On the 13th of February, my group and I discussed ideas for a performance that focused on the military history of the drill hall. Although we were interested in the drills themselves we wanted our performance to be more than just putting the audience through drills themselves, because this wouldn’t necessarily make the audience feel anything emotionally, as there would be no personal connection to the performance. We were also having trouble finding drill sequences from the First World War, other than the above image which is taken from Roland Garvin’s diary when he was undertaking training in London in December 1914.
Another idea we considered was having different stations around the hall so that people could choose to either take part in the whole event or experience specific things, like the smell of polishing boots. From this idea, we decided to research more into disciplinary tasks that the soldiers may have been subjected to and to explore what it was like for the soldiers to be put through drills – their pain and fatigue. However, there was no information at the archives and when I researched more online I could only find generalisations that “were fairly minor: stoppage of privileges, giving offenders unpleasant or dangerous duties” (Sheffield) or the more violent penalty of “the traditional punishment of flogging” (Sheffield) for the bigger military crimes.
The archives did reveal that the “4th battalion Lincolnshire Regiment comprised of civilian volunteers who trained for one or two evenings a week and sometimes at weekends at the Lincoln Drill Hall” (Lincoln Branch) took part in drill competitions before training became necessary with the beginning of WWI. We found pamphlets depicting the competitions programmes and rules, which we could possibly build upon to create a performance text. And so, despite not finding what we were looking for, we gained some new knowledge in the Drill Hall’s past and we have possible stimulus for a performance.
Works Cited
Garvin, R. G. Garvin Papers. Military diary of R. G. Garvin; 1914-1915. London: The British Library.
The Lincoln Branch. Drill Hall, Broadgate, Lincoln. [online] Lincoln: The Royal Anglian and Royal Lincolnshire Regimental Association. Available from: http://www.thelincolnshireregiment.org/drillhall.shtml [Accessed on 2nd March 2015].
Sheffield, G. Military discipline and punishment. [online] London: The British Library. Available from: http://www.bl.uk/world-war-one/articles/military-discipline [Accessed on 16th February 2015].