Soldiers

by Richard Holmes

  ‘Wot’s it goin’ to be, mates? Give it a name.’

  Eventually the familiar bugle sounded outside:

  ‘First post, gents,’ announces the chairman, descending promptly from his rostrum.

  The sergeant on canteen duty rapped his stick on the door, so as to be able to report ‘canteen closed and correct’ to the orderly officer at tattoo-parade at 10.00.

  This, at least, was the theory. But when drink was in, wit was too often out. Francis Hereward Maitland thought that by halfway through the evening soldiers had drunk themselves into ‘a sort of twilight between sobriety and near-drunkenness … The men are not quite lit up enough for the raucous songs which will follow, they are not quite sober enough to drink quietly.’31 First came the impromptu recitals, with:

  There’s a one-eyed yellow idol

  To the north of Kathmandu …

  But, for all his foolish pranks,

  He was worshipped in the ranks …

  Morphed into:

  There’s a cross-eyed yellow bastard

  Who fought at Waterloo …

  ’Cos of all his foolish frolics

  ’e ’ad crabs upon ’is [dramatic pause] ear-’oles …

  Then came the songs. Spike Mays, writing of the 1930s, remembered a classic, ‘the old song sung by ex-India wallahs in canteens the world over, and on Old Comrades’ nights in British pubs.’ It laces soldiers’ Indian (bobaji is a cook, pani is water and atcha OK) into general nonsense, and there are many versions of its words.

  Sixteen annas one rupee,

  Damn and fuck the bobaji.

  Sergeant major, hollow-ground razor,

  Queen Victoria bloody fine man.

  Sixteen years you’ve fucked my daughter,

  Now you go to Blighty, sahib.

  May the boat that takes you over,

  Sink to the bottom of the pani, sahib.

  Tora tini, tora char,

  Bombay bibi bohet atcha.32

  By the time the sergeant arrived to close the canteen a well-oiled customer might decline to leave. The guard was called out, and the offender was ‘at length borne to the guard-room, happy in the consciousness that it has required the united efforts of at least half a dozen men to get him there.’ In addition to his hangover he would face charges of ‘Drunk and disorderly in the canteen, and violently resisting the escort’ when brought before the commanding officer. A man might easily worsen his plight by assaulting an NCO, and in 1835 the adjutant general of British troops in India specifically prohibited NCOs ‘from taking any other part in the confinement of drunken privates than ordering an escort of privates to place them into restraint’. If an NCO became involved then ‘violence is generally the consequence and the offence of the culprit swells to so great an extent as to demand the sentence of a General Court Martial.’33 It was important that the orderly officer kept himself well out of the way, for striking an officer was an offence that could bring a man the death sentence.

  Regiments tried hard to reduce the perils of the canteen. In October 1809, 1/30th Foot, then in garrison in Gibraltar, issued fresh standing orders. The canteen’s good order was the responsibility of ‘a respectable sergeant’. It was to be open from an hour after guard mounting in the morning to ‘the drumbeat for tattoo’ at night. No spirits were to be sold, wine was not to be adulterated in any way, and there was to be no gambling. Drinks were to be paid for on the nail, according to a fixed price, and were not to be consumed off the premises. Only NCOs and men of the regiment, and their families, were to use the canteen. At the first sign of drunkenness the offender was to be sent back to barracks. The sergeant in charge had the power to call out the guard if required, and the captain of the day and orderly officer should both make regular visits to the canteen.34

  Field Marshal Lord Hardinge was past his best when he served as commander-in-chief of the army from 1852 to 1856, but with the active assistance of his military secretary, Richard Airey, he succeeded in altering regulations so that regiments were allowed to run ‘Regimental Institutes’ to sell non-alcoholic drinks, some food, and a variety of necessaries like polish and pipe-clay, cigarettes and tobacco, paper and envelopes. The ‘dry canteens’ created by this regulation were not universally popular. Spike Mays’ troop leader warned his men

  Do not ever let me catch you in a dry canteen eating sticky buns or drinking hog-wash tea. From now on I strongly advise [you] to eat bread and cheese and drink beer. You’ll need them, for you are about to become soldiers.35

  However, the best dry canteens included reading rooms where men could write letters or read newspapers, and their creation coincided with a wider campaign for temperance within the army.

