Royal Army College

Lesson Overview

An army's symbols are not decoration. The Colours a unit carries, the flags it flies, the badge it wears, and the cypher of its Sovereign are the visible expression of its identity, its loyalty to the Crown, and its esprit de corps. This lesson sets out the symbols of the Royal Kaharagian Army and the conventions that govern them: the strict difference between Colours and flags; what a Colour truly is and how it differs from a guidon, a standard, and an ensign; the stand of Colours and what each Colour embodies; the conventions of consecration, trooping, the escort, dipping, the Colour party, and laying up; the National Flag, the Army Ensign, and the Sovereign's standard, all granted by the Institute of Heraldry; flag and ensign etiquette, including the exact form of half-masting; and the badge, cypher, Crown, motto, and battle honours, which are earned and never invented.

By the end you will be able to distinguish Colours from flags and say why the distinction matters, explain what makes a Colour a consecrated emblem and how it differs from a guidon, a standard, and an ensign, describe the stand of Colours and what each Colour embodies, apply the conventions that govern the Colours, name the Army's principal flags and devices and who grants them, carry out the etiquette of flags and ensigns including the correct sequence for half-masting, and explain how battle honours are earned and why the Army does not anticipate honours it has not won.

Key Terms

Colour: a consecrated ceremonial flag that embodies a unit, its identity, its history, and its loyalty to the Crown; carried in pairs as a stand, saluted as the unit itself, and dipped only to the Sovereign. Never a synonym for the National Flag.
Consecration: the single religious ceremony in which a Colour is dedicated and set apart, after which it is sacred to the unit.
Stand of Colours: the two Colours carried together by an entitled unit, the Sovereign's Colour and the Regimental Colour.
Sovereign's Colour: the senior, royal Colour, based on the National Flag, representing the Crown and the Army's loyalty to the Sovereign, always in the position of honour on the right.
Regimental Colour: the Colour representing the unit's own identity, history, and esprit de corps, bearing its badge, motto, and any battle honours it has earned.
Guidon and standard: the equivalent Colours of mounted and armoured units, smaller and of a different shape from the infantry Colour, but consecrated and honoured in the same way.
Ensign (the flag): a national or service flag flown for identification; not consecrated and never dipped. (The same word also names the junior officer who carries a Colour.)
Ensign (the Colour-bearer): the junior officer who carries a Colour on parade, properly styled the Ensign or Colour Officer.
Colour party: the officer or officers who carry the Colours and the escort of senior non-commissioned officers who guard them.
Trooping the Colour: the parading of a Colour slowly down the ranks so that every soldier may see and know it.
Dipping: the lowering of a consecrated Colour in salute, made only to the Sovereign; flags are never dipped.
Half-mast: the lowered position of a flag as a sign of mourning, reached by first hoisting to the peak and then lowering, never raised to it directly.
Battle honour: the name of a battle or campaign a unit is officially permitted to bear, emblazoned on its Regimental Colour, awarded by the Crown for real operations.
Institute of Heraldry: the Organ of State that grants and regulates every armorial device, badge, Colour, ensign, and flag of the Army.

Colours and flags: why the words matter

Two great classes of cloth emblem are commonly confused and must not be. Colours are consecrated: the ceremonial flags that mark the identity of a unit, blessed in a religious ceremony, carried in pairs as a stand of Colours, and lowered, or "dipped", in salute to the Sovereign and to no one else. Flags, which include the National Flag and the service ensigns, are pieces of bunting used for identification or signalling. They are not consecrated, not carried in pairs, and never dipped in salute. The word "Colours" is therefore never a loose synonym for the National Flag, and a soldier who calls the National Flag the Colours, or speaks of dipping a flag, has shown that they do not understand the things they handle. The British spellings Colour, honour, and defence are used throughout, as are the Commonwealth terms half-mast and the bugle calls Last Post and Rouse. The care over these words is not pedantry: the distinction marks the difference between a consecrated emblem of the Army's loyalty and a piece of bunting, and the reverence a soldier owes follows from getting it right.

