Bayonets

My uncle Jesse, the sort of man you'd say about "he wouldn't harm a fly", was a soldier in the First World War. He was first posted to Brecon Barracks for basic training.
He told me that one day they were out "on the square" being told how to use a bayonet. The sergeant in charge of them handed a rifle with bayonet attached to "a volunteer" who, Jesse knew personally, from the same town as him. But the sergeant had picked the wrong volunteer because when he said t0 the volunteer "right then, see if you can bayonet me, young man", believing that he would be able, with his long experience of new recruits, to disarm the man, he found that the volunteer was not a man who gave up easily. The sergeant not only couldn't disarm the man but found himself running away from him, ordering him to put down his bayonet.
"Well," said my uncle, chuckling at the memory, "he chased the sergeant all over the camp. He never actually caught him but I can tell you, knowing the man myself, that if he had, he'd have stuck him, sure enough."
The next day, he told me, every single man was transferred to various other training camps over the country, no two to the same one.
What happened to the volunteer? He didn't know.
What happened to the sergeant? He didn't know that either.
What he did know was that soon he was on his way to France and The Somme.
That he never talked about.