War has rounded off many edges in the Territorials, yet, to the
inexperienced eye, there is still a marked difference between the
Regular and even the most seasoned Territorial. A Territorial battalion
is far more of a family gathering than a Regular battalion. Your
Territorial regiment recruits, as a rule, from one more or less
restricted area, so that there are all kinds of bonds of family,
business, and speech between its men. To the Regulars of our old
standing army war has ever been a business: to the Territorial it is
much more of a prolonged foreign holiday--“the most glorious change of
air and scene I have ever had,” is how a member of the H.A.C. referred
to his service at the front.
This homogeneity of interests in a Territorial battalion also applies
to trades. Thus, you will find, in the case of Territorials from the
North, whole battalions of miners, of cotton operatives, of gillies. I
heard of an entire company of a certain Territorial regiment formed out
of hands from a well-known brewery, who had joined _en masse_.
I imagine that our Territorial regiments resemble more closely than
any other formations we have in the field to-day the bands of archers
who, in the Middle Ages, as Froissart tells, followed their feudal
Barons to France and fought over the very fields where the war is being
waged to-day. Like our Territorials, these bands must have been united
within themselves by countless home associations, led, as they were,
by their home leaders, speaking their home speech, swearing by their
home shrines. The tie that welds Regulars together is the spirit of the
regiment; home is the uniting bond of the Territorials.
The Regular generally marches in silence. If he sings it is as often
as not one of those soldier songs of obscure origin like “The Song of
Shame,” which I have often heard sung but have never seen in print. It
deals with the misfortunes of a lass that loved not wisely, but too
well, and beginning,
“She wuz pore but she wuz honest,”
continues through any number of more or less unprintable strophes.
The Territorial, on the other hand, hates to march in silence. If he is
not singing, he is whistling. His range of songs is extensive. He will
sing anything, from doggerel set to hymn tunes to Grand Opera. He will
carol from Poperinghe to Ypres, from Lillers to Béthune, that familiar
marching ditty which goes to the tune of “Here we go gathering nuts and
may”:
“Nobody knows how dry we are,
Nobody knows how dry we are,
Nobody knows how dry we are,
And nobody seems to care-oh!”
and when one song stops, another is started.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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