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It soon grew easy to handle the regiment in all the simpler forms of close and open order. When they had grown so that they could be handled with ease in marching, and in the ordinary manoeuvres of the drill-ground, we began to train them in open-order work, skirmishing and firing. Here their woodcraft and plainscraft, their knowledge of the rifle, helped us very much.
The washing arrangements were sumptuous and we had truckle-beds to sleep upon, but the sanitation, as everywhere in France, was vile. We kicked a football about on the drill-ground. Then some of us went down into the town, while the rest of us waited impatiently for them to come back, taking a despatch or two in the meanwhile.
When our three firemen reached the drill-ground the chief was showing his recruits how to coil several lengths of the hose, so as to avoid a twist or "kink," which might endanger its bursting when the water was turned suddenly on by the powerful "steamers."
Then, at intervals, all the heads in the row are briskly lifted and as briskly lowered, time after time, with an automatic precision worthy of a Prussian drill-ground. Can it be their method of intimidating an always possible aggressor? Can it be a manifestation of gaiety, when the wanton sun warms their full paunches?
The 'canker of a long peace, during recent years at any rate, is not manifested in disuse of arms, but in mistaken methods. For a quarter of a century the civilised world has tended more and more to become a drill-ground, but the spirit dominating it has been that of the pedant. There has been more exercise and less reality. The training, especially of officers, becomes increasingly scholastic.
The General spoke encouragingly to most of us, and told the subalterns that gunnery rules were as important in this sort of warfare as on the drill-ground. "But don't forget that a cool head and common-sense are as good assets as any," he added.
Every ballot cast to sustain the administration is equal to a well-directed bullet against the foe. April 8. The brigade was called out this morning on the old drill-ground to witness a somewhat sad and novel scene, namely, the branding and drumming out of service of two deserters from Company K. The command was formed into a hollow square, facing inward.
There was water, there were woods, there was an excellent space for a drill-ground. Jackson's directions as to drill-grounds were always characteristically explicit. "Major: You will see that a camp is chosen where there are wood, water, and a drill-ground " emphasis on the drill-ground. At Rude's Hill they drilled and drilled and drilled.
There never has been a time when Europe was not either a battlefield or a great drill-ground for armies. There was a time, long ago, when any man might kill another in Europe and not be punished for his deed. It was not thought wrong to take human life. Today it is not considered wrong to kill, provided a man is ordered to do so by his general or his king.
The only drill-ground for fleets, the open sea, being closed to him, he could do no better than these furtive excursions, to prepare for the eagle's flight Napoleon had prescribed to him. If they go on playing this game, some day we shall lay salt upon their tails, and so end the campaign."
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