Fix the difference in a single picture. A Colour is consecrated, embodies the unit, is saluted as the unit itself, is dipped only to the Sovereign, and at the end of its life is laid up to fade with dignity. A flag is none of these: it is hoisted and lowered as daily routine, used for identification, honoured at colours but never dipped, and replaced when worn out. The diagram below sets the two side by side, and shows on the Colour the empty honour scroll that, for a young Army, is waiting to be filled.

   A COLOUR  (consecrated)                 A FLAG / ENSIGN  (bunting)

    +===========================+          +---------------------------+
    |  *  fringed, on a pike  *  |          |                           |
    |   +---------------------+  |          |   National Flag or        |
    |   |   regimental badge  |  |          |   service ensign:         |
    |   |   + Sovereign's     |  |          |   identification only     |
    |   |     cypher / crown  |  |          |                           |
    |   |  .................  |  |          |   hoisted briskly,        |
    |   |  : (honour scroll : |  |          |   lowered with ceremony   |
    |   |  :  EMPTY, waiting : |  |          |                           |
    |   |  :  to be earned)  : |  |          +---------------------------+
    |   |  .................  |  |
    |   +---------------------+  |          NOT consecrated
    +===========================+          NEVER dipped
                                           honoured at colours
    Consecrated ONCE                       replaced when worn out
    Embodies the unit
    Saluted AS the unit
    Dipped ONLY to the Sovereign
    Laid up to fade with dignity

Figure 1. A Colour distinguished from a flag. The Colour is a consecrated emblem on a pike, bearing the badge, the cypher, and an honour scroll that on the Army's Colours is still empty, the spaces waiting to be earned. The flag is bunting used for identification, never consecrated and never dipped. The figure shows the distinction in principle; the exact armorial design of any Colour is settled by the Institute of Heraldry.

What a Colour is

Understand this first, because every convention that follows is only the working-out of it. A Colour is not a flag that happens to be more ornate. It is a consecrated symbol that embodies the unit: its honour, its spirit, its identity, and its loyalty to the Crown gathered into a single object and made visible. When the unit looks at its Colour it sees itself, its own honour and history, and the bond that ties it to the Sovereign it serves. That is why a Colour is treated with a reverence owed to nothing else made of cloth, and why the language used of it is the language of sacred things.

Three ideas together make a Colour what it is, and a soldier should be able to name all three. First, it is consecrated, set apart in a religious ceremony from all ordinary cloth, so that it is sacred to the unit and not merely owned by it. Second, it embodies the unit and those who have served under it, so that to honour the Colour is to honour every soldier who has marched behind it, and to fail the Colour is to fail them. Third, it stands for the unit's loyalty to the Crown, the same loyalty the soldier's oath expresses, made tangible in an object the whole unit can see and salute. A flag identifies; the Colour embodies.

From this one truth the rest follows by plain logic. Because the Colour embodies the unit, it is saluted as the unit itself. Because it is consecrated, it is dipped only to the Sovereign, for it would not lower the unit's honour to any lesser thing. Because it embodies those who served under it, it is never allowed to touch the ground or to fall, and at the end is laid up to fade with dignity rather than thrown away. A soldier who grasps that a Colour is a consecrated emblem of the unit, and not a grand flag, will arrive at the right bearing toward it on their own; a soldier who misses it will keep the forms without understanding why they matter. The course teaches the meaning before the movement for this reason: the reverence is not in the drill, it is in knowing what the drill is paid to.

Colour, guidon, standard, ensign: telling the kinds apart

A soldier should be able to tell a Colour from the other cloth emblems they will see, because confusing them is the surest sign of not understanding any of them. They divide into the consecrated emblems, which embody a unit, and the flags, which identify.

