Читать книгу Boche and Bolshevik. Experiences of an Englishman in the German Army and in Russian Prisons онлайн

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From eleven to two we were free. From two to three we had “instruktion,” that is to say, some portion of the Infantryman’s Manual was explained to us. Four times out of five the subject was the duty of patrols. We were supposed to know all this off by heart. Patrols were considered so important that everything else was subordinated to them in “instruktion.” Generally the instructor was so tired of the subject that he used to amuse us by stories of the war, or of the pranks he used to play when he was a young recruit twenty years before. If everything else failed, the half-witted Alsatian was dragged out and tortured to make a German holiday. After “instruktion” came two hours more. These were employed either in the drawing-room games I have already mentioned, or in gymnastics, or in sighting-exercises; that is to say, for two hours on end we had to practise sighting our rifles in the three positions—standing, kneeling, lying. I have seen the way the Russian soldier was taught these things, and I should say the Russian was beyond comparison better trained than the German. The Russian targets were much better, much more like the real thing, and much more care was taken. Sometimes the route-march and the exercises took place at night, in which case we had a slack morning. All our marching was made to assimilate as near as possible to war conditions. Our knapsacks were filled with sand, and the weight of our equipment was about what we had to bear in the field (75 lbs.). Our great lack was in service rifles. Most of us had rifles captured from the Russians, and great big heavy things they are, too. For some time, indeed, I had a rifle which bore the date 1820, and had probably been made in England. The strain of these exercises was severe, and I must confess that I was never so tired at the front as I was sometimes at home.