A drab uniformity
There were many reasons why soldiers were bored. Top of the list, according to Julius Jeffreys, staff surgeon in Cawnpore in the 1830s, was “the dull routine of barrack imprisonment”. Soldiers, especially in India, frequently commented on the heat that confined them to their tents for hours a day with nothing to do.
For some, it was the work itself. John Mercier MacMullen of the 13th Light Infantry recalled the “uniform sameness” of his daily routine in the 1840s when he was stationed in Sukkur. Every day he rose at the same time and went to regimental headquarters, where he sat in “the same chair and the same side of the table”, and where his work was “nearly ever of the same character”. He added: “Months passed away without producing an event worth noticing”.
Many soldiers went decades without fighting a single skirmish. The 10th (North Lincolnshire) Regiment of Foot, after serving in India from 1846– 58, did not do battle again until it was sent to Malaya in 1875. And the 22nd (Cheshire) Regiment of Foot, which fought in the Second Sikh War of 1848– 49, was essentially at rest until it went to Burma in the late 1880s.
These lengthy periods of inaction led Lieutenant-Colonel George Hennessy to complain about “the same sameness day after day” while serving in Kandahar in 1879. The wellknown saying that war consists of “months of boredom punctuated by moments of terror” had its origins in the 19th-century British empire.