ASHBURTON DAY
By DAVID JAMES
MANY, indeed, are the temples at which the British worship their national god, Sport, and to the votaries of one the others arc often unknown. To those who follow the liturgy of Lord's Henley is nothing but a pleasant little lay town on the Thames to those who observe the ritual of Wimbledon ; Bisley is a secular speck on the Southern Railway map distinguished only by a branch line, which leads nowhere else, from Brookwood, called also Necropolis. Yet to seven hundred-odd schoolboys on Thursday week Bisley was Mecca, and several thousand devotees of rifle-shooting from all over the Empire paraded the five-hundred- yard firing-point, sharing with them the excitement of the eightieth Ashburton Shield competition. This great silver shield was given by the third Baron Ashburton in 1861, in the heyday of the Victorian silversmith's craft, the year after the National Rifle Association was founded. Three teams competed that year, on Wimbledon Common, wielding the old Hay muzzle-loader, and with it firing, rather hazardously, five rounds each at two and five hundred yards. Rugby won—and did not win again for thirty-three years.
'Wimbledon has given place to Bisky ; the Hay was replaced by the Long Lee Enfield and the "Navy 5-Groove" (both also muzzle- loaders), the Snider, the Martini-Henry (with a kick like a mule) and, in 1897, the .303 magazine rifle. The number of shots was Increased to seven at each range (ten for three years from 1919); slings and aperture, sights have made their permitted appearance ; the number of teams competing has grown to a maximum of 86 in 1932. Till last week Charterhouse had won the shield twelve times, and Harrow eleven (though the latter not since 1908); Eton and Winchester have won it eight times each ; Rugby six times, Clifton four, Cheltenham, Bradfield and King's College School (Wimbledon) three times, and Dulwich, Sedbergh, Lancing, Brighton and Glen- almond twice each. This year Charterhouse made a bold bid for their thirteenth win, and led at zoo yards. However, Glenalmond overtook them at 50o, and finished one point ahead with 512—second only to Eton's record 1947 score of 517. This record (on the present targets) was a most astonishing performance when it is realised that the eight best shots in the Empire, the first Eight in the Grand Aggregate, scored only 525 under identical conditions in the first stage of the King's Prize.
. And it was a grand outing. All the old paraphernalia was there —the line of sixty-nine large black boards, one for each team, on which the scores arc recorded shot by shot, the enormous umbrellas (in case there is any sun), the different uniforms of the school contingents (alas, now not nearly so colourful as before the war— even Eton in khaki !), the sisters and mothers and families, and the old boys. What is it that brings the old boys back ? This rifle- shooting certainly is a curious game. It is understandable for the tigers—they can regularly put up too out of to5, and have the big prizes always within reach. But why does it also hold the loyalty of the comparative duffer, the man who makes about 85, and who seldom even makes ten shillings by squeaking into the bottom of a prize-list, who hasn't a ghost of a chance of winning anything big ? Yet it does, and year after year they return, all ranks and conditions of men, a true democracy, to have another crack at the King's, or, jt may be, only to see the Ashburton again.
What is this germ, which attacks even the schoolboys ? Shooting a rifle is, after all, merely a matter of lying down, aiming and scoring a bull, inner—or worse—for seven, ten times, and then totting up the score. Well, there is rather more to it than that, of course. The theory of the present Bisley targets, whose bull's eyes subtend an angle at the eye of two minutes, is that one minute represents the margin of error inherent in the rifle, half a minute rcprescnt5 the inevitable variations in the ammunition, and half a minute is the latitude allowed for the man. Not much of a margin for the man ; half a minute means that, when aiming, the muzzle of his rifle can wobble precisely six thousandths of an inch from the true. And not even that, because this half-minute has to cover wind-and-weather judgement: at six hundred yards a fair breeze will waft a bullet six feet away from the point of aim unless the firer judges the force and the direction of the wind accurately: at six hundred Yards, too, a change of light may easily throw him high or low, well out of the bull's eye. So, having " tuned-up " his rifle, by ensuring that the barrel is well and truly bedded, having estimated the light and the wind (and kept on estimating it out of the corner of his eye whilst on aim), all the firer has to do is to exert his maximum will-power to control his nerves and muscles into holding the rifle still on aim—and let it off smoothly.
That's all. But in that is the whole essence of the matter. That moment of supreme will-power imposes quite a strain on the firer, so that at the end of a series he is tired. No wonder. So he goes off for a cup of tea or glass of beer at one of the many clubs, and there he meets Tom, whom he hasn't seen since Singapore in '40, or Joe, who was in destroyers with him at Matapan, or old Colonel Blank, who was his father's commanding officer at 'Gallipoli, or it may be merely Smith, whom he meets every year at Bisley and doesn't know whether he's a doctor or a peer or a newsagent—and doesn't care, for he's a good shot. And so, if one plays this game, one realises that rifle-shooting is nothing but one great Empire-wide club. So and so, with whom you were at Oxford, comes back most years from the Sudan—it's the only time in the year when you meet or speak, and it makes you young again.
Yes, I suppose any unchanging institution is a great rejuvenator. Bisley doesn't change. The little two-coach railway has got a bit fancy since the war. The N.R.A. pavilion has introduced this new- fangled cafeteria system. There aren't any mats to lie on (more economy). But the community still dress the same—that is, members have still the same extraordinary invention for diversity of costume. You see five-gallon hats, digger slouch hats, worn old city hats, Sherlock Holmes deer-stalker hats (though I've never seen a bowler). You can see shorts, longs, knickerbockers, plus fours, jodhpurs, breeches, kilts, overall mackintoshes, gaiters, leggings, puttees, stock- ings—bare flesh. You see men carrying their odds and ends of score-books, and screwdrivers and ammunition in wonderful leather boxes made for the purpose, schoolboys' satchels, army haversacks, women's shopping bags, attache cases, brief cases. The diversity is unchanging, and Bisley is unchanging with it. Only the hair grows whiter and the eye a little dimmer. The old boys say, "Well, that's the last time. I've given it up now." But you know that next year they'll be there—" for one more crack at the King's."
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