Lesson Overview
By now you can plan a parade, rehearse a body of troops, and supervise turnout to the standard. This lesson narrows the whole of that craft onto the smallest and most demanding body on any parade: the Colour party. When the Colours are on parade, everything the previous lessons taught comes to a single point, because the party that carries and guards them must be the steadiest, the best drilled, and the most trustworthy soldiers you have, and it is your work to choose them, to train them, and to answer for them. The officer commands the parade; you build the Colour party, and on a Colours parade that is the part that must not fail.
This lesson sets out how the NCO forms and trains the party: how to select its members, the steadiest and most reliable, and who they are by appointment, the Colour Officer who carries the Colour and the escort of senior non-commissioned officers who guard it; how to train them in the handling and care of the Colour, in the hand, socketed in the Colour-belt, never set down for convenience and never allowed to touch the ground or to fall; how to drill the party in its movements and in the heightened standard it keeps, staying covered and bayonets fixed when the rest of the parade relaxes; the one thing you must train them never to get wrong, that the Colour is dipped only to the Sovereign and to no one else; and the trust that the whole of it expresses, for the Colour party are the guardians of the Colour and you are the one who forms them into that.
By the end you will be able to select and appoint a Colour party and say why each member is chosen as they are, train the party in the handling and care of the Colour and in the rule of unbroken custody, drill the party in its movements and explain the heightened standard it keeps and why, train and check the one canon it must never get wrong, that the Colour dips only to the Sovereign, and explain what the whole of this work expresses about the trust placed in the Colour party as the guardians of the Colour.
Key Terms
- Colour party: the small body that carries and guards the Colour on parade, made up of the Colour Officer who bears it and the escort of senior non-commissioned officers who guard it; a single Colour has one party, and a full stand of two Colours is carried by two Colour Officers with a corresponding escort.
- Colour Officer (the Ensign): the junior officer detailed to carry a Colour, ordinarily of the most junior commissioned rank, a Second Lieutenant or Lieutenant, who bears it at the carry with the pike socketed in the Colour-belt and is responsible for it absolutely while it is in his charge; "Ensign" here names the office of the bearer, not a rank.
- Escort to the Colour: the senior non-commissioned officers detailed to guard the Colour, Sergeants and above, armed with rifles, bayonets fixed and points sheathed, who flank and follow it and never leave it unguarded.
- Colour-belt: the belt worn across the body bearing a socket, or "bucket", into which the foot of the pike is set so that the Colour may be carried upright and secured without being held by the hand alone.
- Unbroken custody: the rule that, while a Colour is out of its case, it is never without a responsible hand and never set down for convenience, so that at every moment it is in the bearer's hand, socketed in the Colour-belt, or lodged with ceremony under guard.
- Heightened standard: the conduct the Colour party keeps throughout a parade, staying covered and with bayonets fixed when the rest of the parade uncovers or unfixes, because the guard of the Colour never stands down while the Colour is out.
- Dipping: the lowering of a consecrated Colour in salute, the Colour Officer bringing the pike down from the upright so that the Colour bows, made only to the Sovereign and to nothing and no one else.
- Guardians of the Colour: the proper name for what the Colour party is, the soldiers into whose personal keeping the unit's honour is given for the duration of the parade.
Selecting the party: the steadiest you have
Begin with the selection, because everything that follows rests on it, and a party badly chosen cannot be drilled into a good one. The Colour party is not formed from whoever is free, whoever is keen, or whoever asks. It is formed from the steadiest and most trustworthy soldiers in the unit, deliberately chosen, because the Colour is given into the keeping of the most trusted and not the most available, and the whole composition of the party is itself a statement of how the Army values the Colour. When you form a party, you are not filling slots; you are choosing the hands that will hold the unit's honour while the eyes of the State are on the Army, and you choose accordingly.
What you are looking for is plain enough to name. You want soldiers who are steady under pressure and a long day, who do not fidget, drift, or wilt when a parade runs long and hot; soldiers whose drill is already sound, because the Colour party is the most exposed body on the ground and there is no hiding a fault in it; and soldiers who are reliable in character, who can be trusted to keep the standard when no one is watching them in particular, because guarding the Colour is exactly the duty in which the watching is on the Colour and not on the guard. Steadiness, sound drill, and reliable character are the three things, and of the three, steadiness is first, because a brilliant soldier who is jumpy is worse in the Colour party than a plain one who is solid. You are not assembling the showiest soldiers; you are assembling the most dependable, and that is a different and a harder judgement.
