The Young Dragoon: Every Day Life of a Soldier - Drayson Alfred Wilks

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and many a sly leer of the eye is bestowed upon them by the hundreds of pretty girls that pass in and out during a day. The front gates of the palace are always open for visitors to pass without restriction until nightfall. The splendid picture-galleries and other works of art and curiosities are guarded by policemen; but the approaches to the staircases, corridors, etc, are never without an efficient guard of soldiers. One of these posts is termed the “Garden-gate,” situate in rear of the main building, and the entrance to the palace from the magnificent pleasure-grounds, bounded on one side by the river Thames. There is a broad flagway, or promenade, along the side of the palace, where seats are placed, upon which the visitors can lounge, with their backs to the palace and their faces towards the gardens. The sentry has to pace from one end to the other of this promenade, in front of the company that may be on the seats. I well remember, one sultry night in July, it was my turn to relieve a sentry on this post. It was eleven o’clock, and all the visitors were supposed to have been cleared out of the gardens at nine, or soon afterwards. The guard-relief tramped through the long and lofty passages from front to rear of the palace in silence, as far as speech was concerned; but the sound of their footsteps and the jingle of their appointments was quite sufficient to awaken a man, had he been sleeping soundly on his post. We approached and passed the point where it was usual for the sentry to challenge; but all was still. On reaching the promenade, we turned about to look for the sentry. There he sat on one of the seats, unbelted and unarmed, and, as if to keep up the proverbial gallantry of his race, he had his arm around the waist of as pretty a girl as ever the sun or moon shone upon.

      Lynch – Pat Lynch – I need not withhold his name now – was the gallant sentinel. The object that had won him from his duty spoke not a word, she held down her head, but we could easily perceive that she moved in superior society. In this Pat was her equal, for his father was an extensive landowner in the county of Waterford.

      “Boys,” said Pat, “this is a bad job, to be caught loitering on my post, but this young lady is my sweetheart, and how could I help but sit beside her?”

      Pat was marched to the guard-room, and the fair lady tenderly escorted outside the boundaries of the palace, and she was seen to enter the “Mitre Hotel.” Poor Pat was brought before the major on the following day, and sentenced to twenty-one days’ “kit drill,” namely, carrying all his “kit,” strapped on his back with the surcingle, for four hours each day, to and fro a prescribed distance marked out in the barrack-yard.

      Shortly after he had completed his term of punishment, the young lady, who had money of her own, purchased his discharge. They were married, and for some years, to my knowledge, lived happily together at the pretty little bathing place, Tramore, in the county of Waterford.

      Chapter Eight

      For once, upon a raw and gusty day,

      The troubled Tiber chafing with her shores,

      Caesar said to me – “Darest thou, Cassius, now

      Leap in with me into this angry flood,

      And swim to yonder point?”

      While the head-quarters of our regiment lay in Hounslow, and the out-quarters in Hampton Court, Blackwater, and Kensington, myself and a number of my comrades went to bathe in a stream not far from Hounslow Heath, as had been our custom while stationed at Hampton Court. Whether this water was public or private property, I know not: it was a kind of half river, half brook; probably, however, we were trespassers, as I remember we had to pass over some fields through which there was no public road before we reached it. There were seven of us, and we had no sooner stripped and piled our clothing on the water’s edge than four policemen appeared on the scene. Suspecting our intentions, they had followed us from the outskirts of the town, and concealing themselves behind a hedge, like good generals, they waited until we were undressed and had entered the water, before warning us that we were doing anything contrary to the law. Now, if there is one thing that a soldier detests more than another, it is to be interfered with in any way or shape by a policeman. In this instance the police were striving to take a mean advantage over us, and as they seated themselves quietly on the brink of the stream, and collected every vestige of our clothing in a heap beside them, it appeared very probable that they would remain masters of the field, and that – as my own comrades remarked – we should be taken to “a piece of ground with a station-house over it.”

      The water was no higher than our middles, and we moved down some distance to hold a parley as to the best means of getting out of the dilemma: some were for quietly surrendering to the enemy and trusting to our ignorance of the law to escape punishment. There were no notice-boards or anything to warn us that it was illegal, and what was more natural than that a pure stream of water situated within a mile of a barrack, should be used as a bath during the summer months?

      The idea of surrender was rejected by the majority, who were for making a sortie on the police, and thus regain possession of our clothes and secure our liberty at all hazards. Naked as we were, we numbered nearly two to one; and although we should be sure to be freely beaten with their staves, we should ultimately succeed in getting away. We therefore agreed to make a semblance of surrender in order to get possession of our clothes, but arranged that we should all finish dressing at the same time, taking the initiative as to the donning of each article from a fugleman, so as not to be taken at a disadvantage before we were dressed and ready for a run or a fight, as circumstances directed. Accordingly we left the water and commenced to dress, during which one of the policemen produced a book and gruffly asked our names, the rest surrounding us, apparently ready for action at the same time. We looked at each other, and it was at once understood that we should decline to give any such information. By this time we were attired in our shirts, trousers, and boots, but were interrupted by each of the policemen producing a pair of handcuffs. This was too much: I had never before engaged in a serious encounter, but I was ready and willing for anything – indeed, both myself and comrades would have died before we would have submitted to be handcuffed. While one of my arms was in my jacket-sleeve, I was seized by two policemen; the remaining two grappled hold of another soldier. With the help of my comrades I managed to wriggle out of their grasp, but one of the brutes struck me a fearful blow on my arm with his staff, and one of my comrades was felled to the ground by a blow on his bare head.

      By this time the fight had become general. Charley Dundas (one of the best soldiers in the regiment, who afterwards died of fever in Chobham camp) took hold of one policeman with his left hand on the collar of his coat behind, and with a firm grab of the right on the back of his trousers, he ran him before him like a wheelbarrow to the edge of the stream, from whence he pitched him headforemost into the water; the other three were thrown bodily into the brook. Hats, handcuffs, coat-tails, and staves, were pitched after them, and away we all started, over hedge and ditch, the nearest way to the barracks – but the policemen never chased us a yard.

      It is very difficult to pick out a soldier that may be wanted by the police for such an offence as this, from amongst so many men of about the same height and weight, all wearing moustaches, and attired exactly alike; and we knew that if we could only reach the barracks, the chances of detection were very much in our favour; but it was policy to separate before we reached the gate, and enter it at different periods with others not of our party, to avoid suspicion, and this we managed very nicely.

      The same evening, however, while reconnoitring from the barrack-windows, we espied the four policemen, who, having made a report of the case at the guard-room, were anxiously striving to recognise in the many men passing to and fro the parties who had left them in so ignominious a position. At last they appeared to have found one of the delinquents in one Barney Camel, who was making the best of his way across the barrack-yard from the canteen, with a rasher of bacon in his hand, to his room. Barney bore a striking resemblance to Charley Dundas, the man who had so unceremoniously tumbled one of our enemies into the brook. Like Charley, too, when the police attacked us, he had no jacket on, but his braces were about his hips, his forage-cap was cocked on “three hairs,” and the chin-strap turned over the crown. He was, as he afterwards remarked, “whistling the ‘Groves of Blarney,’ and thinking of nothing but the bacon;” when the four policemen surrounded him and forthwith proceeded to take him to the station-house, followed by a crowd who rapidly gathered from all parts of the barracks. Now, it so happened

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