Royal Army College

Lesson Overview

The earlier lessons taught the parts of drill: the halt and the turn, the slow and quick march, the salute and the marks of respect. This lesson assembles those parts into the thing they are for. A parade is not a string of movements performed for their own sake but a single disciplined act, with a shape and an order, by which a body of soldiers does honour to an occasion. Here you will learn which occasions the Royal Kaharagian Army parades for and why ceremonial counts as a duty; the formations a body takes and the language of line and column, ranks and files; how a parade falls in on its markers and takes its dressing; the ordered sequence of a formal parade from forming up to dismissal, with the word of command and the role behind each phase; the difference between the royal salute and the general salute; and what the occasion asks of the individual soldier. The forms are mastered on the square, in person, under an instructor's eye, and the exact timings are perfected there. What this lesson gives is the sequence, the commands, the roles, and the standard.

By the end you will be able to name the principal ceremonial occasions the Army performs and say why ceremonial is a duty, describe the formations a body takes and the parts of a formed body, explain how a parade falls in on its markers and is dressed, walk the ordered sequence of a formal parade naming each phase, its opening word of command, and the role responsible for it, distinguish the royal salute from the general salute and explain the place of the National Anthem, and explain the standard of preparation, turnout, and conduct the occasion demands of every participant.

Key Terms

Parade: a body of soldiers formed up and moving as one, under command and under observation, in the service of an occasion; drill raised to the service of honour.
Line: a formation in which the troops stand side by side, two or three ranks deep, facing the front; the formation a parade is drawn up in to be inspected and reviewed.
Column: a formation in which the troops are arranged one behind another in file or in successive ranks, narrow in frontage and long in depth; the formation in which a parade moves and marches past.
Rank: a single line of soldiers standing or moving side by side, abreast of one another.
File: a single line of soldiers one behind another, from front to rear; the depth-wise counterpart of a rank.
Frontage and depth: the width a body covers from flank to flank (its frontage) and the distance it covers from front to rear (its depth).
Marker: a soldier placed first on the ground to fix a point, a line, or an interval, on whom the rest of the body forms and takes its dressing.
Supernumerary rank: the rank of commanders and non-commissioned officers formed up behind the body, who command, steady, and correct it without standing in the ranks themselves.
Dressing: the act of aligning the body so that ranks and files are exactly straight and the spacing exact, taken up on the order "right dress" by reference to a flank.
Reviewing officer: the senior person, often a member of the Princely House or a senior officer, in whose honour the parade is held and who inspects the troops and receives their salute.
Saluting dais: the raised stand from which the reviewing officer takes the parade, the fixed point toward which marks of respect are directed.
March past: the phase in which the troops march before the reviewing officer in column, turning their heads toward the dais on the order "eyes right".
Advance in review order: the formal close of a parade, in which the whole body advances together and renders the general salute as one.
Royal salute: the highest salute, rendered to the Sovereign or a vice-regal representative, given with the National Anthem.
Turnout: the standard of dress, cleanliness, and presentation a soldier brings to parade, by which the whole body is judged.

The occasions the Army performs

The Royal Kaharagian Army parades for a small range of recognisable purposes, and a soldier should know them.

The first are the occasions of state. Foremost is the Sovereign's birthday parade, the year's principal ceremonial event, at which the Army renders the highest honours to its head. To these belong proclamations and accessions, the public marking of an act of the Crown; the demise and accession of a Sovereign; and the honours rendered on a state visit, when a head of state or other dignitary is received by the Principality. The second are reviews and inspections, at which a senior officer or a member of the Princely House formally takes the parade and inspects the troops, satisfying themselves and the public of the Army's standard. The third are acts of remembrance and commemoration, the solemn marking of a day of mourning or the memory of those who have served, where bearing is grave and slow rather than bright. The fourth is the mounting and changing of guards, the regular and visible ceremony by which a guard at an honoured post is found, posted, and relieved. The fifth is the passing-out parade, at which recruits who have completed their training are presented as soldiers for the first time.

Each is a public face of the Army, and most are the Army at its most visible. A national who never sees the Army at any other task sees it on parade and forms a judgement there. The Army is young, and it claims no battle honours it has not earned; what it shows on parade is not a long past but a present standard, kept honestly and exactly.

