The Same Article That One Declares Is The
Most Essential To His Comfort, Is The Very First Thing That Another
Will Throw Into The Trail.
A man's outfit is a matter which seems to
touch his private honor.
I have heard veterans sitting around a
camp-fire proclaim the superiority of their kits with a jealousy,
loyalty, and enthusiasm they would not exhibit for the flesh of their
flesh and the bone of their bone. On a campaign, you may attack a
man's courage, the flag he serves, the newspaper for which he works,
his intelligence, or his camp manners, and he will ignore you; but if
you criticise his patent water-bottle he will fall upon you with both
fists. So, in recommending any article for an outfit, one needs to
be careful. An outfit lends itself to dispute, because the selection
of its component parts is not an exact science. It should be, but it
is not. A doctor on his daily rounds can carry in a compact little
satchel almost everything he is liable to need; a carpenter can stow
away in one box all the tools of his trade. But an outfit is not
selected on any recognized principles. It seems to be a question
entirely of temperament. As the man said when his friends asked him
how he made his famous cocktail, "It depends on my mood." The truth
is that each man in selecting his outfit generally follows the lines
of least resistance. With one, the pleasure he derives from his
morning bath outweighs the fact that for the rest of the day he must
carry a rubber bathtub. Another man is hearty, tough, and inured to
an out-of-door life. He can sleep on a pile of coal or standing on
his head, and he naturally scorns to carry a bed. But another man,
should he sleep all night on the ground, the next day would be of no
use to himself, his regiment, or his newspaper. So he carries a
folding cot and the more fortunate one of tougher fibre laughs at
him. Another man says that the only way to campaign is to travel
"light," and sets forth with rain-coat and field-glass. He honestly
thinks that he travels light because his intelligence tells him it is
the better way; but, as a matter of fact, he does so because he is
lazy. Throughout the entire campaign he borrows from his friends,
and with that camaraderie and unselfishness that never comes to the
surface so strongly as when men are thrown together in camp, they
lend him whatever he needs. When the war is over, he is the man who
goes about saying: "Some of those fellows carried enough stuff to
fill a moving van. Now, look what I did. I made the entire campaign
on a tooth-brush."
As a matter of fact, I have a sneaking admiration for the man who
dares to borrow. His really is the part of wisdom. But at times he
may lose himself in places where he can neither a borrower nor a
lender be, and there are men so tenderly constituted that they cannot
keep another man hungry while they use his coffee-pot. So it is well
to take a few things with you - if only to lend them to the men who
travel "light."
On hunting and campaigning trips the climate, the means of transport,
and the chance along the road of obtaining food and fodder vary so
greatly that it is not possible to map out an outfit which would
serve equally well for each of them. What on one journey was your
most precious possession on the next is a useless nuisance. On two
trips I have packed a tent weighing, with the stakes, fifty pounds,
which, as we slept in huts, I never once had occasion to open; while
on other trips in countries that promised to be more or less settled,
I had to always live under canvas, and sometimes broke camp twice a
day.
In one war, in which I worked for an English paper, we travelled like
major-generals. When that war started few thought it would last over
six weeks, and many of the officers regarded it in the light of a
picnic. In consequence, they mobilized as they never would have done
had they foreseen what was to come, and the mess contractor grew rich
furnishing, not only champagne, which in campaigns in fever countries
has saved the life of many a good man, but cases of even port and
burgundy, which never greatly helped any one. Later these mess
supplies were turned over to the field-hospitals, but at the start
every one travelled with more than he needed and more than the
regulations allowed, and each correspondent was advised that if he
represented a first-class paper and wished to "save his face" he had
better travel in state. Those who did not, found the staff and
censor less easy of access, and the means of obtaining information
more difficult. But it was a nuisance. If, when a man halted at
your tent, you could not stand him whiskey and sparklet soda,
Egyptian cigarettes, compressed soup, canned meats, and marmalade,
your paper was suspected of trying to do it "on the cheap," and not
only of being mean, but, as this was a popular war, unpatriotic.
When the army stripped down to work all this was discontinued, but at
the start I believe there were carried with that column as many tins
of tan-leather dressing as there were rifles. On that march my own
outfit was as unwieldy as a gypsy's caravan. It consisted of an
enormous cart, two oxen, three Basuto ponies, one Australian horse,
three servants, and four hundred pounds of supplies and baggage.
When it moved across the plain it looked as large as a Fall River
boat. Later, when I joined the opposing army, and was not expected
to maintain the dignity of a great London daily, I carried all my
belongings strapped to my back, or to the back of my one pony, and I
was quite as comfortable, clean, and content as I had been with the
private car and the circus tent.
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