But in the Army we appear to be nobody.  We are expected to stand stiffly at attention when addressed by an officer; even to call him “sir”—­an honour to which our previous employer has been a stranger.  At home, if we happened to meet the head of the firm in the street, and none of our colleagues was looking, we touched a cap, furtively.  Now, we have no option in the matter.  We are expected to degrade ourselves by meaningless and humiliating gestures.  The N.C.O.’s are almost as bad.  If you answer a sergeant as you would a foreman, you are impertinent; if you argue with him, as all good Scotsmen must, you are insubordinate; if you endeavour to drive a collective bargain with him, you are mutinous; and you are reminded that upon active service mutiny is punishable by death.  It is all very unusual and upsetting.

You may not spit; neither may you smoke a cigarette in the ranks, nor keep the residue thereof behind your ear.  You may not take beer to bed with you.  You may not postpone your shave till Saturday:  you must shave every day.  You must keep your buttons, accoutrements, and rifle speckless, and have your hair cut in a style which is not becoming to your particular type of beauty.  Even your feet are not your own.  Every Sunday morning a young officer, whose leave has been specially stopped for the purpose, comes round the barrack-rooms after church and inspects your extremities, revelling in blackened nails and gloating over hammer-toes.  For all practical purposes, decides Private Mucklewame, you might as well be in Siberia.

Still, one can get used to anything.  Our lot is mitigated, too, by the knowledge that we are all in the same boat.  The most olympian N.C.O. stands like a ramrod when addressing an officer, while lieutenants make obeisance to a company commander as humbly as any private.  Even the Colonel was seen one day to salute an old gentleman who rode on to the parade-ground during morning drill, wearing a red band round his hat.  Noting this, we realise that the Army is not, after all, as we first suspected, divided into two classes—­oppressors and oppressed.  We all have to “go through it.”

Presently fresh air, hard training, and clean living begin to weave their spell.  Incredulous at first, we find ourselves slowly recognising the fact that it is possible to treat an officer deferentially, or carry out an order smartly, without losing one’s self-respect as a man and a Trades Unionist.  The insidious habit of cleanliness, once acquired, takes despotic possession of its victims:  we find ourselves looking askance at room-mates who have not yet yielded to such predilections.  The swimming-bath, where once we flapped unwillingly and ingloriously at the shallow end, becomes quite a desirable resort, and we look forward to our weekly visit with something approaching eagerness.  We begin, too, to take our profession seriously.  Formerly we regarded outpost exercises, advanced guards, and the like, as a rather fatuous form of play-acting, designed to amuse those officers who carry maps and notebooks.  Now we begin to consider these diversions on their merits, and seriously criticise Second Lieutenant Little for having last night posted one of his sentry groups upon the skyline.  Thus is the soul of a soldier born.