  There were regimental and garrison temperance associations from the 1850s. General Sir Frederick Roberts, commander-in-chief India 1885–93, maintained that ‘serious crime in the army is almost entirely due to the effects of drink’. Troops in India not only received a daily issue of spirits, for it was believed that this helped them withstand the rigours of the climate, but had easy access to ‘country spirits’, usually arrack, made from fermented palm-sap, rice or molasses. In 1833, the 710 men of the 26th Foot in garrison at Fort William, Calcutta, drank 5,320 gallons of arrack, 209 of brandy, and 249 of gin, with 207 2½ gallon hogsheads of beer. Drink was associated with many crimes in India, especially ‘hot-weather shootings’ where a drunken man grabbed his rifle (weapons were then held in barrack rooms) and shot a man with whom he might have had no real quarrel. Kipling’s poem Danny Deever is probably based on the hanging of Private Flaxman of the Leicesters at Lucknow in 1887. In 1888 Roberts was instrumental in forming the Army Temperance Association by merging two existing associations. It had 23,000 members by the time he left the country. The Army Temperance Association (Home Organisation) soon followed, becoming the Royal Army Temperance Association in 1902. It was finally disbanded in 1958, by which time there were many alternatives to drinking in the canteen.

  Some of these were private. Elise Sandes was born comfortably off, in Tralee in 1851, and in the late 1860s invited young soldiers to her house for Bible study, hymns, prayers and lessons in reading and writing. The first proper ‘Sandes Soldiers’ Home’ was set up in King Street, Cork in 1877. Others followed in garrison towns across Ireland, and in 1899 she opened a home in that ‘most delightful station’ the great camp on the Curragh of Kildare, not far from Dublin. Temporary homes were established under canvas in South Africa during the Boer War, and permanent homes in India and Singapore followed. The Singapore home, in service 1948–1975, consisted of

  several curved, terraced, tiled and brightly painted blocks situated on the top of a hill and nestled amongst lush greenery. Two of the blocks were sleeping quarters which could accommodate fifty men each. The outdoor amenities included a swimming pool, tennis courts, and a putting green, and the home also had a canteen, a lounge, a dining room, a billiard room, a gift shop, and a huge reading and games room stocked with periodicals, jigsaws, chess, draughts, dominoes, and ping pong tables. The bedrooms came with built-in wardrobes, drawers, a wash-basin with hot and cold water, and a writing-cum-dressing table with long mirror …

  The home had strict dormitory-like regulations … [but] was a good place to stay in and was popular amongst soldiers.36

  During the First World War, Miss Sandes and her supporters sent parcels to soldiers at the front, and went aboard troopships to give men pencils and postcards to write a last letter home. Elise Sandes died in 1934, and her headstone, at Tyrella in County Down, reads ‘For 66 years the friend of soldiers’. The last of the Sandes homes in Eire, at the Curragh, closed in the 1980s. Although he thought that it was ‘essentially British’, a senior Irish officer had reported

  In justice, I must say that Sandes Home is well run and fills a real need. Young soldiers are made to feel at home and not faced with the cold commercial atmosphere of the canteen. A good feminine influence meets a real need where young soldiers are concerned, and the only place here som
e of the young recruits that I obtain, receive anything approaching a motherly care is a Sandes home.37

  Today there are still Sandes Soldiers’ and Airmen’s homes in Ballykelly, Ballykinlar, and Holywood in Northern Ireland; and Pirbright and Harrogate in Britain.