The Colour proper is the consecrated emblem of a foot, or infantry, unit: a square or nearly square flag of rich material, fringed and tasselled, mounted on a pike and carried by hand on parade. It is the form most people picture, and the form the rest of this lesson chiefly describes. The guidon and the standard are the equivalent consecrated emblems of mounted and armoured units, descending from the days of cavalry: a guidon is smaller and swallow-tailed or tapered, a standard smaller again, each suited to being carried on horseback or from a vehicle rather than on foot. Their shape and size differ from the infantry Colour, but their nature does not: a guidon and a standard are consecrated, embody their unit, and are dipped only to the Sovereign, exactly as a Colour is, and everything this lesson says of the reverence owed a Colour is owed to them too.

Set apart from all of these is the ensign in the sense of a flag, the national or service flag flown for identification, treated in a later section. The word repays attention, because the Army uses "ensign" in two senses and a soldier must hold both. An ensign is a flag, a piece of bunting flown to show nationality or service; the Ensign, capitalised, is the junior officer who carries a Colour, the Colour-bearer himself, of whom more in the section on the Colour party. One may speak in the same breath of the Ensign carrying the Colour past the ensign flying at the gate, and mean a young officer and a flag. The kinds, then, are these: Colours, guidons, and standards are consecrated and embody their units; the National Flag and the service ensigns are flags and identify. Get the kinds right and the conventions that follow will never be misapplied.

The consecration of a Colour, and why it makes it sacred

A Colour does not become a consecrated emblem by being made or by being expensive. It becomes one by consecration, the single religious ceremony in which it is dedicated and set apart. This is the hinge of the whole lesson, because it is what turns rich cloth into a sacred thing. Until a Colour is consecrated it is only new bunting, however fine; once consecrated it embodies the unit and is treated as sacred to it.

Consecration happens once in a Colour's service life and is never repeated. New Colours are consecrated in a ceremony built upon the review parade: the unit is drawn up, the new Colours are uncased and laid upon a base, commonly a pile of drums dressed for the purpose, a chaplain conducts the act of dedication, prayers are offered, and the Colours are then presented to the unit and received by the officers who will carry them, after which the unit may troop and march past with its new Colours for the first time. From that day the Colour is sacred to the unit. The detail and choreography of the parade are learned and rehearsed in person; what the soldier must understand here is the meaning of the act, that it dedicates the Colour to God and to the unit's service of the Crown, and that this is why a consecrated Colour is reverenced and a mere flag is not.

Because consecration is once and unrepeatable, two consequences follow. First, when ceremony is wanted in later years, the Colour is not consecrated again but trooped, paraded before the unit so the soldiers know it; the lesson returns to trooping below. Second, when the Crown is renewed on a demise and accession, or when devices change, a Colour already consecrated is not altered or re-blessed but carried to the end of its natural life as it is; only its eventual replacement will bear the new style. The Colour's sanctity is fixed at its consecration and is not disturbed thereafter. This is why a unit treasures the very threads of an old Colour: they were made sacred once, and nothing since has unmade it.

The stand of Colours

A unit entitled to Colours carries a stand of Colours, two Colours together. The first is the Sovereign's Colour, the senior, royal Colour. It represents the Crown, the State, and the Army's loyalty to the Sovereign. It is based upon the National Flag and bears the unit's title with the Sovereign's cypher and crown, and within the stand it always takes the position of honour, on the right of the Colour party, which is the spectators' left. Where in British and Canadian practice this Colour is styled the Queen's or King's Colour, in a principality it is the Sovereign's, or the Prince's, Colour. The second is the Regimental Colour, which represents the unit's own identity, history, and esprit de corps, and bears the regimental badge, the motto, and any battle honours the unit has earned.

Between them the two Colours embody the things an army holds dearest: its honour, its history, its loyalty to the Sovereign, and its pride in itself. They are not merely the unit's flags but its identity made visible, the focus of its esprit de corps. That is why the conventions governing them are strict. There is a division of meaning worth holding: the Sovereign's Colour looks upward and outward, to the Crown and the State the unit serves; the Regimental Colour looks inward and backward, to the unit's own character and what it has done. The stand carries both at once, the loyalty and the identity, the Crown and the self, which is why a unit parades the two together and not either alone.

