Lesson Overview
The previous lesson taught what the Colours are: consecrated emblems that embody the unit, its honour, its history, and its loyalty to the Crown. This lesson teaches what follows in the hand, because a truth held only in the mind is no use on a parade ground. A Colour is honoured not by knowing about it but by the way it is carried, guarded, complimented, mourned, and at the last laid to rest. Every convention in this lesson is the same reverence made practical, turned into something a soldier does with the body so that it is never forgotten or skimped.
This lesson sets out the custody and care of the Colours from the moment they are uncased to the day they are laid up: the absolute and unbroken responsibility for a Colour while it is out, which is never set down for convenience; the Colour party and its escort, who keep a heightened standard and do not stand down while the Colour is on parade; the compliments owed to the Colours and rendered by them; the treatment of the Colours in mourning, which are draped or cased and never half-masted, because a Colour is carried on a pike and not flown on a mast; and the laying-up of old Colours in an honoured place, to fade where they are laid rather than be destroyed. The most exact and most easily mistaken point in the whole lesson is the difference between mourning a Colour and mourning a flag, and a soldier must hold it firmly.
By the end you will be able to state the rule of unbroken custody and the three lawful places a Colour may be at any moment, describe the composition and conduct of the Colour party and its escort and why they keep a heightened standard, explain the compliments the Colours receive and the one compliment they render, set out exactly how the Colours are treated in mourning and why they are never half-masted, and describe the laying-up of retired Colours and why a Colour is left to fade rather than repaired or destroyed.
Key Terms
- Custody of the Colour: the absolute and unbroken responsibility for a Colour while it is out of its case, which rests with the Colour Officer and the Colour party and is never set aside, even for a moment, for convenience.
- Colour Officer (the Ensign): the junior officer detailed to carry a Colour on parade, bearing it at the carry with the pike socketed in the Colour-belt; "Ensign" here names the office of the Colour-bearer, not a rank.
- 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.
- Colour party: the Colour Officer or officers who carry the Colours together with the escort of senior non-commissioned officers who guard them.
- Escort to the Colour: the senior non-commissioned officers detailed to guard the Colour, armed with rifles, bayonets fixed and points sheathed, who flank and follow it and never leave it unguarded.
- 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.
- Draping (in mourning): the dressing of a Colour with a band of black crape near the head of the pike as a mark of mourning, the Colour itself remaining uncased and carried.
- Casing (in mourning): the enclosing of a Colour in its protective cover so that it is not displayed, used in deeper mourning or where the Colour is not to be carried.
- Laying-up: the depositing of a retired Colour in a church or other honoured place, where it is left to age and decay undisturbed, never repaired, destroyed, or put to other use.
The rule of unbroken custody
Begin with the single rule from which this whole lesson is the working-out: while a Colour is out of its case, it is never without a responsible hand and never set down for convenience. The previous lesson gave the reason, that a Colour on the ground or fallen from the hand is the unit's honour in the dirt. This lesson gives the discipline that keeps it from ever happening. A Colour is not an object that is sometimes guarded and sometimes left; from the moment it is uncased to the moment it is cased again, the responsibility for it is continuous, absolute, and personally owned. There is no instant in which no one is answerable for the Colour, because the unit's honour does not take a moment off.
So a Colour is, at every moment it is out, in one of exactly three lawful states, and a soldier should be able to name all three. It is in the Colour Officer's hand, carried at the carry or borne in movement, steadied and controlled. It is 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 the bearer's charge and still guarded. Or it is lodged with ceremony, set in a proper place, a stand, a rest, or a sentried position, by a deliberate act and under guard, and not merely propped. What a 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 to whoever is nearest so the officer can do something else. Those are not lawful states for a Colour, and a Colour found in any of them is a fault that an instructor will correct at once, because it shows that the hand has forgotten what the mind was taught.
This is the most practical mark of reverence there is, and the easiest of all to judge. You cannot see whether a soldier understands the history embodied in a Colour, but you can see in a glance whether they are letting it touch the ground, whether the bearer's hand is on it, whether it is socketed or merely balanced. Watch how a Colour is handled across a long and tiring day, when the easy thing would be to set it down, and you see at once whether those handling it have understood what it is. The discipline of unbroken custody is the reverence of the first lesson made visible in the body, and it is the standard against which everything else in this lesson is measured.
WHERE MAY A COLOUR BE? (while out of its case)
LAWFUL NEVER
[1] In the Colour Officer's hand Leaned in a corner
carried, steadied, controlled Laid across chairs or a table
[2] Socketed in the Colour-belt Set on the floor "for a moment"
foot in the bucket, upright, Handed off to whoever is nearest
still under charge, still guarded Propped unguarded against a wall
[3] Lodged with ceremony Set down for convenience
in a stand or rest, by a in ANY form, at ANY time
deliberate act, under guard
Out of its case, a Colour is ALWAYS in state [1], [2], or [3].