  During the First World War the YMCA, Church Army, and the Salvation Army were amongst the voluntary organisations that opened huts to serve food and non-alcoholic drink to soldiers and provide them with books and writing materials. Some set up hostels where the relatives of the wounded could stay. In 1915 the Revd Philip ‘Tubby’ Clayton, an army chaplain, set up Talbot House in the Belgian town of Poperinghe, not far behind the front line. This was a place ‘where friendships could be consecrated, and sad hearts renewed and cheered, a place of light and joy and brotherhood and peace’. It was named for a Rifle Brigade officer killed outside Ypres, and known, from the phonetic alphabet then used by the army, as Toc H. A sign above its front door warned ‘Abandon rank, all ye who enter here’, for it was open to men of all ranks, who could drink tea in the kitchen, sit in the walled garden, or attend church services in the ‘Upper Room’. Toc H survived the war and prospered in the inter-war years, becoming a spiritual movement that went well beyond heartening soldiers. During the Second World War it opened servicemen’s clubs both at home and abroad, and afterwards it developed in many ways: the Revd Chad Varah, a Toc H padre, went on to start The Samaritans. After the Second World War it provided canteens to some British barracks in Germany, as a trooper in the Royal Hussars, stationed in Munster in the 1960s, recalls.

  The Toc-H which was a canteen, was set in the wall of the camp and we would go there to have a tea or coffee and something to eat, also to read the daily papers and chat up the girls who work there … We spent a lot of time there during the day time when we weren’t at work and in the evenings we would go into Munster itself … Either to eat and drink and sometimes to the Army Cinema or the S[ervices] K[inema] C[orporation] which was just past the railway station on the right.38

  The biggest change, however, was the establishment in 1921 of the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes, abbreviated to NAAFI, although these letters were thought, by an unkind few, to stand for ‘No Ambition And Fuck-all Interest’. Previously, regimental institutes had had a mixed reputation. Some sold inferior goods to a captive audience at too high a price; there were great opportunities for profitable dishonesty. In 1894 three officers formed the Canteen and Mess Co-operative Society, buying goods wholesale and selling them on to canteens. This was absorbed during the First World War by the Expeditionary Force Canteens, run by serving members of the Army Service Corps. In 1917 the Army Canteen Committee was set up to take over canteens at home, and this committee eventually absorbed the Expeditionary Force Canteens and formed the nucleus of the NAAFI. By April 1944 the NAAFI ran 7,000 canteens and had 96,000 personnel.

  In peacetime its employees are civilians, but on mobilisation those going overseas take on military ranks as part of the Expeditionary Forces Institute (EFI), to ensure that they are governed by appropriate legislation. The equivalent for the navy is the NCS, the Naval Canteen Service. In May 1982 when HMS Ardent was under air attack off San Carlos in the Falklands, its canteen manager was John Leake, transformed into a petty offer when the ship sailed for war. He had used the General Purpose Machine Gun when he was in the army, and volunteered to man a gun taking on the attacking Skyhawks; he damaged one so badly that it had to land at Port Stanley and he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal.

  Today the NAAFI has 500 stores and entertainment facilities in seventeen countries, providing servicemen and their families with many of the goods and services that they might expect to find at home. The NAAFI’s reputation wavered substantially ten years ago, and it remains vulnerable to comparison with cutting-edge organisations that operate more widely. However, on operations it provides a service that few others might wish to duplicate. A recent advertisement for staff, headed ‘Serving Private Ryan’, sought personnel who would be prepared to sign on for six months in Afghanistan followed by six months rotation in a non-operational posting. In 2004 the small garrison at Camp Abu Naji, just outside the Iraqi town of Al Amarah, contained a small EFI that did a roaring trade in cold drinks, chocolate bars, and Pringles, usually clearing $5,000 a week. One NCO thought it ‘basic but a godsend when its shelves were stacked’, and a soldier thought that Pot Noodles were ‘morale in a container’. Major James Driscoll explained:

  Even though you knew what was on sale from the last time you were in the NAAFI people still enjoyed wandering around this little shop – I believe it was the association with doing something ‘normal’. Sometimes people would buy things not because they really wanted them but because they could afford that and it was nice to own something new like a CD player or a camera, almost like a toy to a child, difficult to describe but I’ve seen it on all operational tours.39

  Within the barracks from 1921, the NAAFI took over the running of what had been the dry and wet canteens, and provided a refuge for those personnel who were not members of the officers’, sergeants’ or, for those units that ran them, the corporals’ mess. The NAAFI bar was out of bounds to officers and senior NCOs so that junior ranks would not find their spare time intruded upon. The one exception was the nightly procedure of closing the NAAFI, when the orderly officer and orderly sergeant would visit the place to ensure that all customers were out at closing time. This presented many of the hazards of closing the dry canteen, and was one of those many moments when a young officer would profit from the guidance of an experienced sergeant.