Why ceremonial is a duty

Ceremonial is not a pleasant extra set apart from the Army's real work. The aid-to-the-civil-power course teaches the opposite, and this course keeps faith with it. The ceremonial duties of state are a form of aid to the civil authorities: the Army lends its discipline and dignified presence to the institutions of the Principality in the conduct of their public business, the proclamation, the state occasion, the commemoration. The cordon at a procession and the guard at a state event are aid tasks as surely as the sandbag line at a flood, governed by the standard of turnout, timing, and bearing rather than by the rules of force, for force is almost never in question. A parade is therefore a duty owed, to the Crown the Army serves and to the civil authorities it supports, and it is among the most frequent and most public tasks the Army performs. The standard a soldier shows on these occasions is, for much of the public, the Army itself.

The formations a body takes

Before a soldier can understand a parade, they must understand the shapes a body of troops is put into, because every order on parade is an order to form, hold, or change one of these shapes. The two that matter are line and column, and a parade is the body passing between them.

A body is built from ranks and files. A rank is a single line of soldiers standing side by side, abreast of one another; a file is a single line of soldiers one behind another, from front to rear. Think of a checked field: each row across is a rank, each column running back is a file. A squad or platoon on parade ordinarily forms in three ranks, front, centre, and rear, each soldier covered off exactly behind the one in front so the files are as straight as the ranks. Three ranks is the standard depth: broad enough to look substantial, shallow enough to be controlled and dressed precisely. Smaller parties may form in two ranks, but three is the form a soldier should picture.

In line, the ranks stand side by side facing the front, the body wide and shallow. This is the formation a parade is drawn up in to be inspected and reviewed, because in line every soldier faces the reviewing officer and can be seen. In column, the body is turned so the ranks follow one behind another, narrow in frontage and long in depth. This is the formation in which a parade moves off and marches past, because a narrow front can be marched along a route and past a fixed point in good order. The width a body covers from flank to flank is its frontage; the distance from front to rear is its depth. A parade spends its still phases in line, to be seen and inspected, and its moving phases in column, to march; turning from one to the other is itself a drill movement done on command.

Two further parts complete the picture. The markers are soldiers placed on the ground first, before the body forms, to fix the points and lines everyone else will dress on; they are dealt with in the next section. The supernumerary rank is the rank formed up behind the body, the commanders and non-commissioned officers who command, steady, and correct the parade without standing in the ranks themselves. From behind they see the whole of their part, watch the dressing, and check a fault without leaving a hole in the line. A soldier in the ranks faces the front and sees only the backs of those ahead; the supernumerary rank is the eye that watches the body from behind.

A squad drawn up in three ranks, with its marker and commander:

                          FRONT (toward the reviewing officer)

   M *                                                            <- marker, placed first
   |
   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x       <- FRONT RANK
   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x       <- CENTRE RANK
   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x       <- REAR RANK

       o                          C                              <- SUPERNUMERARY RANK
   (a NCO)                  (squad commander)                       (commanders and NCOs)

   <----------------- frontage ----------------->
   ^
   |  depth (front rank to rear rank)
   v

   Each column of three (front, centre, rear) is a FILE.
   Each row across is a RANK. The body shown is in LINE.

Getting on parade: falling in and dressing

A parade is built from the ground up, and the first thing placed on the ground is not the body but the marker. A marker is a single soldier sent out and halted on an exact spot, often a point chalked or pegged on the square, to fix where the body will form. For a parade of several squads or sub-units, a marker is placed for each, dressed in line and at the correct interval from the next, so that before a single rank is filled the skeleton of the whole parade already stands true on the ground. Everything that follows dresses on the markers; if the markers are placed wrong, the whole parade is wrong, which is why their placing is checked before the body falls in.

The body then falls in. On the command, the soldiers form up on their marker, the front-rank soldier dressing on the marker and the rest filling in to its side and behind, three ranks deep, each taking up the regulated interval to the next, the correct space between shoulders, and the regulated distance between ranks, the correct space front to rear. The body is now roughly in place, and rough is not good enough for a parade, so it is dressed.

Dressing makes the lines exact. On the caution and the executive command, ordinarily "right dress", the body takes up its dressing by the right: every soldier but the right marker turns the head and eyes smartly to the right, looks down the rank, and shuffles by short paces until the rank becomes a single straight line dressed on the right-hand flank, the directing flank. At the same time the files are dressed, each soldier covered off exactly behind the one in front so that, seen from the flank, the three ranks make three clean lines. The whole interval and spacing of the parade is taken up in this one movement. On the order "eyes front" the heads snap back to the front and the body is still. From the supernumerary rank the commanders watch the dressing go down the line and correct any soldier out of it before "eyes front" is given. A parade lives or dies by its dressing: a watching public reads a crooked line at once, and a straight one says, without a word, that the body is under control.

