: Training for the Trenches A Practical Handbook Based upon Personal Experience During the First Two Years of the War in France by Vickers Leslie - World War 1914-1918; Military hygiene; Intrenchments; Siege warfare; Defensive (Military science); Offensive

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TRAINING FOR THE TRENCHES

TRAINING FOR THE TRENCHES

THE CIVILIAN AND THE SOLDIER

The change from civilian to soldier is one that is not easily accomplished. We soon find that there are many new conditions to be faced, many new and uncongenial tasks to be undertaken, and all sorts of strange and novel regulations to which we must render the strictest obedience. In civilian life we become thoroughly independent. We come and go more or less as we please. We do not usually ask the permission of any one if we wish to depart a little from our customary habits. Not since we left school have we answered to roll-calls to any considerable extent, and only in the summertime, "for the fun of it," have we done our own housekeeping and submitted to domestic duties. In civilian life we have been allowed to work out our own salvation, and if we have been part of a machine at all it has been a huge social machine in which we did not figure as a cog but rather as an attachment.

In civilian life, too, a man usually chooses with scrupulous care his roommate or mates. In the army one may be placed in a tent or a billet with men who are by no means congenial, unless he is lucky enough to have been able to join a group of companions who form a unit. But even the experience of having uncongenial companions is not altogether without its compensations; for every civilian finds that he has need of rearranging his estimates of men when he enters the army. The sooner our own corners are rubbed off the better, and many of them are inevitably rubbed off when we are ten or thirteen in a tent!

When we have learned obedience we need to learn discipline--for the two words do not mean exactly the same thing. Discipline may be of two kinds. First of all there is SELF-DISCIPLINE. This includes the restraint of selfishness; the cultivation of the spirit of comradeship, generosity and thoughtfulness; the cultivation of habits of moderation in smoking, drinking, etc.; and the elimination of those vices that tend to rob us of our strength or impair the clearness of our thinking. Then there is, secondly, ARMY DISCIPLINE, which includes obedience, thoroughness, common sense and resourcefulness. This question is dealt with at length in military handbooks and needs few words from me.

The point to remember is that training for modern war is a serious business, not to be entered upon lightly, nor regarded as a "cinch." A man must first of all be fit in body to be able to withstand the many physical hardships that he will be sure to encounter. Then he must be fit in mind to provide him with the imagination and the resourcefulness that he will certainly be called on to show. His heart must be strong not only in the opinion of the surgeon but in the opinion of those who judge his "all-round manhood." He must be trained in such a way that he will be able to stand not only the physical but the nervous strain as well. A visit to the hospitals in England and France will provide the spectacle of row after row of beds containing men who have never been wounded but whose nerves have gone to pieces in the strain of modern warfare.

Remember to take your training seriously--it pays.

HEALTH

Benjamin Franklin once said, "Be sober and temperate and you will be healthy." This is in the main true and is excellent advice for the soldier. But there are ills that are liable to affect the fighting man in spite of his temperance and sobriety and of these we must speak.

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