The party divides by appointment into two kinds, and you must understand both. The Colour is carried by the Colour Officer, properly the Ensign, a junior officer detailed for the duty, ordinarily of the most junior commissioned rank, a Second Lieutenant or Lieutenant, for it is an honour given to the young officer to bear the unit's emblem. You do not select the Colour Officer in the way you select the escort, because that is an officer's appointment; but you train him with the rest, and you must understand his place, that he is the bearer and is responsible for the Colour absolutely while it is in his charge. The escort you do select, from the senior non-commissioned officers of the unit, Sergeants and above, the steadiest and most experienced ranks, Colour Sergeants by long tradition among them, because the Colour is given into the keeping of those most trusted. Note the rank carefully and keep it right, for it is a consistency point this course holds to: the escort is drawn from the senior NCOs, the Sergeant and above, and not from the junior soldiers, and the bearer is a junior officer who holds the rank of Second Lieutenant or Lieutenant and is styled the Ensign only for the duty. There is no rank of Ensign and no rank of Warrant Officer in the Royal Kaharagian Army; the Ensign is an office, and the escort are senior NCOs.
FORMING THE COLOUR PARTY (who, and why)
THE BEARER THE ESCORT
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Colour Officer (the Ensign) Senior NCOs (Sgt and above),
a JUNIOR OFFICER: 2Lt or Lt Colour Sgts by tradition
carries the Colour, responsible guard the Colour, armed,
for it ABSOLUTELY bayonets fixed, points SHEATHED
CHOSEN FOR NOT chosen for
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[1] steadiness under a long day being keen or merely available
[2] sound drill, already proven being the showiest on the square
[3] reliable character, kept being junior, untried, or
when no one is watching handy at the moment
A single Colour: one bearer + escort.
A full STAND of two Colours: two bearers + a corresponding escort.
The composition itself says: the Colour is given to the most trusted.
Figure 1. Forming the Colour party. The bearer is a junior officer, the Ensign, a Second Lieutenant or Lieutenant; the escort are senior non-commissioned officers, Sergeants and above. Both are chosen for steadiness, sound drill, and reliable character, because the Colour is entrusted to the most dependable and not the most available. The exact establishment of a party for a given parade is settled with the parade commander; the basis of selection is held here.
Training the handling and care of the Colour
A party well chosen must still be trained, and the first and most important thing you train is not a movement but a discipline: the handling and care of the Colour, from which every movement afterwards takes its meaning. This is the same rule the PRO 210 course teaches and the same rule the Sovereign's Regulations set down, and your task here is to drill it into the hands of your party until it is second nature and never has to be thought about, because the moment it has to be thought about is the moment it is forgotten. Teach the rule first, then the handling, and check the handling against the rule every time.
The rule is unbroken custody. While the Colour is out of its case, it is never without a responsible hand and never set down for convenience, and so at every moment it is in one of exactly three lawful places: in the Colour Officer's hand, carried and steadied; socketed in the Colour-belt, the foot of the pike set into the bucket worn across the body so that the Colour stands upright and secured while the bearer's hands are otherwise occupied, still under his charge and still guarded; or lodged with ceremony, set in a proper stand or rest by a deliberate act and under guard. What the Colour is never in is a fourth state, the state of convenience: leaned in a corner while its bearer rests, laid across chairs or a table, set on the floor "just for a moment", handed off to whoever is nearest. Those are not lawful states, and a Colour found in any of them is a fault you correct at once. Above all, the Colour is never allowed to touch the ground and never allowed to fall, because a Colour on the ground, or fallen from the hand, is the unit's honour in the dirt, and there is no fault on a Colours parade graver or more visible than that.
So train the handling to serve the rule. Train the Colour Officer to take the carry cleanly, to settle the foot of the pike into the socket of the Colour-belt without fumbling, to steady the Colour with the hand and not merely balance it, and to keep it controlled in wind, which is the thing that catches an untrained bearer out, for a Colour is a large sail on a long pike and a gust will move it. Train the escort to support the Colour through any moment when it must be lowered, to uncase and to case it without letting it dip toward the ground, and to be ready to take it in an emergency without hesitation and without dropping it, for the one time a Colour is most at risk is the moment it is being passed, lowered, or worked with. And train the whole party to think of custody as continuous, so that there is never an instant in a long day, not at the halt, not stood easy, not waiting between events, in which no one is answerable for the Colour. This is the most practical mark of reverence there is and the easiest of all for you to judge: you cannot see whether a soldier understands the history embodied in the Colour, but you can see in a glance whether they are letting it touch the ground, whether the hand is on it, whether it is socketed or merely propped. Train the hands, and check them across the longest, most tiring rehearsal you can run, because that is when the truth comes out.
