Military recruit

“ THE WAY OF THE RECRUIT The way of the recruit, though still a hard one, is not so hard as it used to be, for, especially in the cavalry and artillery, various modifications have been introduced by which the youngster is broken in gradually to his work. ”

“ But what are you goin' to do? 'Fall in,' ses you, 'an' dress by the right. Stop that talkin' in the ranks,' ses you. 'I'm glad to see there's one recruit at least as is fond of 'is duty, tho' 'e'd look better,' ses you, 'if 'e'd 'old 'is 'ead up. ”

“ Now, men, you'll likely find it a bit dull here for a day or two. Recruits generally do. Then that will all wear off, and you'll be glad you're in the Army. If there's anything you need to know, ask Corporal Shrimp"—Hal winced inwardly—"or me. The mess call will soon go for dinner. When it does, follow me outside, but take your places in the rear of A Company, which is the recruit company that you now belong to. I'll [68] show you where to stand. New recruits don't march with the battalion—not until they've been drilled enough to know how to march."
"Is there a battalion here, Sergeant?" ”

“ Now for a little about soldiers.”
“If I were giving you my own history, I might be tempted to dwell on my own exploits, but as that is not the case I shall try to keep close to my subject,—Soldiers and Sailors. When a recruit is enlisted and sworn in before a magistrate he is put into the awkward squad for a time, and then he enters the ranks. He has much to learn before he becomes a thorough soldier, from standing at ease to the charge; from the single file to the battle array.” ”

“ You have but to see the spirit of our troops and the spirit of the recruits, disappointed because their offers to serve in the army are rejected. We do not need every recruit now, and as we do take new men, there are hundreds of thousands more, ready to serve the Fatherland—to the end. ”

“ It is a bad affair if the officer is under the necessity of using his weapons and wounding or killing the recruit.
Care must be taken, also, that the recruit be not an over match for his guard. Every stout, well-built, bold-faced recruit must be closely watched, and it may even become necessary to double the guard. ”

“ The recruit learns his exercise on the authority of his officer, because he is himself ignorant of the art of war. The reasons for the different manoeuvres, he will discover when he comes into action. ”

“ A recruiting officer bearing a flag and attended by a band of martial music paraded the streets, to excite a thirst for glory and a spirit of military ambition. The recruiting officer possessed the qualifications requisite to make the service alluring, especially to the young. ”

“ The logic of war is, learn to obey and ask no questions.
One thing happened which came very near breaking up my troop, and threatened to destroy the regiment itself. It was at that time difficult to get recruits for the regulars. Citizen-soldiers preferred the volunteers. But it was considered important to keep the regiments in the regular army recruited up to the minimum, at least, and an order was issued from the War Department permitting regular officers to recruit from the ranks of the volunteers. ”

“ He knew so much about war, arms, tents, knapsacks, ammunition, marching, fighting, camping, cooking, shooting, and everything a soldier is and does. It is remarkable how much a recruit and how little an old soldier knows about such things. After a while the recruit forgets all, and is as ignorant as any veteran. ”

“ The first thing the recruit has to learn is to stand in a proper position. Then come facing, stepping, and marching, filing, wheeling, and with the manual and platoon exercise, forming; and, if in the cavalry, saddling, bridling, mounting, riding, and leaping, with the manœuvres of troops and squadrons, companies, battalions and regiments. What with carbine and pistol exercise, sword exercise and lance exercise, with parade, mounting guard, and keeping accoutrements, and perhaps, a horse in order, a soldier has many duties to perform.”
“And have sailors as much to do as soldiers?” ”

“ The dignity with which the recruiting is done is very pleasing, for these officers, uncommissioned though they be, wear their uniforms with the grace of a major-general. When they approach a man, they do so with an air of authority, in a straightforward manner, and although they depict the attractions of the service beguilingly, they seldom attempt to42 gain a recruit against his will. Most of those who loiter about the boards come with their minds made up to enlist, and do not need any great amount of persuasion. ”

“ He describes the raw English recruit, picked out of the gutter, recounts the stages of discipline that make him a good soldier, and finally a reliable non-commissioned officer—a man that, returned to his country, would prove a good and useful citizen. ”