The conventions that govern the Colours

The Royal Kaharagian Army observes these conventions exactly as the Commonwealth tradition keeps them. Consecration happens once, in a ceremony built upon the review parade, and Colours are never re-consecrated. Where an occasion calls for ceremony thereafter, the Colour is trooped. Trooping the Colour is the parading of the Colour slowly down the ranks, at least once a year, so that every soldier may see it and know it by sight, the ancient purpose of "trooping": that a body of soldiers should know its own Colour without doubt. The right-flank company furnishes the Escort to the Colour, the body of soldiers that attends and guards it on parade.

Dipping is the lowering of a Colour in salute, and only a consecrated Colour is dipped. It is dipped only to the Sovereign, or to a regent or vice-regal representative standing for the Sovereign, and to no one else whatever their rank. Flags are never dipped at all. The Colour party carries the Colour: a single Colour is carried by a junior officer, the Colour Officer, with an escort of two senior non-commissioned officers, and a full stand is carried by two Colour Officers with a corresponding escort. The escort carries rifles with bayonets fixed, their points sheathed lest they tear the Colour, and the Colour party does not remove its headdress or unfix its bayonets even when the rest of the parade does, for the Colour is never left unguarded. Finally, when Colours are at last retired they are laid up, deposited as memorials in a church or other honoured place and left to decay naturally. They are never repaired, destroyed, or discarded. A Colour ends its life with dignity, fading where it was laid, and that is the only fitting end for it.

The care and escort of the Colour

The conventions above name the duties; this section gives the standard of care behind them, because handling the Colour is itself a discipline. The single rule from which the rest follows is plain: the Colour is never allowed to touch the ground and never allowed to fall. A Colour on the ground, or fallen from the hand, is the unit's honour in the dirt. So a Colour is at all times either held in the hand of its bearer, secured upright in a Colour-belt or socket at the carry, lodged with ceremony in a proper place, or cased and borne carefully when not paraded. It is not leaned in a corner, not laid across chairs, not set down on the floor for convenience. When a Colour must be lowered to be uncased or worked with, it is supported throughout and not let go. This is the most practical mark of reverence there is, and the easiest to judge: watch how a Colour is handled, and you see at once whether those handling it understand what it is.

The Colour is carried by the Ensign, the junior officer detailed as Colour Officer, who bears it at the carry with the pike socketed in the Colour-belt and steadied by the hand, and who is responsible for it absolutely while it is in his charge. He does not surrender it lightly, and he guards it with his honour. Around him stands the escort, the Colour party proper: the senior non-commissioned officers of the unit, the steadiest and most experienced ranks, chosen because the Colour is given into the keeping of those most trusted. They are armed, with bayonets fixed and points sheathed so the blade cannot tear the silk, and they flank and follow the Colour to guard it. The whole party keeps a heightened standard throughout: it stays covered and keeps its bayonets fixed even when the rest of the parade uncovers or unfixes. When the parade stands easy, the Colour party does not. When the parade removes headdress for a service, the Colour party keeps it on. This is not an exemption; it is the visible statement that the guard of the Colour never stands down while the Colour is on parade.

The Colour is lodged and paraded with ceremony at both ends of its day. It is marched on at the start of a parade and marched off at the end, received and dismissed with compliments; between parades it is lodged, kept secured and guarded in an appointed place, and brought out and returned under escort. Every movement of the Colour is a small ceremony, because the Colour is never handled casually. A soldier who finds this elaborate has not yet understood the point: the ceremony is the care, and the care is the reverence, made into drill so that it is never forgotten or skimped.

The compliments paid to and by the Colour

The Colour stands in a double relation to the compliments of the Army, and a soldier must hold both halves, because they are easily run together and are not the same thing. The Colour both receives compliments and, in one strict case only, renders one.