There is no moment in which no one is answerable for it.
Figure 1. The three lawful states of a Colour out of its case. At every instant the Colour is either in the bearer's hand, socketed in the Colour-belt, or lodged with ceremony under guard. The "state of convenience" is not lawful and never has been; a Colour set down to save trouble is a fault, however brief. The exact drill of socketing and lodging is certified in person; the rule is held here.
The Colour party and the escort
The Colour is not carried alone. It moves with a Colour party, made up of those who carry it and those who guard it, and the composition of that party is itself a mark of how the Army values the Colour, because it gives the Colour into the keeping of its most trusted people. A soldier should know who they are and why they are chosen.
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. A single Colour is carried by one Colour Officer; a full stand of two Colours is carried by two. The Colour Officer bears the Colour at the carry, the pike socketed in the Colour-belt and steadied by the hand, and is responsible for it absolutely while it is in his charge. He does not surrender it lightly and he guards it with his honour. Note that "Ensign" here names the office of the bearer and not a rank: there is no rank of Ensign in the Royal Kaharagian Army, and the young officer who carries the Colour holds the rank of Second Lieutenant or Lieutenant and is styled the Ensign only for the duty.
Around the Colour Officer stands the escort, the senior non-commissioned officers of the unit detailed to guard the Colour. These are deliberately the steadiest and most experienced ranks, Sergeants and above, Colour Sergeants by long tradition among them, because the Colour is given into the keeping of those most trusted, not the most junior or most available. They are armed, carrying rifles with bayonets fixed and the points sheathed, the bayonet covered so that the naked blade cannot tear or fray the silk of the Colour it is there to protect, and they flank and follow the Colour to guard it on every side. The escort does not exist to make the Colour look impressive; it exists to ensure that the Colour can never be approached, seized, fouled, or left unguarded, and every soldier in it knows that the Colour is, for the duration, the first object of their duty.
THE COLOUR PARTY IN ORDER (a single Colour, viewed from the front)
[ COLOUR ]
|| pike, socketed in the Colour-belt
||
(Colour Officer) <- the Ensign: a junior officer
the bearer (2Lt / Lt), responsible
for the Colour absolutely
(Escort NCO) (Escort NCO) <- senior NCOs (Sgt and
rifle, bayonet rifle, bayonet above), bayonets fixed,
fixed, sheathed fixed, sheathed POINTS SHEATHED so the
blade cannot tear the silk
The party flanks and guards the Colour on every side and does not
stand down, uncover, or unfix while the Colour is on parade.
A full STAND of two Colours is carried by two Colour Officers with
a corresponding escort.
Figure 2. The Colour party for a single Colour: the Colour Officer, the Ensign, bears the Colour, and the escort of senior non-commissioned officers guards it, bayonets fixed and points sheathed. The composition expresses the value placed on the Colour, which is entrusted to the most experienced and most trusted. The exact spacing, marching, and movements are certified in person.
The mark of the Colour party throughout a parade is its heightened standard, and this is the point a soldier most often finds strange and most needs to understand. The Colour party 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. This is not a privilege or an exemption granted to a favoured few; it is 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: someone, always, is on guard over the Colour, and that someone does not get to stop.
The compliments owed to and by the Colours
The Colours stand in a double relation to the compliments of the Army, exactly as the first lesson set out, and this lesson fixes the practical side. The Colours both receive compliments, as the embodiment of the unit, and, in one strict case only, render one. A soldier must hold both halves and not run them together, because they are not the same thing and the difference matters on parade.
The Colours receive the salute because they embody the unit. When a Colour is on parade, or passes, or is passed, it is paid the compliments owed to the unit itself: individual soldiers salute it, and formed bodies present arms or turn their eyes toward it on the word of command. A compliment is rendered, by the Army's custom, to the Sovereign, to the Sovereign's commission, and to the Colours, and the Colours are saluted because they embody the unit, its service, and its honour. This is why the Colour party's own bearing matters so much: it carries the thing the whole parade is saluting, and it must carry it as the unit's honour deserves to be carried. The salute paid to the Colour is never 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.
The Colours render a compliment in one case only: they dip. 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. Here is the firm canon carried over from the first lesson, the line on which ceremonial is most often got wrong and on which this course will not waver: 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. 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 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 can dip, and a Colour dips only to the Sovereign. Hold this canon now, because it is the single thing about the Colours a soldier must never get wrong.
