Now, you’ve done nothing with your life except join the army, take part in a bunch of wars killing a lot of ‘Johnny foreigners’ and now you’ve retired.  What are going to do with the rest of your life?

Well, with a keen interest in the young male form, you might think, how can I get some more of that without being arrested and hung?  The answer; start your very own boys movement and then write a book that states you are in fact ‘Scouting for Boys’.  So that’s what Baden Powell (BP) did, the dirty little devil!  And after all, he’d spent a life time in the army, ordering people about, so what better way to see out your retirement!  But it does go a little deeper than that.

Scouting was established in 1907 and it rapidly caught on.  What began with 20 boys in a hut near Dorset went on to amass 28 million scouts in 160 countries.  But back then BP saw another use for his tenderfoots.  He knew, after being in so many, wars can spring up out of nowhere and if you haven’t got a supply of cadets, you could find yourself a tad short in cannon fodder at the Front.

So while everyone thought they were have a great time, roughing it and starting fires by rubbing two of their fellow scouts together, they were in fact being seduced into a uniform, taught to take orders and to do their duty.  And what do you know; in 1914 a short Austrian kicked his toys out of the pram and invaded Poland!  What came next was The Hitler Youth Movement!  Here’s a quote from Scouting for Boys.  Campfire yarn no1:  “I suppose every boy wants to help his country in some way or other.”  Really!  Aged 11?   

Even though BP began a huge movement I think there was a darker side to his nature.  For a start, we didn’t play games like, staff tossing and bang the bear!  He seemed overly keen to watch the young in contact sports, and at the age of 55 he married a young gal of 23!  All of which makes me think, hmmm perhaps he was into bondage.  Well, he did show a keen interest in knots, didn’t he!

However, it was BP’s attitude toward suicide that took my interest.  “Where a man has gone as far as to attempt suicide, a scout should know what to do.”  “A tenderfoot is sometimes inclined to be timid about handling an insensible man or dead man, or even of seeing blood.  Well he won’t be much use till he gets over such nonsense.”  “The poor insensible fellow can’t hurt him, and he must force himself to catch hold of himself.  When he has done this his fears will pass off.”  Priceless wasn’t he! 

I had a great time in the cubs and the scouts, and remarkably I was allowed to openly carry a knife.  Luckily the badge for dealing with stiffs and suicides victims had been discontinued by then…

Anyone who wishes to sign up to ‘Forward’ the bipolar newsletter I write for can do so by sending a blank email to ashby300@hotmail.com

Just put the word ‘subscribe’ in the subject box at that it.  We cover bipolar and other mental health news stories from around the globe.  We also have a humour section and it’s a free publication.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 2nd, 2012 at 1:25 am and is filed under Neils Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.