fighting at Lexington, at Guildford Court House, and in its suicidal advance up Bunker’s Hill, had earned it them. I caught the sense of regimental tradition a day or two after I arrived at the depot. In a cupboard in the junior anteroom at the mess, I came across a big leather-bound ledger and pulled it out to see what it was about. It was the Daily Order-book of the First Battalion in the trenches before Sebastopol. I opened it at the page giving orders for the attack on the Redan Fort. Such and such a company was desired to supply volunteers for the storming party under Lieutenant So-and-so. There followed details of their arms and equipment, the number of ladders they were to carry, and the support to be afforded by other companies. Then details of rations and supply of ammunition, with an earnest Godspeed from the commanding officer. (A sketch of the commanding officer was on the wall above my head, lying sick in his tent at Scutari, wearing a cap-comforter for the cold.) And the next entries were about clearing up after an unsuccessful attack—orders for the burial of the dead, thanks from headquarters for the gallantry vainly displayed, and a notice that the effects of the late Lieutenant So-and-so, who had led the storming party, would be sold at public auction in the trenches next day. In another day’s orders was the notice of the Victoria Cross awarded to Sergeant Luke O’Connor. He had lived to be Lieutenant-General Sir Luke O’Connor and was now colonel of the regiment. The most immediate piece of regimental history that I met as a recruit-officer was the flash. The flash is a fan-like bunch of five black ribbons, each ribbon two inches wide and seven and a half inches long; the angle at which the fan is spread is exactly regulated by regimental convention. It is stitched to the back of the tunic collar. Only the Royal Welch are privileged to wear it. The story is that the Royal Welch were abroad on foreign service for several years in the 1830’s, and by some chance never received the army order abolishing the queue. When the regiment returned and paraded at Plymouth the inspecting general rated the commanding officer because his men were still wearing their hair in the old fashion. The commanding officer, angry with the slight, immediately rode up to London and won from King William IV, through the intercession of some Court official, the regimental privilege of continuing to wear the bunch of ribbons in which the end of the queue was tied—the flash. It was to be a distinctive badge worn by all ranks in reward for the regiment’s exemplary service in the Napoleonic wars.