8
"K.l" Packs its Last Kit-bag.
By R. J. T. Hills.
TWENTY-ONE years ago Kitchener's First Hundred Thousand stood mustered.
You remember how we sat back amazed at the great War Minister's demand
merely a preliminary. Such a reinforcement the Army had never known. Kitch
ener's Army the new force became by its own and popular acclaim. Officialdom insisted
on New Armies' a name without a soul.
There were placards to urge us strikingly different from those old types that
used to hang outside the local post office, with their gentlemen in elegant red and blue.
A tattered man in khaki cried Will they never come A cheery soul cupped a match
to a gasper and muttered "Half a mo' Kaiser." Lord Kitchener himself pointed grimly
out from the hoardings and said Your Country needs YOU."
Photo] [Imperial War Museum,
Crown Copyright
Never a thought had we given to soldiering the most of us. Even when it came
we imagined it was to be for the country at large an affair of coloured flags to be
stuck into a map.
Not an ornamental force K.l. So unwarlike was Britain that it could not produce
khaki cloth fast enough for its new soldiers. The blue serge issued in lieu was ugly in
cut and blue only to the colour-blind. You remember actually it ranged from helio
trope to purple. Still, it served. Occasionally one might see old red militia jackets.
Squads of men drilled plain clothes to rags in Hyde Park.
Light-hearted we were. We cared little for war less for the foe less, of all for
the future. There was much painful learning in store. As far as we calculated at all we
should be lucky, save the word, if hostilities lasted long enough for us to get out there.
That we should win none doubted.
Remember the early days of our soldiering Rather remarkable the way we shook
ourselves into the harness. The sharper tongued the sergeant major the more we revelled
in it. And they were the real stuff, some, of those sergeant-majors. Tough old dogs of
war, many of them, that had stormed their way in through the barrack gates from retire
ment as soon as the 'balloon went up,' qnd led orderly room a dog's life because they
wouldn't draft 'em abroad.
#<9
Now it's all twenty-one years ago the span of a full army life time. Old We
shall never admit that. Once a year we say again as we that are left grow old,' the
