifully frescoed ceilings refurnishing our
apartments in all their former splendor. Private Henry Morgan was not
of this type. Henry came in one evening rather the worse for liquor and
with clubbed musket assaulted his unlovely reflection in an expensive
mirror. I believe he is still paying for his lack of restraint at the rate of a
sixpence per day, and will have canceled his obligation by January,
1921, if the war continues until that time.
* * * * * *
Although we were poorly equipped and sometimes wretchedly housed,
the commissariat was excellent and on the most generous scale from
the very beginning. Indeed, there was nearly as much food wasted as
eaten. Naturally, the men made no complaint, although they regretted
seeing such quantities of food thrown daily into the refuse barrels. I
often felt that something should be done about it. Many exposés were,
in fact, written from all parts of England. It was irritating to read of
German efficiency in the presence of England's extravagant and
unbusinesslike methods. Tommy would say, "Lor, lummy! Ain't we got
no pigs in England? That there food won't be wasted. We'll be eatin' it
in sausages w'en we goes acrost the Channel"; whereupon he dismissed

the whole question from his mind. This seemed to me then the typical
Anglo-Saxon attitude. Everywhere there was waste,
muddle-headedness, and apparently it was nobody's business, nobody's
concern. Camps were sited in the wrong places and buildings erected
only to be condemned. Tons of food were purchased overseas,
transported across thousands of miles of ocean, only to be thrown into
refuse barrels. The Government was robbed by avaricious