The adventures of an ensign

This story, like so many others in England’s military history, opens at Waterloo Station. We shall abridge the formalities of introducing its central figure, for he can only cla...

In the long pavilion over which floated the Brigade flag, our Ensign and The Lad found the Officers’ Mess--a long dining-room and an ante-room, with bright curtains and basket-c...

A rushing noise as of great wings beating the air, a reverberating crash, like the slamming of an iron door, blended with the sound of jangling glass, of splintering wood; then...

The period in reserve had brought the whole battalion together once more. The companies were no longer separated as they had been in the trenches. Our Ensign found the officers...

And now the scene changes. The stage is set afresh for another act of the great drama in which our hero plays the leading part or the tiniest of _rôles_, according as we take hi...

Inscrutable appear the ways of the Staff to the young lions of our army in France. For a month the Battalion had been fondly nursing the idea of going into action, yet here they...

Just contemplate the Billeting Officer’s parlous position. The briefest period of grace is conceded to him, in which he and his accomplices cycle furiously ahead of the Battalio...

Take a large French village, shell it a little and bomb it a little from aeroplanes so that all the windows are broken and most of the roofs damaged, remove the civilian inhabit...

From now on, the shadows of the events that stood before began to be more sharply defined. As the Brigade marched out of M---- behind the Drums on a dull grey morning, there wer...

Johnson stood over our Ensign, as he lay curled up in his Wolseley valise on the floor of his tent. A canvas bucket of hot water steamed in the servant’s hand. Our young man fel...

The day was already three hours old by the time that our Ensign reached the Wood with his weary fatigue party. The trenches were wrapped in slumber, and from Bryan, upon whose r...

The speaker was a red-haired Irish Guardsman--what they would call in Ireland a “foxy man”--who was cleaning his rifle and chatting the while with a grizzled comrade, who was co...

Our Ensign awoke with a start. His limbs were stiff and cold. He felt frozen to the very marrow. The earth of his shell-hole was firm to the touch under the night’s frost. The s...

Once again our Ensign was in the midst of the Guards--Grenadiers, Coldstream, Irish, ... remains of half a dozen battalions were there, intermingled with a good sprinkling of me...

On returning to the trench, our Ensign found that, during his absence, the men had dug a foot or so down and had fashioned a rude kind of fire-step. Their numbers had been incre...

“The moving finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.”

The noonday sun was high overhead. The long hand of the watch was passing the half-hour mark after noon. The first wave of Guards was waiting for the whistle-blast that would la...