The order of falling in:

   1. MARKERS OUT      ->   a marker is halted on each fixed point,
                            dressed in line and at correct interval.

   2. FALL IN          ->   the body forms on its marker, three ranks,
                            taking up interval (side to side) and
                            distance (rank to rank).

   3. RIGHT DRESS      ->   heads and eyes to the right; the body shuffles
                            until ranks and files are exactly straight,
                            dressed on the directing (right) flank.

   4. EYES FRONT       ->   heads snap to the front; the body is still,
                            correctly spaced and aligned, ready to be
                            reported and reviewed.

The sequence of a formal parade

A formal parade has a fixed sequence, best learned not as a description but as an ordered drill: a chain of phases, each begun by a word of command and owned by a particular role. Learn the order, the command that opens each phase, and who gives it, and you understand how a parade is run.

One: form up and dress. The markers are placed, the squads or sub-units fall in on them, and each is dressed by its own commander as set out above. The parade is brought to order and stands ready in line.

Two: the report. With each squad formed and dressed, its commander reports it to the parade commander: brings the squad to attention, faces the parade commander, salutes, and reports in the regulated form, the substance being that the squad is "present and correct", all present and turned out to standard. Each commander reports in turn, and when all have reported, command of the formed parade passes to the parade commander. The report is the moment a collection of squads becomes one parade under one commander.

Three: receive the reviewing officer and salute. The parade waits at ease until the reviewing officer or dignitary is about to arrive. On their approach the parade commander, or the parade sergeant-major acting on the order, brings the whole parade to attention as one, and on the word "general salute, present arms" (or the royal salute if the Sovereign or a vice-regal representative is being received) the entire parade renders the salute together in a single movement. The band or bugle plays the salute, and for a royal salute the National Anthem is played and the parade held at the present for its duration. This is the parade's formal welcome and the first great honour of the day, paid by the whole body as one.

Four: the inspection. The reviewing officer, accompanied by the parade commander, walks the ranks. The parade stands rigid at attention, motionless, while the inspecting officer passes slowly down each rank and looks at the soldiers individually, the front rank first and, passing behind, the rear. The soldiers do not move and do not speak. The inspection is both an honour paid to the troops by the reviewing officer's notice and a test of the standard each has brought, and it is the phase in which turnout is most exposed, because a watching eye is brought to within a pace of every soldier in turn.

Five: the march past. The parade now changes from line into column and marches before the saluting dais. As each sub-unit comes level with the dais, on the order "eyes right" every soldier in it turns the head and eyes sharply toward the reviewing officer, the marching salute of the body, holding the dais in view until "eyes front" returns the head. The march past may be in quick time or, on the most solemn occasions, in slow time. This is the great public movement of the parade; its mechanics, the stepping off together, the holding of dressing and pace, and the eyes right itself, were taught in Lesson 03, and here it takes its place as one phase in the whole.

Six: re-form and advance in review order. After marching past, the parade re-forms in line facing the dais. On the command it then advances in review order, the whole body marching forward a set number of paces together and halting as one, so that the parade closes the distance to the reviewing officer in a single disciplined advance. At the halt, a final general salute (or royal salute) is rendered, the entire parade saluting once more in one movement on one word. This is the formal close of the honours, the parade paying its last respect together before it is dismissed.

Seven: march off and dismiss. The reviewing officer departs, the parade is brought once more to attention, and on the command it marches off the ground in column in good order, or is formally dismissed where it stands. The parade ends as it began, under command and in order, never trailing away.

Each phase has its place, and the dignity of the whole rests on each being done exactly and in turn. A soldier who knows the seven phases, and the word that opens each, is never lost on a parade: they know what has just happened, what comes next, and what is being asked of them.

