Brewster 'A Glimpse of War through a Private's Eyes', a retrospective account of experiences in World War I, 1915-1917 / John James Brewster - Page 419
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Transcription
[Page 419]
take place. To the men, it was simply idiotic to post a guard in such a place & under such circumstances, being right away from the main road at the back of a large building but within sight of the O/C's quarters Why! Oh Why!!
This red tape regulation made the men marvel, & also to think what very little thought the officers had for men, who perhaps in 24 hours or so would be in the midst of a hellish action, more particularly as there was nothing to mount guard over & being fully 4 miles from the support line. Two guards were also posted in the front of the building on the road, for no other purpose, according to the men, than to salute every officer that passed.
The never ending disciplinary training & drill was the only answer but why place men in a place of needless danger. It is stiff enough luck for able bodied men to be "skittled" under fire, but to run the risk of losing good men "by accident" through the disire of adhering to a red tape regulation which "must" be carried out is simply worse than bad.
That it can be ignored by an officer with common sense was shown in 1916 when the O/C dispensed with not only every guard but all drill & useless routine work & the Company was then situated under similar circumstances excepting that the firing line, not the support, was within four miles.
To post these guards was just as harebrained a thing to do as to take a Company of about 200 men the day before a strenuous action was to be fought, a couple of miles along a road to fill a huge crater in one day, that would have taken a battalion a week. The result of the days work looked so infinitesimal, that not only the whole of the men but even the accompanying officers had to laugh outright at the "impression" that had been made
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