A VOLUNTEER ON GUARD. H AVE you got a good night
for guard duty?" This question, asked by one Volunteer of another, might seem cryptic to an outsider. Does it refer to the convenience to the sentry of the appointed night in respect of his social engagements ? Or perhaps it refers to the weather ? The weather, of course, is frightfully
important to a sentry, and even the fact that when it is raining he may " secure his arms," and in very heavy rain may enter his sentry-box, does not console him for the worst manifestations of our climate. But, then, how can the sentry possibly know in advance whether the weather will be good or bad on the night for which he has been warned for duty ? When you have the clue, however, the question is seen to be extremely pertinent. A good night is a moonless night. Then there is a sporting chance that the tedium of the sentry's pacing to and fro may be relieved by the excursions and alarms, the illuminations and fireworks, of a Zeppelin raid. Instead of counting the slow hours while he stares into the empty darkness and listens for a suspicious footfall, the sentry will have an Earl's Court entertainment, with all kinds of realities thrown in. If the good night turns out to be very good, be will see a flaming Zeppelin dive earthwards, and hear from his enchanted beat London ringed with shouts of exultation, and the shouts taken up by the whistles of engines, and the horns of motors, and the sirens of ships. Is not that truly a very good night ? There is enough reason, then, for the Vohmteer sentries, who more and more are releasing Regulars from guard duty, to ask whether their friends have got a good night or a bad one. Those who are warned for the bright nights of the month envy those who get the moonless nights, particularly when the barometer shows no signs of falling. I have read innumerable amounts from the German newspapers of the emotions of London under aerial bombardment, but the most pressing emotion on the subject which happens to have afflicted us Volunteers has been omitted from all those catalogues of gloom.
I put in my Saturdays to Mondays as often as possible doing guard duty or digging trenches with a Volunteer Corps, and I offer here a few notes on guard duty. Trench work has been described already in the Spectator. Sometimes I think I shall miss all this Volun- teer work after the war ; at other times I am perfectly sure I shall not. Firm in the faith that man is a creature of habit, I still, perhaps, do not know for certain whether I have become addicted to the habit of Volunteering. In any case, if I abandon the admitted incon- veniences and annoyances of it after the war, I shall also abandon with these things many pleasures, not the least of which is the successful reconstruction of a kind of collegiate life among men between the ages of forty-one and sixty, which one would have said before the war was a thing impossible to be achieved. The last Saturday to Monday brought my turn for twelve hours' guard duty by day in an important industrial compound. Other members of my corps on that day were digging trenches, others were still in the country helping with the last operations of the harvest, others were despatched on one of those semi-diplomatic missions for which Volunteers seem to have betrayed some ability. This last group were, in fact, escorting military prisoners who had outstayed their leave. " You're new to this job," said an old Regular N.C.O. to one of the Volunteers who were starting on this delicate mission, " so I'll give you a wrinkle. I don't think you'll 'ave any trouble. I know those men—they'll come quiet enough. But if one should turn nasty, you get 'is boots off. You won't 'ave no more trouble."
The day I am about to describe was a memorable day for me, for it was—shameful to relate—the first time I ever travelled with a workman's ticket. When I paid for my ticket in the Tuba very early in the morning, the booking-clerk returned to me what seemed at first sight to be handfuls of change. I was much astonished and gratified. I ought to explain that we Volun- teers enjoy the dignity of paying for most of the services we render to the State. Twopence, I discovered, bought ins a return ticket to any station on the whole of the system. I made a note that London when the air is still fresh with the morning mist is a most delightful and inexpensive place. This was an adventure to be repeated.
On arriving at the main gate of the compound, I wait for the time to arrive for the new guard to relieve the old guard. On no account must the new guard go in before the proper time. It would be as though you arrived for a party at nine o'clock when you were bidden for ten. It would be a deplorable blunder. At nine your hostess would not be established at the head of the stairs. The new guard has to be received by the old guard, and the old guard has to salute the new guard in a ritual which is extraordi- narily precise and impressive. I love this ceremony. It is the only occasion on which my fellow-privates present arms to me—a salute which is reserved on all other occasions for field officers. But here am I (I and my fellow-members of the new guard with one N.C.O. are inside the compound now) receiving the " present." Even my own Platoon officer if he comes in on " visiting rounds " a little later on will receive from me only a tap of my hand on the small of the butt of my rifle. But this ritual between the old and the new guards is an act of homage and mutual admiration. We are fine fellows. We are worthy to carry arms in the King's service, and we have very grave
duties to perform. We present arms to the old guard who have done these services faithfully, and they present arms to us because on us has fallen the proud office of continuing their services. The milkman who is giving the uncouth calls of his trade—a Swiss yodel manqu f—and the postman, and the early newspaper boy are doing their work outside the safer because we guard an important post—if only they knew it I My N.C.O. points a highly official finger at me and says " One ! " My fellow-privates in the new guard are similarly accused of being " two " and " three." In other words, I am the first relief. Like a prisoner I am marched off to the sentry-box by the new and the retiring N.C.O.'s. " Sentry, halt ! " I suddenly hear when we are a few paces off the sentry on guard. Knowing my job to perfection, I do not halt at all. It is like Alice in Wonderland. I march on, wheel left, halt on the far side of the sentry, looking in the opposite direction to him, and then turn about. The sentry is ordered to instruct me in my duties. He indicates the beat ; tells me that I am to guard all property from damage ; report Sze ; stop suspicious- looking persons ; detain them if not satisfied by their answers, and in the event of damage being done and their trying to escape when called upon to halt, to fire ; to " pay the usual compliments " to officers and armed and unarmed parties ; and so on. The retiring sentry, looking rather draggled after his night out, clumps off with the two N.C.O.'s and I am left to my two hours' turn.
