Armstrong stalked the line like a lion choosing whom to devour.

‘Just because you’ve been in the field for two months, you think it’s all right for boots to look like lead piping an’ belts like old bandages – an’ saddles as the day would quake to look on? Well let me tell you, one an’ all of you, that even if it were just us – ’Is Majesty’s Sixth Light Dragoons – on this grand scheme of ’Is Majesty’s to bring light into this benighted land, your dragoons’ boots an’ belts an’ saddles do not pass muster! Understand?’

‘Sir!’

‘An’ if the belts an’ boots an’ saddles won’t pass muster, what in the name of God is the state of them things as I ’aven’t seen? Swords rusted away are they? Carbines fouled so bad you couldn’t squeeze a pea in, let alone a ball? Eh?’

‘Sir!’

‘But it isn’t just us, ’Is Majesty’s Sixth Light Dragoons, on this grand scheme to bring light into this benighted land; it’s half the bloody soldiers in India! Half the white ’uns, anyway. An’ you think it’ll be good enough to parade with ’alf the King’s men in India, looking like a regiment of half-washed chimneysweeps?’

‘Sir!’

Armstrong halted abruptly, thrust his whip under his arm and braced himself.

‘Listen very carefully, you troop serjeant-majors. Colonel Hervey, who is soon to be a general again, will be back at any minute. I would be shamed – shamed, I tell you! – for him to see his regiment in such bad order as this. An’ if I am shamed, by God, so will you too be. Your stripes won’t see the light of another day!’

The silence was profound. No bird sang, no dog barked, no horse whickered in the distant lines.

‘Is … that … under … stood?’

‘Sir!’

Armstrong glowered at each of them, his face as red as his tunic.

‘Dismiss!’

The troop serjeant-majors turned to the right, paused to an unspoken count of ‘two, three’, marched sharply four paces, then without a word scuttled in different directions. In less than a minute they’d be in full throat too.

Armstrong’s groom held out his forage cap and took his shako by return.

The serjeant-major nodded, said nothing, nodded again to him to fall out, then went to his tent and sank into the camp chair under the awning to contemplate the now empty maidan.

He was seething still. Bawling out serjeant-majors, all of ’em whipper-snappers – except Foxall … and Prickett (Prickett! God ’elp ’em all!) – an’ all of ’em reckoning they could do ’is job, and wondering when they’d get the chance …

It was always the same: the boots, belts and saddles were never good enough; he could never allow them to be good enough – and then to hope like hell that what mattered even more would be good enough on the day. Not just on a parade – worthy test though that was – or even a field day, but when it was the true test: With ball-cartridge, Load!; Draw swords!; Walk-March!; Trot!; Gallop – Cha-a-arge!