The Colour receives the salute as the embodiment of the unit. When a Colour passes, or is passed, or is on parade, it is paid the compliments owed to the unit it embodies: soldiers salute it, formed bodies present arms or turn eyes toward it. Lesson 04 sets this out in full, that a compliment is rendered to the Sovereign, to the Sovereign's commission, and to the Colours, the Colours being saluted because they embody the unit, its service, and its honour. The salute paid to the Colour is not paid to a piece of cloth; it is paid to the unit, its history, and its loyalty to the Crown, all gathered into the Colour and made visible. To salute the Colour is to salute the unit itself.

The Colour renders a compliment in one case only: it dips. To dip is to lower the Colour in salute, the Colour-bearer bringing the pike down from the upright so that the Colour itself bows. Here is the firm canon of the whole lesson, the line on which ceremonial is most often got wrong and on which the course will not waver: the Colour dips only to the Sovereign, and to nothing and no one else. It is dipped to The Prince, 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, not to any dignitary however honoured. The reason is exactly 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. This is not a discourtesy to a distinguished guest, who is honoured in every other way the occasion allows; it is the mark of what the Colour is. Lesson 07 returns to this at the guard of honour, where a Colour renders the royal salute to the Sovereign by dipping but renders a general salute to any other person without dipping; hold the canon now, because it is the single thing about the Colours a soldier must never get wrong.

   DOES THE COLOUR DIP?

   To The Prince (the Sovereign) ................... YES   (dipped in salute)
   To a regent / vice-regal representative
     standing in the Sovereign's place ............. YES   (he 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 dips ............................ NEVER, to anyone

Figure 2. The dipping of the Colour. A consecrated Colour dips only to the Sovereign, or to one standing in the Sovereign's place; it dips to no other person and on no other occasion. Flags are never dipped at all. The conduct of the movement is certified in person; the canon is learned and held here.

The flags and the personal standard

Alongside the Colours the Army uses flags, and the soldier should know them and keep them distinct. The National Flag of Kaharagia is the senior flag of the Principality and is flown at every Army establishment. On parade it is carried by a senior non-commissioned officer and, by custom, has no armed escort unless the troops on parade are themselves armed. The Army Ensign identifies the land service. In the Commonwealth manner it is formed of the National Flag in the canton, the upper quarter next to the staff, upon a field of the Army's distinguishing colour, defaced in the fly with the badge of the Army. To "deface" a flag, in heraldry, means simply to add a badge to it, and carries no negative sense. The Sovereign's personal standard outranks the National Flag and is flown only where the Sovereign is personally present; it is struck the moment the Sovereign departs. None of these flags is consecrated and none is ever dipped. All of them, like every device the Army bears, are granted by the Institute of Heraldry.

A word on precedence, because a soldier may have to fly more than one flag and must know which is senior. The order, highest first, is the Sovereign's personal standard, flown only when the Prince is present and struck when he leaves; then the National Flag, the senior flag in ordinary use and the one flown at every establishment; then the Army Ensign and other service or distinguishing flags. Where flags are flown together the senior takes the position of honour and is never flown lower than a junior; where one flagstaff carries the day's flag, it is the National Flag unless the Sovereign's presence calls for his standard. None of this touches the Colours, which are not in the order of flags at all, being consecrated emblems and not bunting; the order of precedence is among flags, and the Colours stand outside and above it.

Flag and ensign etiquette

Flags are not consecrated, but they are not handled carelessly either, for they stand for the Principality and the service, and the way a flag is treated is read by everyone who sees it. The etiquette is simple, exact, and a matter a soldier can keep without supervision.

A flag is hoisted briskly and lowered slowly. It goes up smartly, run quickly to the peak as the day begins, and comes down slowly and with ceremony at the day's end, lowered with deliberate dignity rather than dropped. The difference is deliberate: the brisk hoist greets the day, the slow lowering honours the flag as it is taken in. A flag is flown by day, or for such hours as are ordered, and brought in accordingly; the daily hoisting and lowering are the morning and evening colours at which compliments are paid, treated in Lesson 04. A flag is never allowed to touch the ground, in hoisting, lowering, handling, or storage, and never used carelessly or for any unworthy purpose: it is not bunting for decoration, not a cover or a wrapping, not a thing to be left out tattered in the weather. A flag worn out in honest service is replaced and the old one disposed of decently, not flown in rags. These rules are small, but they are the visible respect the Principality's flag is owed.