Drilling the party and its movements
With the handling sound, you drill the party in its movements, and here the standard you hold is higher than anywhere else on the parade, because the Colour party is the most watched body on the ground and carries the thing the whole parade exists to honour. A loose flank in a rear rank is a fault; a loose Colour party is a fault seen by the whole State, and so you rehearse it harder, dress it tighter, and accept from it nothing you would let pass elsewhere. The detail of the movements, the spacing, the timing of the carry and the order, the marching on and off, the receiving and dismissing of the Colour, is certified in person under qualified supervision and is not learned from a page; what you hold here is the standard to which you drill it and the principle behind the heightened bearing the party keeps throughout.
That principle is the one your party will find strangest and most needs to understand, so teach the reason and not merely the form. The Colour party keeps a heightened standard throughout a parade, and it does not relax when the parade relaxes. When the parade is stood easy, the Colour party is not eased in any way that loosens its hold on the Colour. When the rest of the parade removes headdress for a religious service, the Colour party stays covered, keeping its headdress on. When others unfix bayonets, the escort keeps its bayonets fixed, points sheathed as always so the blade cannot tear the silk. This is not a privilege handed to a favoured few, and you must train your party to understand it as exactly the opposite of a privilege: it is a heavier duty, the visible statement that the guard of the Colour never stands down while the Colour is out. The parade may rest because the parade is not, at that moment, answerable for the unit's honour; the Colour party may not rest because it is. A soldier who sees the Colour party standing covered and armed amid a bare-headed, eased parade is seeing the rule of unbroken custody made into a picture, that someone, always, is on guard over the Colour, and that someone does not get to stop. Train your party to carry that knowledge, because a soldier who keeps the heightened standard merely because they were told to will let it slip on a long day, while one who understands what it says will not.
THE PARADE RELAXES; THE COLOUR PARTY DOES NOT
THE PARADE THE COLOUR PARTY
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stood easy remains alert, hold on the
Colour never loosened
removes headdress for a service stays COVERED (headdress ON)
unfixes bayonets keeps BAYONETS FIXED (points sheathed)
eased, at rest, off duty on guard, on duty, answerable
The reason, drilled into every member:
the guard of the Colour NEVER stands down while the Colour is out.
This is not an exemption granted to a favoured few.
It is a heavier duty, made visible.
Figure 2. The heightened standard. When the parade eases, uncovers, or unfixes, the Colour party does not, because it remains answerable for the Colour while the rest of the parade does not. Train the party to understand this as a heavier duty and not a privilege; a party that knows why will keep the standard when a party that was merely told will let it slip. The drill of the movements is certified in person; the standard and its reason are held here.
The one thing they must never get wrong
There is much for a Colour party to learn, and most faults in it can be corrected on the next rehearsal. There is one thing, though, that you must train until it is certain and then check until you are sure, because it is the single point on which the Colour is most easily and most publicly got wrong, and it cannot be allowed to go wrong even once. It is the canon of dipping, and you will hold it before your party exactly as the previous courses hold it, because this course will not waver on it.
The Colour renders a compliment in one case only: it dips. To dip is to lower the Colour in salute, the Colour Officer bringing the pike down from the upright so that the Colour itself bows. And here is the canon, the line your party must never cross: the Colour dips only to the Sovereign, and to nothing and no one else. It is dipped to H.R.H. The Prince of Kaharagia, or to a regent or vice-regal representative standing in the Sovereign's place, and to no other person whatever their rank, not to a visiting head of state, not to a senior officer however senior, not to any dignitary however distinguished, not at a funeral to the fallen however honoured. The reason is the reason the Colour is what it is: it is the consecrated emblem of the unit's loyalty to the Crown, and it lowers that loyalty to the Crown alone. To dip it to a lesser person would be to claim that the unit's loyalty is owed elsewhere, which it is not. A flag, by contrast, is never dipped at all, to anyone, because a flag is not consecrated and embodies nothing; only a Colour dips, and a Colour dips only to the Sovereign.