“ At one blow the enthusiastic, ambitious recruit had turned into one of the many soldiers who serve in the army simply because they are compelled to do so, and who are longing for the day when they will be able to doff the uniform forever. ”

“ These same readers also know how the two young soldiers put in several weeks of steady drilling at a recruit rendezvous near New York, where they learned the first steps in the soldier's strenuous calling. Our readers are also familiar with all the many things that happened during that period of recruit instruction, and how Hal and Noll, while traveling through the Rockies on their way to join their regiment, aided in resisting an attempt by robbers to hold up the United States mail train. ”

“ And off went the valiant soldier, marching down the road at a quick pace, while the preacher resumed his address.
SUFFICIENTLY EQUIPPED
Recruiting Sergeant—“I can’t enlist you, my good man; you have only one eye.”
Patriotic Scotsman—“Hoots! that disna matter. Ye’ve tae shut ae e’e whin yer shootin’ onywey.”
[25]
“NEXT OF KIN”
A good recruiting story, told by an officer at Seaforth, shows how prone is a simple mind to be confused by the elaborate cross-questioning which the new recruit has to undergo. ”

“ And he is trained to meet the emergency.
The new recruit, in ordinary times, is sent for his first instruction to Port Royal, down in Georgia. There he has nothing to do but drill, drill, drill, until he can do the infantry evolutions in his sleep. He learns to drill, he learns to keep clean—the Marines are something of a dandy corps—and he learns to take care of himself no matter what happens. He is taught to be a soldier and a man. He learns to walk straight, shoot straight, think straight. ”

“ When he returned on board, it was to take the oar of a poor, delicate-looking boy, one of the company of soldiers, who from the first had suffered with bleeding at the nose on every unusual exertion. I was not surprised, on inquiring, to find that this lad was a recruit just entered the service. ”

“ From the youngest boy to the oldest man, the citizens were in such a ferment of excitement as gave recruits the idea that to enlist was simply providing amusement for themselves during a certain number of days, and, with the exception of those experienced in such matters, no person believed for a moment that the brave ones who were rallying at their country’s call would suffer hardships or privations. ”

“ Therefore the others stood rather in awe of our men, and they did not quite like the idea of having anything to do with us, even though we were only recruits on the way to the battalion, for every soldier knows that the recruit is even more anxious to follow the regimental tradition than the veteran. ”

“ I, therefore issue this, my proclamation, calling for a battalion of five companies of mounted volunteers to recruit said regiment; each company to consist of one captain, one first lieutenant, one second lieutenant, four sergeants, four corporals, and sixty privates. Each company to elect its own officers, and each volunteer to furnish his own arms, horse, and equipments. ”

“ The value of army remounts was exemplified the other day by the cavalry sergeant who lost patience with an awkward recruit.
“Never approach the horses from behind without speaking,” he exclaimed. “If you do they’ll kick you in that thick head of yours, and the end of it will be that we shall have nothing but lame horses in the squadron.” ”

“ It has already been stated that a full day’s work for the recruit is a strenuous business. If we39 take the average day of a recruit in, say, a cavalry regiment, and follow him from réveillé to “lights out,” it will be seen that he is kept quite sufficiently busy. ”

“ Yet in spite of this treatment,—which is virtually [Pg 19] a breach of contract by the Government, since the recruit is led to suppose on his enlistment that he is to be a soldier and not a hod-carrier,—in spite of his rarely being taught his profession, or shown how to become skilled in arms or horsemanship, the American soldier is subordinate, quick to obey, ready in expedients, uncomplaining, capable of sustaining great fatigue, brave and trustworthy in action. ”

“ In this state of things, several officers, supposing that commissions and rank might depend on recruiting men, began, without permission, to recruit soldiers, to serve particularly under the officer enlisting them. ”