The ordered sequence of a formal parade, from fall-in to march-off:

   PHASE                      OPENED BY (command)        OWNED BY
   ------------------------   ------------------------   ---------------------
   1. Form up and dress       "Fall in" / "Right dress"  Squad commanders
   2. The report              "...present and correct"   Squad commanders
                                                         -> parade commander
   3. Receive and salute      "General salute,           Parade commander /
                               present arms"             parade sergeant-major
   4. The inspection          (the officer walks)        Reviewing officer
   5. The march past          "Eyes right"               Sub-unit commanders
   6. Advance in review       "Advance in review         Parade commander
      order + general salute   order" + "General salute"
   7. March off / dismiss     "March off" / "Dismiss"    Parade commander

   The body is in LINE for phases 1 to 4 and 6 (to be seen and inspected),
   and in COLUMN for phase 5 and the march-off (to move).

The roles on parade

A parade is run not by one person but by a set of roles, each with its own part, and a soldier should know who does what.

The parade commander commands the whole parade. They receive the reports of the sub-unit commanders, give the major words of command that move the parade through its phases, accompany the reviewing officer on the inspection, and answer for the parade's conduct from end to end. The parade commander owns the sequence.

The parade sergeant-major or, for a unit parade, the regimental sergeant-major is the keeper of the drill standard. This senior appointment is the authority on drill itself, who forms the parade up, supervises the markers and the dressing, sets and checks the standard of every movement, and is, in practice, the person who makes the parade exact. Where the parade commander owns the sequence, the sergeant-major owns the precision. By long Commonwealth custom this appointment is the guardian of drill, and a soldier learns early that the sergeant-major's eye misses nothing.

The squad or sub-unit commanders each command their own squad within the parade: they fall it in, dress it, report it "present and correct" to the parade commander, give it its "eyes right" in the march past, and answer for its bearing throughout. They are the link between the individual soldier and the parade commander.

The markers are the soldiers placed first on the ground to fix the points and lines on which the parade forms; their accuracy decides whether the whole parade stands true. The inspecting officer, often the reviewing officer themselves, walks the ranks during the inspection and is the focus of the occasion: the salutes are directed to them, the inspection is conducted by them, and the march past is performed before them.

Behind all these stand the band or bugler, who provide the music, the salute, and on the highest occasions the National Anthem, and who give the parade the sound by which much of its timing is felt. Each role exists so that no one person carries the whole, and so that the precision, the command, and the honour each have a keeper.

The salutes and the Anthem

The honour rendered on parade takes its form from who is being honoured. The royal salute is the highest mark of respect the Army can pay, and it is rendered to the Sovereign, or to a regent or vice-regal representative standing for the Sovereign, and to no one of lesser standing. It is given with the playing of the National Anthem, the troops at the present and held there for its duration, and it is the parade at its most solemn. To others who take a parade, a senior officer or a visiting dignitary who is not the Sovereign, the general salute is rendered instead, the same disciplined movement of the whole body but the salute proper to a lesser, though still honoured, occasion. The distinction is not a nicety. To render the royal salute is to mark the presence of the Crown itself, and the higher honour, with the National Anthem, is reserved for the Sovereign and those who stand in the Sovereign's place. Compliments and the salute were treated fully in Lesson 04; here they are seen in their grandest setting, paid not by one soldier but by a whole parade as one, and they fall at fixed points in the sequence above, the welcome at phase three and the formal close at phase six.

What the occasion asks of the soldier

For the individual on parade the demand is exacting. The first demand is preparation. Good ceremonial is built before the parade begins, in rehearsal that is exhaustive by design, the sequence walked and walked again until it does not depend on memory, the timings fixed, the ground known. A parade that looks effortless is the product of long and patient practice, and the soldier owes that practice as much as the performance. The second demand is turnout: a standard of dress and presentation that is itself part of the honour rendered, for a body of soldiers immaculately turned out says, without a word, that the occasion is taken seriously. The third is timing and stillness, the willingness to stand rigid and unmoving through a long ceremony, in heat or cold, and to move only on the word and exactly on the word.

Behind all three lies one hard truth. On parade the body acts as one, and one person's error is the whole body's error. A single head turned late, a single soldier out of step, a single rank dressed badly, is seen at once, and it mars not that soldier alone but the parade entire. There is no hiding in a body that moves as one, and no soldier carries only their own part; each carries a share of the whole. That is the weight, and the privilege, of ceremonial: the standard of the many rests visibly on the discipline of each. The exact timing of every movement, the depth of the pace, the length of the pause, is fixed in drill and built into the body on the square; what the soldier brings from this lesson is the knowledge of the sequence, the commands, and the roles, so that on the day the order of it is already sure and only the execution, long since practised, remains to be given.

