An
I. G. Corps exchanges one officer every two years with a Canadian or
Australian or African Guard Corps. We've had a year of our Dove, an' we
shall be sorry to lose him. He humbles our insular pride. Meantime,
Morten, our 'swop' in Canada, keeps the ferocious Canuck humble. When
Pij. goes we shall swop Kyd, who's next on the roster, for a Cornstalk or
a Maori. But about the education-drill. A boy can't attend First Camp, as
we call it, till he is a trained boy and holds his First Musketry
certificate. The Education Code says he must be fourteen, and the boys
usually go to First Camp at about that age. Of course, they've been to
their little private camps and Boys' Fresh Air Camps and public school
picnics while they were at school, but First Camp is where the young
drafts all meet--generally at Aldershot in this part of the world. First
Camp lasts a week or ten days, and the boys are looked over for
vaccination and worked lightly in brigades with lots of blank cartridge.
Second Camp--that's for the fifteen to eighteen-year-olds--lasts ten days
or a fortnight, and that includes a final medical examination. Men don't
like to be chucked out on medical certificates much--nowadays. I assure
you Second Camp, at Salisbury, say, is an experience for a young I.G.
officer. We're told off to 'em in rotation. A wilderness of monkeys isn't
in it. The kids are apt to think 'emselves soldiers, and we have to take
the edge off 'em with lots of picquet-work and night attacks.
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