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Page 12
He took my rifle, slid a cartridge into the breech, and coaxed the
trigger lovingly towards him. Three times he fired, then we went
together to look at the target. Not a bullet fired by him had struck
it. The instructor glared down the barrel of the gun, made some
nasty remarks about deflection, and went back to yell at an orderly
corporal.
"What the dickens did you take this here for?" he cried. "It's a
blooming wash-out,[1] and was never any good. Old as an unpaid bill
and worn bell-mouth it is, and nobody can fire with it."
[Footnote 1: "Wash-out" is a term used by the men when their firing is
so wide of the mark that it fails to hit any spot on the card. The men
apply it indiscriminately to anything in the nature of a failure.]
On a new rifle being obtained I passed the preliminary test, and a
rather repentant instructor remarked that it might be possible to make
a soldier of me some day.
Since then my fellow-soldiers and I have had almost unlimited rifle
practice, on miniature and open ranges, at bull and disappearing
targets, in field firing at distances from 100 to 600 yards. On a
field exceeding 600 yards it is almost impossible to hit a point
the size of an ordinary bull; fire then must be directed towards a
position. Field or volley firing is very interesting. Once my company
took train to Dunstable and advanced on an imaginary enemy that
occupied the wastes of the Chiltern Hills. Practice commenced by
firing at little squares of iron standing upright in a row about 200
yards off in front of our line. These represented heads and shoulders
of men rising over the trenches to take aim at us as we advanced. In
extended order we came to our position, 200 yards distant from the
front trenches. At the sound of the officer's whistle, we sank to
the ground, facing our front, fixed our sights, and loaded. A second
whistle was blown; we fired "three rounds rapid" at the foe. The
aiming was very accurate; little spurts of earth danced up and around
the targets, and every iron disc fell. The "searching ground," the
locality struck by bullets, scarcely measured a dozen paces from front
to rear, thus showing that there was very little erratic firing.
"That's some shooting!" my Jersey friend remarked. "If the discs were
Germans!"
"They might shoot back," someone said, "and then we mightn't take as
cool an aim."
We are trained to the rifle; it is always with us, on parade,
on march, on bivouac, and recently, when going through a dental
examination, we carried our weapons of war into the medical officer's
room. As befits units of a rifle regiment, we have got accustomed
to our gun, and now, as fully trained men, we have established the
necessary unity between hand and eye, and can load and unload our
weapon with butt-plate stiff to shoulder and eye steady on target
while the operation is in progress. In fact, our rifle comes to hand
as easy as a walking-stick. We shall be sorry to lose it when the war
is over, and no doubt we shall feel lonely without it.
CHAPTER V
THE COFFEE-SHOP AND WANKIN
What the pump is to the villager, so the coffee-shop is to the soldier
of the New Army. Here the men crowd nightly and live over again the
incidents of the day. Our particular coffee-shop is situated in our
corner of the town; our men patronise it; there are three assistants,
plump, merry girls, and three of our men have fallen in love with
them; in short, it is our very own restaurant, opened when we came
here, and adapted to our needs; the waitresses wear our hat-badges,
sing our songs, and make us welcome when we cross the door to take up
our usual chairs and yarn over the cosy tables. The Jersey youth
with the blue eyes, the Oxford man, who speaks of things that humble
waitresses do not understand, the company drummer, the platoon
sergeants, and the Cockney who vows that water is spoilt in making
every cup of coffee he drinks, all come here, and all love the place.
I have come to like the place and do most of my writing there,
catching snatches of conversation and reminiscence as they float
across to me.
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