friend now that will always stand by you and play you fair. Just give him a chance, and he'll maybe see you out of many a tight corner. Now, who is this friend I'm talking about?" he asked, turning to a youth who was leaning on his rifle. "Come, Weary, and tell me."

"The rifle," was the answer.

"The crutch?"

"No, the rifle."

"I see that, boy, I see that! But, damn it, don't make a crutch of it. You're a soldier now, my man, and not a crippled one yet."

Thus was the rifle introduced to us. We had long waited for its coming, and dreamt of cross-guns, the insignia of a crack shot's proficiency, while we waited. And with the rifle came romance, and the element of responsibility. We were henceforward fighting men, numbered units, it was true, with numbered weapons, but for all that, fighters—men trained to the trade and licensed to the profession.

Our new friend was rather a troublesome individual to begin with. In rising to the slope he had the trick of breaking free and falling on the muddy barrack square. A muddy rifle gets rusty, and brings its owner into trouble, and a severe penalty is considered meet for the man who comes on parade with a rusty rifle. Bringing the friend from the slope to the order was a difficult process for us recruits at the start the back-sight tore at the fingers, and bleeding hands often testified to the unnatural instinct of the rebellious weapon. But the unkindest kick of all was given when the slack novice fired the first shot, and the heel of the butt slipped upwards and struck the jaw. Then was learnt the first real lesson. The rifle kicks with the heel and aims for the jaw. Control your friend, humour him; keep him well in hand and beware his fling.

I was unlucky in my first rifle practice on the miniature range, and out of my first five shots I did not hit the target once. The instructor lay by my side on the waterproof ground-sheet (the day was a wet one, and the range was muddy) and lectured me between misses on the peculiarities of my weapon and the cultivation of a steady eye.

"Keep the beggar under control," he said. "You've got to coax him, and not use force. Pull the trigger easily, as though you loved it, and hold the butt affectionate-like against the shoulder. It's an easy matter to shoot as you're shooting now. There's shooting and shooting, and you've got to shoot straight. If you don't you're no dashed good! Give me the rifle, you're not aiming at the bull, man, you're aiming at the locality where the bull is grazing."

He took my rifle, slid a cartridge into the breech, and coaxed the trigger lovingly towards him. Three times he fired, then we went together to look at the target. Not a bullet fired by him had struck it. The instructor glared down the barrel of the gun, made some nasty remarks about deflection, and went back to yell at an orderly corporal.

"What the dickens did you take this here for?" he cried. "It's a blooming wash-out,¹ and was never any good. Old as an unpaid bill and worn bell-mouth it is, and nobody can fire with it."

On a new rifle being obtained I passed the preliminary test, and a rather repentant instructor remarked that it might be possible to make a soldier of me some day.

Since then my fellow-soldiers and I have had almost unlimited rifle practice, on miniature and open ranges, at bull and disappearing targets, in field firing at distances from 100 to 600 yards. On a field exceeding 600 yards it is almost impossible to hit a point the size of an ordinary bull; fire then must be directed towards a position. Field or volley firing is very interesting. Once my company took train to Dunstable and advanced on an imaginary enemy that occupied the wastes of the Chiltern Hills. Practice commenced by firing at little squares of iron standing upright in a row about 200 yards off in front of our line. These represented heads and shoulders of men rising over the trenches to take aim at us as we advanced. In extended order we came to our position, 200 yards distant from the front trenches. At the sound of the officer's whistle, we sank to the ground, facing our front, fixed our sights, and loaded. A second whistle was blown; we fired "three rounds rapid" at the foe. The aiming was very accurate; little spurts of earth danced up and around the targets, and every iron disc fell. The "searching ground," the locality struck by bullets, scarcely measured a dozen paces from front to rear, thus showing that there was very little erratic firing.

"That's some shooting!" my Jersey friend remarked. "If the discs were Germans!"

"They might shoot back," someone said, "and then we mightn't take as cool an aim."

We are trained to the rifle; it is always with us, on parade, on march, on bivouac, and recently, when going through a dental examination, we carried our weapons of war into the medical officer's room. As befits units of a rifle regiment, we have got accustomed to our gun, and now, as fully trained men, we have established the necessary unity between hand and eye, and can load and unload our weapon with butt-plate stiff to shoulder and eye steady on target while the operation is in progress. In fact, our rifle comes to hand as easy as a walking-stick. We shall be sorry to lose it when the war is over, and no doubt we shall feel lonely without it.

Footnote 1: (return)

"Wash-out" is a term used by the men when their firing is so wide of the mark that it fails to hit any spot on the card. The men apply it indiscriminately to anything in the nature of a failure.

CHAPTER V

The Coffee-Shop and Wankin

What the pump is to the villager, so the coffee-shop is to the soldier of the New Army. Here the men crowd nightly and live over again the incidents of the day. Our particular coffee-shop is situated in our corner of the town; our men patronise it; there are three assistants, plump, merry girls, and three of our men have fallen in love with them; in short, it is our very own restaurant, opened when we came here, and adapted to our needs; the waitresses wear our hat-badges, sing our songs, and make us welcome when we cross the door to take up our usual chairs and yarn over the cosy tables. The Jersey youth with the blue eyes, the Oxford man, who speaks of things that humble waitresses do not understand, the company drummer, the platoon sergeants, and the Cockney who vows that water is spoilt in making every cup of coffee he drinks, all come here, and all love the place.

I have come to like the place and do most of my writing there, catching snatches of conversation and reminiscence as they float across to me.

"I wasn't meanin' to 'urt ole Ginger Nobby nohow, but the muck I throwed took 'im dead on the jor. 'Wot's yer gime?' 'e 'ollers at me. 'Wot's my gime?' I says back to 'im. 'Nuffin', if ye want ter know!' I says. 'I was just shyin' at squidges.'"

Thus spoke the bright-eyed Cockney at the table next me, gazing regretfully at his empty coffee-cup and cutting away a fringe of rag-nails from his finger with a clasp-knife. The time was eight o'clock of the evening, and the youth was recounting an adventure which he had had in the morning