To the uninitiated the expression "peculiar position" may need explanation. It would yet seem to do so to War Office authorities, commanding officers, inspecting officers, depôt commanders, and adjutants. These gentlemen are much given to treat every company composing a battalion of volunteers alike, and judging all by one, comment on non-attendances and want of skill at target practice or on parade. Now in a county battalion no two companies are similarly situated, and can give an equal attendance on drill or other instructions. One company has its members scattered over an area of twenty miles, the centre of such area being little more than a village, and serving as head quarters. To these head quarters no railway runs, nor is there anything beyond the floor of a barn obtainable for drill purposes in bad weather. The target practice ground is inaccessible, and terribly exposed. There are no resident gentry to help the funds of the corps or to offer prizes for best drills or best shots, and all the expenses incurred beyond those met by the dole received from the War Office comes down on the two or three officers attached, perhaps the village attorney and the doctor, who as Captain and Lieutenant have undertaken the thankless office of commanding and keeping up the company. Another company lives in clover; its head quarters are in a good town: the officers are wealthy and popular, and the townspeople proud of their men and the band. The practice ground is close at hand, the armoury large, with drill-yard attached, and all expenses incidental to attendance at regimental camps, autumn manœuvres, and reviews on a large scale, immediately met. It is easy for such a company to be efficient, and it is still more easy for an inspecting officer, with his beloved barrack square dangling before his eyes, to select this company as a criterion, and _ex uno disce omnes_. The Trowbridge companies are composed chiefly of mill hands, and so defined is the work of the mill among the numerous hands employed, that in many instances the withdrawal of two or three of these from a single machine will delay the completion of an order for an indefinite period. A battalion drill at 2 p.m. simply means all work in that part of the mill where these men now gone to the drill are employed must cease; and when these attendances at drills are demanded for days at a time, as is the case with a regimental camp or at autumn manœuvres, indeed any man, excepting perhaps an Army fossil or a War Office clerk, could see that so serious a demand on the hands of mill-owners or employers of labour generally, must be met by special arrangements, and thus it was with the Trowbridge Rifle Corps. The mills were overhauled and repaired generally in the month of August, and so this time was selected for holding the Regimental Annual Camp.