Excerpt from Fifty Years of Public Service
A Soldier by Birth and Environment - At a Public School - Short Commons-Welcome Tips - Athletics - What was Taught - Outbreak of the Crimean War - Offer of a Commission - At Sandhurst - A Visit to the Regimental Agents: "Sebastopol will soon Fall" - At the Regimental Depot - Practical Joking and a Bayonet Charge - A Quaint Drill - Sergeant - A Terrifying Colonel.
I am a soldier's son, born in an Indian garrison (December 9th, 1838), a soldier's grandson, with a host of relatives, near and distant, and as I write this I gaze at family portraits and miniatures in uniforms of a bygone day. My earliest associations were with soldiers: a soldier's wife was my nurse; my father's orderly carried me on his shoulders at the immature age of three to the dame school where I learnt my A, B, C; my favourite toys were a wooden sword and the buttons off an old regimental coat.
Fortune cast my lines still more deeply in the same groove. I lived as a child surrounded by military traditions. My home was at Douglas, Isle of Man, in those days a favourite retreat for old officers, veterans of the Peninsula, India, and Waterloo. There was one lame major whose limp was caused by a still unextracted French bullet; his story sent a thrill through me whenever I heard it.
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