THE KING’S GUARDS

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 79, 28 December 1926, Page 3

THE KING’S GUARDS

The Guards never forget that down to the junior drummer (they have no such modernities as buglers) they are members of the King’s Household (says an old Grenadier in the “Daily Mail”). . , Therefore the orderly sergeant is the “Sergeant-in-Waiting,” and the same style is applied to all other N.C.O.’s on duty.’ They remember, too, the days when the Palace of St. James s lived daily beneath the shadow of imminent insurrection, and the safety of the King’s person was rntrusted to them, as it is to-day. They are oil active service always on that account. Hence the officer whose duty it is to see that watch is duly kept is the officer in charge of outposts —not the orderly officer, as in the Line, but the picket officer. Other regiments flaunt the hue of their facings as their regimental colour, reserving the Union Jack for the King’s colour. The Guards are the King’s alone. Their legimental colour, as well as the King's, is the Union Jack. And the junior ensign who carries it still has right of audience of the King. Like the feud of Eton mid Harrow is the age-long rivalry of the Grenadiers and the Coldstreamers. In the Armv list the Coldstreamers are the Second Foot Guards, whose place should be in the centre. But not on parade. King Charles 11, in his exile, raised a company of Guards, “Colonel Russell’s Regiment,” who crossed bayonets with the Cromwellians at Dunkirk, and became at the Restoration the First, or Grenadier, Guards. But General Monk’s regiment, which became the Second, or Coldstream, Guards, was the remnant of Cromwell’s army. They had been in being long before and had never been disbanded. Second they would not be, and therefore they elected to be last. To this day they’ fall in always upon the left of’ the line, and their motto is “Second to None.”

This traditional rivalry has persisted so obstinately that even to-day when a sergeant-major of the Grenadiers has occasion to caution a sol flier cs to how his rifle is sloped, his final words to the clumsy one .will be probably “You Coldstreamcr!”