SOLDIERS' STRANGE BEDS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10770, 16 May 1913, Page 2

SOLDIERS' STRANGE BEDS.

EXPERIMENT IN PATRIOTISM. SOLDIERS BILLETED IN VILLAGES. -The village of Hartford Bridge has been "discovered" by the public. Previously it was known to few save the hard-working villagers themselves. Hartford Bridge suddenly emerged from' its workaday agricultural life and found itseli tlie o&ciai centre oi a new experiment in military efficiency and practical patriotism. Nearly every cottage and farm in the neighbourhood had alfixed to - its gatepost a white card announcing that soldiers were being billeted there. Two divisions, consisting of about 10.000 men and 2500 horses, marched out from Aldershot, ten miles away, and were quartered on the villages along the route.

The aim of the experiment was not only to accustom the men to war conditions, but to make the public realise what they may be expected to do for the troops.

The large numbers of men sent to hospital through sleeping out night after night on rain-sodden ground in drenching weather last autumn brought the question of billeting prominently before the authorities. But the Is 6d and Is -Id a head which the War Office gives for these uniformed guests does not allow for luxury. Every man told me he had slept well. "Not quite so good as barracks," said one, "but a. great- deal better than sleeping up a tree or in a pool of mud." In a narrow loft, upon fragrant, rustling straw, twenty-eight of the Suffolks slept comfortably. In a neighbouring farm thirty others slept in a shed upon a thick couch of dried bracken.

Opposite them twenty men lay in a- low byre. Perhaps the most comfortable of all were those who slept in a stable among 6weet-snielling liay. The cottages were all occupied. There were no beds, and eight men slept on the floor in a small room where the L.C.C. would probably find air-space for no more than three. But Tommy Atkins never took the trouble to measure the number of cubic feet of fresh air he was "enjoying." A detachment of the Guards slept in a lime kiln, and others in schoolrooms and institutes.

There were, of course, billets of a different type. Ivy-clacl cottages, one or two rectories, and several _ large mansions had given accommodation to the soldiers, and in a number of instances comfortable beds behind curtained casements were put at the disposal of tli© strangers. The billeting was not compulsory, so that those who liked could decline to put the soldiers up, but there was a general willingness to do the duty. The kindly cottagers sometimes did more than their duty. Many of the men had an extra meal on their arrival, and at breakfast there were slices of bacon, new-laid eggs, and other little extras added to the regulation rations. The experiment was regarded by the officials as a. thorough success, _ both from the point of view of organisation and of the spirit shown by the villagers.