Train this into your Colour Officer and into the whole party until it is beyond doubt, because the bearer is the one whose hands carry it out and the escort are the ones who will know at a glance if it is ever about to go wrong. Make them say it back to you; make them tell you, for a list of persons and occasions, dip or no dip, until they answer without thinking, The Prince yes, a head of state no, the General no, the fallen no, a flag never. When you plan a parade, this is among the first things you confirm with the parade commander: whether the Sovereign or one standing for him will be present, and therefore whether the Colour will dip at all, and to whom, and on whose word, so that nothing is left to a bearer's guess in the moment. If you train nothing else perfectly, train this, because a Colour wrongly dipped is a public statement of misplaced loyalty made on the unit's behalf before the State, and there is no quiet way to take it back.
DOES THE COLOUR DIP? (drill this until the answer is instant)
To The Prince (the Sovereign) .................... YES
To a regent / vice-regal representative
standing in the Sovereign's place .............. YES (stands for the Crown)
To a visiting head of state ...................... NO
To a senior officer, however senior ............. NO
To any dignitary, however distinguished ......... NO
At a military funeral, to the fallen ............ NO (draped or cased,
never dipped)
A FLAG / ENSIGN ................................. NEVER dips, to anyone
The bearer carries it out; the escort knows at a glance if it is
about to go wrong. Confirm with the parade commander BEFORE the parade
whether the Colour dips at all, to whom, and on whose word.
Figure 3. The dipping canon, the one thing the Colour party must never get wrong. The Colour dips only to the Sovereign or to one standing in his place, and to no other person and on no other occasion; a flag never dips at all. Train it until the answer is instant and confirm the day's case in planning, so nothing is left to a guess in the moment. The conduct of the movement is certified in person; the canon is held here.
The trust placed in the guardians of the Colour
Stand back, now, from the parts and see the whole, because the selecting, the training, the drilling, and the canon are all the working-out of one thing, and your party will carry the duty better if they understand what that one thing is. The Colour party are the guardians of the Colour. For the duration of the parade, the unit's honour, its history, its loyalty to the Crown, all gathered into the consecrated Colour, is given into the personal keeping of a handful of soldiers, and that giving is an act of trust as great as the Army makes. The composition of the party says so: the steadiest soldiers, the senior NCOs, the young officer honoured with the bearing of the emblem. The heightened standard says so: these are the ones who do not stand down while the Colour is out. The whole shape of the party is the Army declaring whom it trusts with the thing it values most, and when you form a party you are choosing the soldiers worthy of that trust and then making them equal to it.
So train your party to feel the weight of it, because the work is hard, the days are long, and a soldier who feels only the discomfort and not the honour will not keep the standard when it costs something. The Colour party is exposed, watched, and unrelieved; it carries and guards without rest while others ease; it cannot afford the small lapse that passes unnoticed elsewhere. None of that is borne well by a soldier who thinks of it as an awkward detail. It is borne, and borne proudly, by a soldier who understands that they have been chosen, out of the whole unit, to guard the unit's honour before the eyes of the State, and that this is the most trusted thing a soldier can be asked to do on a parade ground. That is the understanding you are really training, underneath the handling and the drill and the canon. Get the understanding right and the rest holds even on the worst day; leave it out, and the forms will slip the moment the watching turns elsewhere. The guardians of the Colour are made, not found, and you are the one who makes them.
In Practice: Forming a Party for a Visiting Head of State
A Colour Sergeant is told to form and train a Colour party for a parade at which a single Colour will be carried before H.R.H. The Prince and a visiting head of state on a State visit, three weeks off, and the parade commander has left the building of the party to him. He starts with selection, and he does not start with the keenest hands. He goes through the senior NCOs of the unit looking for steadiness first, the Sergeants and the Colour Sergeants he has seen hold a standard on a long, hot day without drifting, whose drill he would put under any eye, and whom he would trust to keep the bearing when no one in particular is watching them, because on this parade no one will be watching the guard, they will be watching the Colour. He settles his escort, and he confirms with the parade commander that the Colour Officer is a young Lieutenant detailed for the honour, and he reminds himself that the bearer is an officer of that rank and is the Ensign only for the duty, not a rank of its own.
