THE PERFECT SOLDIER

Evening Post, Volume XCIII, Issue 106, 4 May 1917, Page 8

THE PERFECT SOLDIER

A MAN OF MANY PARTS.

There is a general idea, writes "An Officer" in an English journal, that the perfect soldier is the. man with the big chest and the smart salute, the man who can shoot well, use a bayonet to advantage, and drill like an automaton on the barrack square. . And this, like most general ideas, is absurdly incomplete, for the perfect soldier is much" more than a man who knows his drill. .

To start with, he must be an engineer. His trench is full of water —he must devise some method of emptying it; he must pave it with branches, bricks, tins, and sandbags; he must drive in stakes and run a little drain along at the side; he must, if possible, direct all superfluou water over towards .the Boche. He arrives , ait a spot for the night" and discovers .that there is nothing, to shelter him from the rain; he does wonders with his waterproof sheet and a little string, or he cuts down trees, chops off their branches for a roof, and in an hour or two has' a cosy little log hut vrith a chimney, a doofway, and a seat outside to ba used if ever the fine weather comes. . . . . ■ ■He must learn to dig at night in No Man's Land without nearly "braining" his immediate neighbour at each stroke of his pick'; he must know that skill is needed to use a spade, that sandbags must be placed like the bricks of a house if his parapet is to have any stability at all; he must be able to build a complete city of dug-outs in the course of a few days; and he must master the art _of putting up a pit-prop,-and of revetting the side of a trench.

PORTER AS WELL AS ENGINEER.

He is not only an engineer—he is also a porter of no little skill, for he muse learn- how to carry two sheets of corrugated iron in a howling gale, and from time to time, he will probably find himself faced with the necessity of bringing two boxes of, ammunition over a mile up to the trenches. He is a cook who can boil tea without " stewing " it, and produce a Welsh rarebit that is not black and N tough like shoeleather. He is a diplomatist and a tactician; he can see like a cat in the dark; he can march for miles' over rough cobble-stones ;. and he oils and cleans his rifle, when he comes iii wet and tired, before he thinks of drying his clothes or cooking his supper. «And, greatest of all, he is cheerfuL He laughs when he falls into a shell-hole full of water; he plays on his mouthorgan when the men pine for a tune to help their feet along the road; he is good-tempered when he is called upon to dig trenches for the fourth night in succession; and he refrains from swearing when the ration party brings him his 217 th pot of plum and apple jami He knows at least a dozen comic songs; he, does not grumble and ask "why there's a blooming war on"; he does not lose his equipment; he never uses his bayonet as a toasting-fork; and he cleans his teeth, and not his toots t with his toothbrush. I ■So that, y°u se.e> tne perfect soldier is a very extraordinary being after all..