When a flag is taken in it is folded respectfully and stored with care, not bundled. It is folded by a settled drill, brought together by its handlers in measured folds into a neat shape, kept clean and dry, and stored where it will not be soiled or crushed, ready to be flown again. The exact folding sequence is shown and practised in person; what the soldier holds here is the principle, that a flag is folded with the same care it is flown with.

Half-masting: the form of mourning

The most exact piece of flag etiquette, and the one most often got wrong, is half-masting, the lowering of the National Flag as the Principality's most public sign of mourning. Mourning is shown by half-mast, and by half-mast alone; it is never shown by dipping, for flags are never dipped and the Colours dip only to the Sovereign. A soldier must know the form exactly, because an error in it is seen by everyone.

The flag is never raised directly to the half-mast position. To half-mast a flag, it is first hoisted briskly the whole way to the peak, held there for a moment, and then lowered slowly to the half-mast position, roughly one flag's depth, or about a third of the staff, down from the top, judged so that the flag flies clear in its place of mourning. The flag stays there through the period of mourning. To bring it down at the end of the day, or to return it to full height when mourning is over, the order is reversed: the flag is first raised again briskly to the peak, held, and only then lowered slowly and struck, or left at the full for ordinary flying. The flag rises to the peak at the beginning and returns to the peak at the end, and is at half-mast only in between. The reason is that half-masting is itself a salute: the flag is brought to the peak to render that salute to the dead before it is lowered in grief, and brought to the peak again to render it once more before it is finally taken in. To run a flag straight up to half-mast, or to strike it from half-mast without first raising it, omits the salute and mistakes the whole meaning of the act.

   HALF-MASTING THE NATIONAL FLAG  (read left to right)

   TO HALF-MAST:                          TO LOWER / RETURN:
                                          (reverse the order)

   peak  |[#]      |[#]      |            |         |[#]      |[#]
         |   hoist |  pause  | lower      | raise   |  pause  | then
         |  BRISK  |   at    | SLOWLY     | BRISK   |   at    | lower
         |  to the |  peak   |  to        | to the  |  peak   | SLOWLY
   half  |  peak   |         | [#] half   | peak    |         | and strike
   mast  |         |         |  mast      | [#]     |         |
         |         |         |            |         |         |
   foot  +----     +----     +----        +----     +----     +----

   NEVER raise straight to half-mast.  ALWAYS to the peak first,
   and to the peak again before lowering or striking.

Figure 3. The half-masting sequence. The flag is hoisted briskly to the peak, paused, then lowered slowly to the half-mast position; to take it down it is first raised briskly to the peak again, paused, then lowered slowly and struck. The flag is brought to the peak to render the salute before and after the period of mourning. The drill of handling the halyard is certified in person; the sequence and its meaning are learned here.

The authority for half-masting matters as much as the form, and the course returns to it in Lesson 07: an establishment does not lower its flag on its own judgement, however genuine its grief, but on the order of the Royal Court, for the death of the Sovereign or a member of the Princely House, for national mourning, or for the death of a serving member, so that the Principality mourns as one and on proper authority. The form is kept here; the authority is kept there; both are part of mourning done correctly.

Badge, cypher, Crown, motto, and battle honours

The Army's identity is carried also in smaller devices, each with its meaning. The regimental badge is the single most important identifying device of the Army, worn on the headdress and appearing on the Regimental Colour, on buttons, on vehicles, and on stationery. The Sovereign's cypher is the reigning Sovereign's initial and regnal style intertwined and ensigned with the crown, and it marks devices and property as the Sovereign's, appearing on the Sovereign's Colour, on badges, and on warrants of appointment. The Crown above a badge denotes royal authority, and on a demise and accession the style of crown and the cypher are renewed across the Army's insignia, though Colours already consecrated are not altered but carried to the end of their natural life. The motto, borne on a scroll with the badge, expresses the Army's ethos in a few words and is not altered casually.