  Arrangements for the supervision of barracks varied over the years, but most of the work was done by an orderly officer and orderly sergeant who did a twenty-four hour period of duty, beginning when the bugle sang out ‘Parade for Guard’ or ‘Picquet’ at about 9.00 in the morning. Neither was allowed to leave barracks during their tour of duty, and both had to remain in uniform. Orderly officers were found, by rotation, amongst the subalterns, though awarding extra tours of duty to young officers guilty of minor infractions was a popular sport for adjutants, whose efforts were warmly appreciated by the law-abiding, or undetected, majority. In all units orderly officers were required to visit the men’s meals and ask if there were any complaints. This procedure could vary from the wholly ritualistic to the genuinely helpful, with much depending on the common sense and moral courage of the officer. The orderly officer was also to inspect the barracks’ guard once every night. The time of this inspection was usually allocated by the adjutant, although in some units the orderly officer might be invited to throw a specially made die which had ‘lucky bastard’ on one of its faces, sparing him from duty that night. An early inspection meant that the officer could fulfil his obligation not long after dinner and, with luck, enjoy an undisturbed night. With a late inspection he would not have long to wait till breakfast. An adjutant who wanted to make a point would have the youngster visiting the guard between 2.00 and 3.00 every morning.

  There might be a captain of the day providing the orderly officer with immediate support, and a field officer of the week, one of the unit’s majors, who maintained an overview. The guard (sometimes called quarter-guard or picquet) was generally commanded by a sergeant, with a corporal, drummer, bugler or trumpeter, and up to eight men. When the guard was inspected by the orderly officer after coming on duty it was customary for the most smartly turned out private to be made ‘stick man’, or orderly to the commanding officer for the day, which freed him from standing guard. In the Royals, as Spike Mays tells us, he was

  maid-of-all work for the guard; he carried their meals, washed up, lit fires … carried messages to squadron, regimental and brigade headquarters at the gallop – regarded as the stick orderly’s privilege.40

  Most barracks had several sentry posts that would be manned, after dark, by members of the guard, usually on two-hour ‘stags’, with reliefs being marched from post to post by the guard commander. Cavalry regiments also ha
d to provide stable guards, who went on duty at 5–6.00 p.m. and came off at ‘Reveille’, to see that no horses got loose in the night. Stable guards were on duty for two hours at a time with four hours off, and in the 1870s sleeping at post inevitably brought a prison sentence of two months. Wully Roberston remembered being on stable guard, armed with an empty carbine, on Christmas Day 1877, and his loyal comrades brought him ‘a huge plateful of miscellaneous food – beef, goose, ham, vegetables, plum-pudding, blanc-mange – plus a basin of beer, a packet of tobacco, and a new clay pipe.’41

  When the orderly officer visited the guard-room the sentry outside it would challenge ‘Halt! Who comes there?’ The officer would reply ‘Roving Rounds’, the sentry would yell ‘Guard, turn out!’ and the guard, awakened from sleep or disturbed at cards, would come clattering out under the lantern beneath the guard-room verandah. If the field officer of the week chose to visit – he might do so once or twice during his tour of duty – he would reply ‘Grand rounds’ to the sentry’s challenge, for while a subaltern or captain was owed a butt salute, with the soldier slapping the butt of his sloped rifle, a field officer was entitled to a full present arms. The East India Company’s armed forces were not legally part of the British army at all, but followed most of its procedures. However, the very high proportion of rumbustious Irishmen and a rather laissez-faire style in its European regiments led to a blurring of the proper formalities, as an officer of 2nd Bengal European Fusiliers discovered in 1856 when he came upon Private Poynard at sentry-go and rather expected that he might call out the guard.

  SENTRY: ‘Who comes there?’

  CAPT A. F.: ‘Officer of the Day’.

  SENTRY: ‘Arrah, major jewel, go home again, the boys are all tired & fast asleep.’