In Practice: The Passing-Out Parade at the Garrison Square

A young private stands in the ranks on the morning of the passing-out parade, the day the recruits of the course are presented as soldiers for the first time, drawn up on the parade ground of a garrison. He has rehearsed the sequence a dozen times in the weeks before, until the order of it is sure. He fell in on the marker chalked on the square and dressed by the right until his rank was a single line, heads to the right and then snapping to the front on "eyes front". He heard his squad commander report the squad present and correct up to the parade commander, and felt the moment the separate squads became one parade. He came to attention as the reviewing officer arrived and presented arms with the whole body on the word, the general salute rendered as one. He stood rigid through the long stillness of the inspection as the reviewing party moved down the ranks a pace from his face. He marched past in column with its sharp "eyes right" toward the dais, advanced in review order, and rendered the final general salute. He has stood since before dawn and will stand a while more. None of it is for him to improvise; all of it is for him to do exactly. He knows, because his instructors have told him plainly and the rehearsals have proved it, that if his head turns a beat late at "eyes right" the fault will be seen, and that the credit the parade does the Army that morning rests, in his small part of the line, on him. He turns his head on the word, exactly on the word, and the line moves as one. That is the whole of what is asked of him, and it is a great deal.

Check Your Understanding

Explain the difference between line and column, and say which formation a parade is in to be inspected and which to march past, and why. What are a rank, a file, and the supernumerary rank, and what is the supernumerary rank for?
Walk the seven phases of a formal parade from fall-in to march-off, naming each phase, the word of command that opens it, and the role responsible for it. What does it mean for a squad commander to report a squad "present and correct", and what changes at that moment?
Distinguish the royal salute from the general salute, and explain the place of the National Anthem and at which phases of the parade the salutes fall. Why does the lesson say that one person's error on parade is the whole body's error?

Reflection (write a short paragraph): This lesson says that on parade the body acts as one, so that a single soldier's mistake mars the parade entire, and that good ceremonial rests on exhaustive rehearsal done before the day. Think about why a soldier might be tempted to treat a rehearsal as less important than the parade itself, and what that soldier would be misunderstanding. How does the knowledge that the whole parade's standing rests on each person's discipline change the way a soldier ought to approach both the practice and the performance?

Summary

The Army performs a small range of ceremonial occasions: occasions of state such as the Sovereign's birthday parade, proclamations, accessions, and state visits; reviews and inspections; acts of remembrance and commemoration; the mounting and changing of guards; and passing-out parades. Most are the Army at its most public, and it claims no honours it has not earned.
Ceremonial is a duty, not an extra: it is a form of aid to the civil authorities, the Army lending its discipline and dignified presence to the public business of the Principality, governed by the standard of turnout, timing, and bearing rather than by the rules of force.
A body forms in ranks and files, ordinarily three ranks deep, and takes two great formations: line, wide and shallow, in which it is drawn up to be inspected; and column, narrow and deep, in which it moves and marches past. The markers fix the ground, and the supernumerary rank of commanders watches and corrects the body from behind.
A parade is built on its markers and made exact by its dressing: markers out, fall in, right dress by the directing flank, eyes front, leaving the body correctly spaced and aligned.
A formal parade runs in a fixed sequence of seven phases, each opened by a word of command and owned by a role: form up and dress, the report "present and correct", receive the reviewing officer and salute, the inspection, the march past with eyes right to the dais, the advance in review order with the general salute, and the march off or dismissal.
The roles share the work: the parade commander owns the sequence, the parade or regimental sergeant-major keeps the drill standard and owns the precision, the squad commanders form, dress, and report their squads, the markers fix the ground, the reviewing officer inspects and receives the salutes, and the band gives the music and the Anthem.
The royal salute, given with the National Anthem, is rendered only to the Sovereign or a vice-regal representative; the general salute is rendered to others who take a parade, falling at the welcome and the formal close.
The occasion demands exhaustive rehearsal, a high standard of turnout, and exact timing and stillness from every participant; because the body acts as one, a single soldier's error mars the whole parade, and the standing the parade gives the Army rests visibly on the discipline of each. The timing and physical execution are perfected on the square; this lesson teaches the sequence, the commands, and the roles. The march past is treated in Lesson 03, the general salute and compliments in Lesson 04, the Colour on parade in Lesson 06, and the guard of honour in Lesson 07.

The Parade and Ceremonial Occasions