On the walls, "cigarette photties"--by the
way, the children down here call them "fag picters." Across the room
run clothes-lines, bearing steaming garments (and tell it not in
Gath!) an occasional hare skin.
"C" are billeted in a village two miles away, and we see them but
rarely.
The rain has ceased for a brief space--it always does about parade
time--and we accordingly fall in. The men are carrying picks and
shovels, and make no attempt to look pleased at the circumstance. They
realise that they are in for a morning's hard digging, and very likely
for an evening's field operations as well. When we began, company
training a few weeks ago, entrenching was rather popular. More than
half of us are miners or tillers of the soil, and the pick and shovel
gave us a home-like sensation. Here was a chance, too, of showing
regular soldiers how a job should be properly accomplished. So we dug
with great enthusiasm.
But A Company have got over that now. They have developed into
sufficiently old soldiers to have acquired the correct military
attitude towards manual labour. Trench-digging is a "fatigue," to
be classed with, coal-carrying, floor-scrubbing, and other civilian
pursuits. The word "fatigue" is a shibboleth with, the British
private. Persuade him that a task is part of his duty as a soldier,
and he will perform it with tolerable cheerfulness; but once allow
him to regard that task as a "fatigue," and he will shirk it whenever
possible, and regard himself as a deeply injured individual when
called upon to undertake it.
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