Then he trains them, and he trains the handling before he trains a single movement. The Colour, he tells them, will be uncased at the start and not cased again until the very end, and for every minute between it must be in the Lieutenant's hand, socketed in his Colour-belt, or lodged with ceremony under guard, and never, on the longest part of a long parade, set down for convenience or let near the ground. He drills the heightened standard and makes them understand it as a heavier duty: when the parade eases, they do not; if there is a moment when others uncover or unfix, they stay covered and keep bayonets fixed, points sheathed, because the guard of the Colour does not stand down while the Colour is out. And he spends his hardest hour on the one thing this parade puts squarely in front of them, the dipping. There will be two great persons on the dais, he says, the Sovereign and a foreign head of state, and the Colour will dip to one of them only. He makes them say it back until it is instant: to The Prince, yes; to the visiting head of state, however honoured a guest, no, because the Colour dips only to the Sovereign and a foreign head of state is not the Sovereign. He confirms with the parade commander, in writing, on whose word and at what point the dip is made and to whom, so that on the day the Lieutenant has nothing to guess. He tells them, last, what they are: not a detail, but the guardians of the unit's honour for the length of the parade, chosen because they are trusted, and they carry the Colour the better for knowing it.
Check Your Understanding
- Explain how you select a Colour party and on what three qualities you choose its members, and why steadiness comes first. Who carries the Colour and what is his rank and appointment, who forms the escort and from which ranks, and why is the escort drawn from the senior non-commissioned officers rather than the most junior or most available soldiers?
- State the rule of unbroken custody and the three lawful places a Colour may be while it is out of its case, and explain why "set down for convenience" is never one of them and why letting the Colour touch the ground is the gravest fault on a Colours parade. Then explain the heightened standard you train the party to keep, giving the two examples of staying covered and keeping bayonets fixed, and say why you teach this as a heavier duty rather than a privilege.
- State the one thing the Colour party must never get wrong, to whom alone the Colour dips and why, and why a flag is never dipped at all. Explain how you train and check this canon, and what you confirm with the parade commander before the parade so that nothing is left to the bearer's guess in the moment.
Reflection (write a short paragraph): This lesson argues that the Colour party is not assembled but formed, chosen for steadiness and trust and then trained until the handling, the heightened standard, and the dipping canon are certain, because the party are the guardians of the unit's honour for the length of the parade. Choose one part of this work, the selecting, the training of unbroken custody, the heightened standard, or the dipping canon, and explain what it expresses about the trust placed in the Colour party, and what an NCO who treated forming the party as merely filling slots would miss. Then consider the dipping canon in particular: why must this one thing be trained until the answer is instant and confirmed in planning, and what does a Colour wrongly dipped say, before the whole State, about a party that was not properly formed?
Summary
- The Colour party is formed, not assembled: its members are deliberately chosen as the steadiest and most trustworthy soldiers in the unit, on three qualities, steadiness under a long day, sound and proven drill, and reliable character kept when no one is watching, because the Colour is given into the keeping of the most trusted and not the most available.
- The party is a junior officer and senior NCOs: the Colour Officer, the Ensign, a Second Lieutenant or Lieutenant who carries the Colour and is responsible for it absolutely, and the escort of senior non-commissioned officers, Sergeants and above, who guard it armed with bayonets fixed and points sheathed so the blade cannot tear the silk. "Ensign" names the office of the bearer, not a rank, and the escort are senior NCOs, not junior soldiers.
- The first thing you train is the handling and care of the Colour under the rule of unbroken custody: while it is out, the Colour is always in the bearer's hand, socketed in the Colour-belt, or lodged with ceremony under guard, never set down for convenience, and never allowed to touch the ground or to fall, which is the gravest and most visible fault there is. Drill the hands and check them across the longest, most tiring rehearsal you can run.
- You drill the party to a higher standard than anywhere else on the parade and train it to keep a heightened bearing throughout: it stays covered and keeps its bayonets fixed when the rest of the parade uncovers or unfixes, because the guard of the Colour never stands down while the Colour is out. Train this as a heavier duty and not a privilege, and teach the reason, so the standard holds on a long day.
- The one thing the party must never get wrong is the dipping canon: the Colour dips only to the Sovereign, to H.R.H. The Prince or to one standing in his place, and to nothing and no one else, not to a visiting head of state, a senior officer, a dignitary, or the fallen; a flag is never dipped at all. Train it until the answer is instant, and confirm with the parade commander before the parade whether the Colour dips, to whom, and on whose word.
- The whole of this work expresses one thing: the Colour party are the guardians of the unit's honour for the length of the parade, given the most trusted duty on the parade ground. Train your party to feel the honour and not only the discomfort, because a soldier who understands the trust keeps the standard when it costs something, and the guardians of the Colour are made, not found, and you are the one who makes them.
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