The battle honours call for particular honesty, and this course keeps it. A battle honour is the name of a battle or campaign that a unit is officially permitted to bear, emblazoned upon its Regimental Colour to record its operational history. Battle honours are awarded by the Crown against settled criteria, and only a selected number are emblazoned. They commemorate real engagements, and the cardinal rule is that they are earned, not designed. The Royal Kaharagian Army is young, founded in 2010, and it does not invent a history it has not lived. This lesson therefore records only the mechanism by which an honour would be granted and emblazoned; it names no honours, because the Army does not anticipate honours it has not won. To treat the honours of the Crown with the seriousness that truth requires is itself a mark of the discipline this course teaches, and a soldier should be proud that the Army's Colours bear only what the Army has truly earned.

That honesty has a visible form on the Colour itself. On the Regimental Colour the spaces where battle honours would be emblazoned are, on the Army's Colours, empty, the honour scroll bearing the badge and the motto but no honour names, because none has yet been earned. This emptiness is not a lack to be embarrassed by or, worse, quietly filled with invented names; it is an honest record, and a kind of promise. The scroll waits, and it will bear only what is one day truly won in real service to the Crown, and not one name before. A unit that carried false honours would dishonour its Colour at the very point the Colour exists to honour, the unit's real history; a unit that carries an empty scroll carries the truth, and there is more honour in a true blank than in a designed lie. The space waiting to be earned says exactly what the Army is: young, honest, and building a history it means to deserve.

The reverence owed the Colours

All of this comes to a single point of conduct. The Colours are honoured and saluted as the embodiment of the Army's identity and loyalty, and a soldier treats them with a reverence owed to nothing else of cloth. They are saluted on parade; their Colour party stands armed and covered when the rest of the parade relaxes; they are guarded, never let touch the ground or fall, trooped so the soldiers may know them, dipped only to the Sovereign, and at the last laid up to fade with dignity. To understand the Colours is to understand that the Army's honour, its loyalty to the Crown, and its pride in itself are gathered into them and made visible, and that to pay them respect is to pay respect to all the Army is. A soldier who grasps this carries the right bearing toward the Colours without being told. The conventions are many, but they all say one thing: this is the unit, made visible, and it is treated accordingly.

In Practice: The New Colours at the Cathedral Square

A stand of new Colours is to be consecrated for a unit of the Royal Kaharagian Army on a great square in the capital, and a sergeant who will form part of the escort prepares his soldiers for it. He tells them plainly what they are about to take part in, and why it can happen only once. The Colours will be consecrated this single time and never again; the chaplain will dedicate them upon a base of drums, the unit will receive them, and from that day the unit will troop them, parading them slowly down the ranks year by year so that every soldier knows them by sight, but it will not consecrate them a second time. He shows them the stand: the Sovereign's Colour, based on the National Flag and bearing the Sovereign's cypher and crown, which will always take the place of honour on the right; and the Regimental Colour, bearing the badge and the motto, and bearing no battle honour, because the unit has earned none and the Army does not invent them. He has the youngest of them look closely at the empty honour scroll, and tells them not to be ashamed of it but proud of it, because it is honest, and it waits.

Then he drills them on the care of it, which is the part their hands will do. The Colour is never to touch the ground and never to fall, he says; while it is on parade it is either in the Ensign's hand, socketed in his Colour-belt, or lodged with ceremony, and never set down for convenience. He reminds the escort that on the day they will carry their rifles with bayonets fixed and points sheathed so the blade cannot tear the silk, and that the Colour party will not uncover or unfix even when the parade does, for the guard of the Colour never stands down while the Colour is out. He tells them the one thing they must never get wrong: the Colour dips only to the Sovereign, to The Prince and to no one else, however grand the guest, and if they ever see it lowered to any other they will know something is badly wrong. And he tells them what the end of these Colours will one day be, long after his own service: not the rubbish heap, but a quiet laying-up in an honoured place, to fade where they are laid. His soldiers handle the Colours differently after that, because they now know what they are.