“ Not so bad at first, perhaps, for a stout-hearted, hefty sportsman, during recruit days when everything is novel, there is something to learn, time is fully occupied, and one is too busy to think, too busy evading strange pit-falls, and the just or (more often) unjust wrath of the Room Corporal, the Squadron Orderly Sergeant, the Rough-Riding Corporal, the Squadron Sergeant-Major, the Rough-Riding Sergeant-Major, the Regimental Sergeant-Major, the Riding-Master. ”

“ Only the old Sergeant and some of the younger ones were perfectly erect.
"Why don't you dodge the balls?" asked a recruit of the Sergeant.
"A soldier of the empire never dodges," was the proud reply.
Some change occurred on the hills; they could not see what. Just then the order came down the line to advance at a double-quick and support the batteries. They moved forward at a run and passed beyond the shelter of the ridge. ”

“ But to train the recruits, and to command such an army when fashioned, would have required a very great corps of professional officers of high military education, many times as large as we had actually raised. ”

“ As the regiment was leaving, and a crowd cheering, a recruit asked: “Who are all those people who are cheering?”
“They,” replied the veteran, “are the people who are not going.”—Life.
BUT NOT THIS TIME
Officer (to boy of thirteen who, in his effort to get taken on as a bugler, has given his age as sixteen) —“Do you know where boys go who tell lies?”
Applicant—“To the front, sir.” ”

“ Many serjeanties were connected with warfare, such as light horsemen, infantry, bowmen, captains of the national militia, leading the infantry of certain hundreds, military transport, carriage of armour on a horse, munitions of war such as lances, arrows or knives. ”

“ Another Method.—Take your recruit, and place him at headquarters. Let him mix freely with all the bad characters that have been carefully kept in the regiment, until his nature has become assimilated to theirs. For three years pay him rather less than a ploughboy's wages, and make [Pg 78] him work harder than a costermonger's donkey. Your soldier having now reached perfection, you will turn him out of the service with economical dressing. ”

“ The foregoing is all the preparation needed, but if our recruit is anxious to advance beyond the position of a private soldier, and to fill places of responsibility, it is needless to say he must prepare himself.
HIS CHANCES FOR ADVANCEMENT.
His first duty is to learn thoroughly his work as a private. Having done that well, he is without doubt prepared to teach others the same work. The officers are always watching for bright and intelligent men, and so will recommend for the next grade, and his captain will secure for him the appointment as corporal. ”

“ The officer who commands the respect of his men does not get nicknamed, and the recruit very soon learns to call his superiors by their proper names when he has occasion to mention superior officers in course of conversation with his comrades.
As a rule, the recruit is subjected to one or more practical jokes by his comrades in his early days as a soldier. In cavalry regiments, a favourite form of joke is to get the recruit to go to the farrier-major for his “shoeing-money,” a mythical33 allowance which, it is alleged, every recruit receives at the beginning of his service. ”

“ We should have to get you into one of the household battalions,—not as an officer, of course; you know the officers must be of the nobility, but there are gentlemen in the ranks of every military body that is attached to a sovereign's person. There are the body-guards, the foot-guards, the horse-guards, and other such troops. Doubtless volunteers are very welcome. ”

“ Marching as fully equipped infantry in the ranks is a very different proposition from walking along the road independently, and for the private in ranks with his load it is different from what it is for the officer with his. ”

“ As we inhabit an island, and hold the command of the sea by an overwhelmingly powerful navy, there was no valid reason to press for any alteration in our time-honoured custom of recruiting the army by voluntary enlistment. ”

“ The recruits, as fast as they are enlisted, may be concentrated under the eye of the major, where they may be exercised and drilled, so that when he joins the regiment, they will be qualified to enter the ranks and face the enemy. ”

“ The veterans give experience and steadiness;—when the battle is joined the old hands feel bound to make good their camp-fire boastings to the recruits. The recruits bring freshness and the spirit of competition;—they are determined to show that they are as brave as the old fighters. ”

“ They are a description of troops invaluable in every respect,—being as soldierlike, and well trained in the duties of infantry, as the best regiments of that arm, and therefore equally available for all military services in garrisons and quarters; while their qualities as artificers are by no means confined to admirable proficiency in their proper business as engineer-soldiers, in the management of the pontoon-train and the conduct of siege operations. ”