Certainly this is a dull place. Yet it is tremendously important. I reflect that some dull people are tremendously important There are links between the animate and inanimate worlds. I long for some suspicious-looking person. But a more unsuspicious-looking lot I never saw than the civilians who are busy about the place. Workmen come in and steer a straight course for their jobs. Work- men come out of hidden places and steer a straight course for the gate. Of course, I must not challenge them. A sentry like me must behave with perfect discretion. I am not there to be a meddle. some bore, but only to intervene when something is obviously wrong. The old guard pass me on their way out ; they have the air of men who have sat upright all night in the Scotch express; besides that, they have the air of men who have been defrauded--certainly on a moonless night with no wind they had had every right to expect that the Zeppelins would give them a show. I watch them into the street, and presently hear them porting arms for inspection before they are dismissed. I pace up and down, and wish that some- thing would happen. Then I reflect that I ought after all to be thankful. My rifle is not heavy ; it is easy work to carry it ; the two hours will not be physically exhausting, and then there will be four hours to dawdle about till my next turn. It is the time that is heavy, not the rifle. I pass an evening primrose on a patch of grass, and calculate that the flower which had come out the evening before will be withered by the time my twelve hours' duty is over. This proves to be exactly true. My beat overlooks a street. When I can see nobody who looks in the least suspicious, I study the archi- tecture of the houses. It is very odd that I had never noticed it before, though I had often passed this way. Some day I shall buy a guide-book to London and discover my own home. It would be just as satisfactory as studying domestic architecture in Genoa, as I have done before now, and it would be much cheaper—at least, some parts of London would be as satisfactory, but not this part. Not far away there is a granitic-looking house which suggests a mixture of Pierrefonds and Toledo. It has places for pouring molten lead on to the enemy—presumably duns and rate-collectors. It is absurd. I wonder who can have built it. The dulness causes me to remember wistfully a very different place where I had done guard duty a few weeks before. It was one of the hubs of London. It was even exciting there, as so many officers kept passing that ib was no easy matter to " pay the usual compliments." Several times when I was saluting a mere Captain. I became aware that a field officer had drifted into my orbitand I feared, for the credit of my corps, that he might think the dfully inadequate salute was intended for him. Moreover, it had been vastly amusing to see friends among the crowd, and wonder whether they would recognize me in my fancy dress. Out of about fourteen intimate friends who went by, only one, as a matter of fact, noticed me. Some of them looked straight through me. It was like the experience of R. L. Stevenson, who walked abroad in a sleeved waistcoat and found that he was completely disguised without further trouble. Yes, how different that place was—.
Hurrah ! Here's our Major coming in at the main gate. What a pleasing diversion ! Probably my delight is entirely unprofes- sional. I double up to the guard-room and bawl : " Guard, turn out Grand Rounds " I enjoy yelling at my N.C.O. as though I suspected him of being asleep. He has no legal redress whatever against any insinuations I may choose to put into my intonation. Then I skip back to my beat, turn to my front and
present arms as the Major passes. I slap the palm of my hand on the barrel above the magazine with a resounding smack and hope that he may be satisfied. Officers, I have discovered, measure your smartness entirely by the distinctness of that smack. It is not really difficult to please most of them.
I continue on my beat. Did I say my rifle was not heavy ? I must have been mistaken. If it weighed ten pounds in the first quarter of an hour, it weighs a hundredweight in the last. But is it the weight of the rifle telling on my left shoulder ? Perhaps (awful thought I) it is rheumatism. I am truly glad to be relieved.
It is very pleasant in the guard-room. Preparations are already being made for luncheon. A cooking-stove has been established in the whitewashed shed, and gas has been laid on. Plank beds and mattresses are ranged round the walls. One of the privates says, with a challenging tone, that he can make an omelette. No one encourages him, and he does not make it. Apart from our hilarious preparations for the picnic, we feel called upon to offer advice and assistance to the N.C.O., who is harassed by the necessity of filling in his form. The form of the night before is no great help as a model, as that related to a different set of conditions. The N.C.O. had then to declare that his men had washed and shaved themselves (I wonder), and that the boots of prisoners had been removed. I wonder still more—there is evidently much more than I had supposed in this matter of boots. Then I read all the orders posted on the walls. The earnest instructions from Headquarters that friendly aircraft, and even the falling in flames of a Zeppelin, are not to be reported by telephone, are positively pathetic. I can picture the flood of reports which wrung this order from the Staff officer as he sank beneath their waves. It seems that I have hardly had time to read the papers, eat, help to clean the guard-room and wash up the things, when my turn has come again. I am ready. No member of the guard may ever take off his tunic) or belt or ammunition-pouch.
At eight o'clock in the evening the now guard arrives. By that time we are feeling unquestionably that we are the old guard. We go through our ritual in the dark. I suddenly recognize that I have had a most delightfully restful day—highly regular exercise, with nothing to worry about. And I have seen London rise from the seas of a silvery autumn mist, and sink into it again. It was a chapter, an episode, complete in itself.
There is plenty of room for more Volunteers. For Volunteers to mount constant guards a very large reservoir of men is needed, in order that the rotas of busy men may be arranged more easily. Innumer- able posts have to be guarded; innumerable trenches have to be dug. It is futile to argue that these things need not be done. The authori- ties have decided that they must be done. That is enough. If Volunteers do not do them, Regulars will. Every fresh Volunteer releases a fractional part of a Regular for service abroad. That is why civilians should " join up " in the Volunteer Army of their own
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