Check Your Understanding

Distinguish a Colour from a flag, giving the defining feature of each, and explain what makes a Colour a consecrated emblem rather than a grand flag. How does a Colour differ from a guidon or a standard, and from an ensign, and why does the lesson say that calling the National Flag "the Colours" shows a misunderstanding?
Describe the stand of Colours and what each Colour embodies, then explain the care and escort of the Colour: who carries it, who guards it, why the Colour party stays armed and covered when the parade relaxes, and the rule that the Colour never touches the ground. Explain how the Colour both receives the salute and dips, and state to whom alone it dips.
Give the correct sequence for half-masting the National Flag, and for returning it, and explain why the flag is brought to the peak at each end. Then explain how battle honours are awarded, why the lesson records only the mechanism and names none, and why an empty honour scroll is a thing to take pride in.

Reflection (write a short paragraph): This lesson says a Colour is a consecrated symbol that embodies the unit, its honour, its history, and its loyalty to the Crown, and that every convention governing it, consecration once, the Colour never touching the ground, the Colour party that stays armed and covered, dipping only to the Sovereign, and the laying-up to decay, flows from what the Colour is. Choose one of these conventions and explain what it expresses about the reverence owed the Colours, and why a soldier who treated the Colour as merely the unit's flag would miss something important. Then consider the empty honour scroll of a young Army: why is carrying a true blank more honourable than emblazoning honours that were never earned, and how does understanding all this change the bearing a soldier brings to the Colours?

Summary

A Colour is a consecrated symbol that embodies the unit, its honour, its history, its identity, and its loyalty to the Crown; it is not a grand flag but a sacred thing, saluted as the unit itself. From this one truth every convention follows.
Colours are consecrated, carried in pairs, and dipped only to the Sovereign; guidons and standards are the consecrated emblems of mounted and armoured units and are treated identically; flags, including the National Flag and the Army Ensign, are not consecrated and are never dipped, and "Colours" is never used for the National Flag. The word "ensign" names both a flag and the junior officer who carries a Colour.
Consecration happens once and is never repeated; it dedicates the Colour and makes it sacred to the unit. Thereafter the Colour is trooped, not re-consecrated, paraded down the ranks so every soldier knows it; a Colour already consecrated is carried to the end of its life unaltered, and at the last is laid up to fade with dignity, never repaired, destroyed, or discarded.
A unit's stand is the Sovereign's Colour, the senior royal Colour based on the National Flag and always in the position of honour on the right, and the Regimental Colour, bearing the unit's badge, motto, and any battle honours. Together they embody the Army's honour, history, loyalty to the Sovereign, and esprit de corps.
The Colour is never allowed to touch the ground or to fall; it is carried by the Ensign, a junior officer, and escorted by a Colour party of senior non-commissioned officers who stay armed and covered when the parade relaxes, and it is lodged and paraded with ceremony. The Colour receives the salute as the unit's embodiment, and dips only to the Sovereign, or to one standing in the Sovereign's place, and to nothing and no one else.
Flags are hoisted briskly and lowered slowly, flown by day or as ordered, never allowed to touch the ground or be used carelessly, and folded and stored with care; mourning is shown by half-mast, by first hoisting to the peak then lowering, and reversing the order before finally lowering or striking, never raised directly to half-mast, on the order of the Royal Court (Lessons 04 and 07).
The badge, the Sovereign's cypher, the Crown, and the motto are the Army's principal devices, all granted by the Institute of Heraldry. Battle honours are awarded by the Crown for real operations and are earned, not designed; the young Royal Kaharagian Army records only the mechanism, names none, and carries an honest empty honour scroll that waits to be earned, which is a thing to take pride in.

The Colours and the Ensign