{"id":10260,"date":"2014-12-19T06:00:09","date_gmt":"2014-12-19T11:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.royalmontrealregiment.com\/?p=10260"},"modified":"2014-12-19T06:00:09","modified_gmt":"2014-12-19T11:00:09","slug":"conditions-slowly-improving-for-rmr-in-1914","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/conditions-slowly-improving-for-rmr-in-1914\/","title":{"rendered":"Conditions Slowly Improving for RMR in 1914"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saturday, December 19, 1914<\/em><\/p>\n

In Camp, West Down South, Salisbury Plains<\/em><\/p>\n

The Battalion War Diarist wrote for this day: \u201cOrders to be prepared to move to hutments at Lark Hill.\u201d\u00a0[1]<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

THIS DAY IN RMR HISTORY: \u201cThe fame of the Colonials has spread through every little town and village from Devizes to Salisbury.\u00a0 They have settled down in comparative comfort now at Lark Hill, within sight of Stonehenge, and they are making light of the hardships which they suffered for many weeks; they declare magnanimously that the war office is busy, that war is war, and that they are ready enough to take pot-luck with the rest who are training for the trenches.\u00a0 Before they reached England they had seventeen long days on board ship, tumbling about in the Atlantic.\u00a0 The transports were densely packed, the food ran short; and what there was of it, in some cases at least, was bad; fasting was more popular than eating.\u00a0 They were glad enough to land, all of them, but most of them found they had only made a change between the Devil and the deep sea.<\/p>\n

West Down South is a lonely, bleak place, five hundred feet above sea level, nine miles or more from Devizes, seven from Amesbury.\u00a0 I have spoken to men \u2013 Canadians \u2013 who were thirty hours without food, who spent many dreary days in tents, who lay in soaked straw beneath dripping canvas, and were expected by the good citizens of Devizes to present a smart, soldierly appearance when they dropped down into the town for relaxation.<\/p>\n

It was, indeed, a poor reception to give men who had left their homes so readily to join us.\u00a0 But they are hardy in their loyalty, and are disposed to regard it all as part of their training for war.\u00a0 Now, at any rate, they are fixed up in better quarters.\u00a0 I have just visited them in their new shelters at Lark Hill.\u00a0 Already many hundreds of these oblong wooden sheds have been constructed on the exposed summit of the Plain; some are already tenanted, others are being quickly run up, enough of them, it is said \u2013 when all are ready \u2013 to house 200,000 men from Kitchener\u2019s armies.<\/p>\n

Those in which the Canadians are quartered have at any rate the advantage of being rain-proof, for they are roofed over with corrugated iron.\u00a0 I would not recommend them, however, as ideal winter residences.\u00a0 Each shed is about 60 feet long and 20 feet broad, and one section (from 40 to 50 men) is quartered in it.\u00a0 There is a door at each end, windows on each side, and the floor and walls consist of bare planks.\u00a0 The floor is raised a foot or so above the ground, resting on brick supports; and the air circulating freely underneath, blows up through the chinks in the floor and awakens the men with an icy gale in the early morning.\u00a0 Their beds consist of straw mattresses, which at night they spread out in rows and heap up against the wall in the daytime.\u00a0 They rejoice in the luxury of a long table which runs down the middle of the shed, and the good food which is now served out tastes better when it is eaten at a table.<\/p>\n

Some felt, or linoleum, to keep out the wind from below, is all that is needed to turn these sheds into quite adequate winter quarters.\u00a0 As shelters hastily improvised, they cannot be seriously complained of.\u00a0 They are no longer breeding places for pneumonia and other diseases, and I have recently slept in much worse quarters with a volunteer training corps.\u201d<\/p>\n

When they left Canada the men were very far from having completed their training.\u00a0 Some of them knew their job thoroughly, whilst others were almost fresh to it.\u00a0 But they have been working hard since they have been camped on Salisbury ||Plain, where there is plenty of room for operations in extended order, for long-range rifle practice, for machine gun practice, and the important work of engineers. They are working nine hours a day, and are glad enough after supper to crowd into the big Y.M.C.A. shed where a sing-song is held every evening.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 [2]<\/a><\/p>\n

[1]\u00a0\u00a0 War Diary, 14th<\/sup> Canadian Battalion, The Royal Montreal Regiment<\/em>, Dec 19, 1914.\u00a0 Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa,\u00a0http:\/\/data2.collectionscanada.ca\/e\/e044\/e001089681.jpg<\/a><\/pre>\n
[2]\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cA Visit to Salisbury Plain and the Canadians in Camp,\u201d R.A. Scott-James, London Daily Mail<\/em> as quoted in The Ottawa Citizen<\/em>, Saturday, December 19, 1914, pg. 1, col. 4.<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saturday, December 19, 1914 In Camp, West Down South, Salisbury Plains The Battalion War Diarist wrote for this day: \u201cOrders to be prepared to move to hutments at Lark Hill.\u201d\u00a0[1]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-day-in-rmr-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10260\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}