The Colours in mourning
Now comes the most exact and most easily mistaken passage in the whole lesson, and the consistency point on which the course is most insistent. When the Army mourns, its Colours and its flags are treated by two entirely different methods, and to confuse them is to make the most public ceremonial error there is. A flag is mourned by half-masting. A Colour is mourned by draping or casing, and is never half-masted. The reason is not custom for its own sake but a plain physical fact: a flag is flown from a halyard on a mast, and so it can be raised to the peak and lowered to half-mast; a Colour is carried by hand on a pike, and a pike has no mast, no halyard, and no half-mast position to lower to. You cannot half-mast a thing that is not on a mast. The two methods belong to two different objects, and a soldier who half-masts a Colour, or who tries to drape a flag, has shown that they do not understand either.
How, then, is a Colour mourned? By one of two means, according to the depth of mourning and whether the Colour is to be carried. The first is draping. A band of black crape is tied near the head of the pike, just below the finial, so that it hangs against the Colour as a visible mark of grief, while the Colour itself remains uncased and is carried in the ordinary way, at the carry, in the hand or socketed, guarded by its party exactly as always. The Colour goes about its duty, but it goes in mourning, the black crape declaring the unit's grief without the Colour ceasing to be borne. The second is casing. The Colour is enclosed in its protective cover and not displayed at all, used in deeper mourning, or where the occasion is one at which the Colour is present but not to be shown, or where the Colour is not to be carried. A cased Colour is still under the full custody and guard of its party; it is not displayed, but it is not abandoned. Between draping and casing the unit shows the degree of its mourning, the drape for grief borne openly on a carried Colour, the case for grief that withdraws the Colour from sight.
MOURNING: TWO OBJECTS, TWO METHODS (never confuse them)
A FLAG (on a mast, by a halyard) A COLOUR (on a pike, by hand)
+--------+ || finial
| | hoist to peak first, ||==== black CRAPE tied near
| | then lower to || the head of the pike
+--------+ HALF-MAST ||
| flag | || the Colour, still carried,
| | one flag's depth down || still guarded, in mourning
| | for the period of mourning ||
| mast | || OR, in deeper mourning,
| | THEN raise to peak again [==] the Colour is CASED
| | before lowering / striking [==] (enclosed, not displayed,
+--------+ [==] but still under guard)
FLAGS are HALF-MASTED. COLOURS are DRAPED or CASED.
A Colour is NEVER half-masted: a pike has no mast and no halyard,
and so no half-mast position to lower to.
Figure 3. Mourning a flag and mourning a Colour are two different acts for two different objects. A flag, flown on a mast, is half-masted; a Colour, carried on a pike, is draped with crape or cased, and is never half-masted, because it has no mast to half-mast on. The handling of crape and the casing of a Colour are certified in person; the distinction is held here, and it is the one a soldier must never get wrong.
One further consequence follows, and it ties back to the dipping canon of the first lesson. At a military funeral, the Colour is draped or cased in mourning, but it is not dipped to the dead, however honoured the fallen, because a Colour dips only to the Sovereign. The Army shows its grief over the Colour by the crape and the case, not by lowering the Colour in salute to anyone but the Crown. So the two halves of the Colour's conduct stay perfectly clear: it dips for one reason only, loyalty to the Sovereign, and it mourns by a wholly separate means, the drape and the case, which are not a salute and are never confused with one. Lesson 09 treats the military funeral in full; what a soldier holds here is that mourning a Colour and dipping a Colour are two different things, and that a Colour is mourned by draping or casing and never by half-masting or by dipping.
The laying-up of old Colours
Every Colour comes, in the end, to the close of its service, and the way the Army ends a Colour's life is the last and in some ways the gentlest expression of what the Colour is. A Colour worn by years of service, its silk thinned and its embroidery faded, is not thrown away, not cut up, not burned, and not even repaired back to newness. It is laid up. To lay up a Colour is to deposit it, with ceremony, in a place of honour, ordinarily a church, a cathedral, a chapel, or a hall of the Service, and there to leave it, undisturbed, to age and decay naturally where it hangs, until in the fullness of years nothing remains but a few threads on the staff. That slow fading in an honoured place, and not the rubbish heap or the fire, is the proper and the only fitting end for a Colour.
A soldier reasonably asks why, and the answer is the whole of the first lesson come round again. The Colour was consecrated once and made sacred to the unit; nothing since has unmade it, and so it cannot simply be discarded like worn-out kit, for it is not kit but a sacred thing. Yet a new Colour must one day take its place, and the old one cannot be carried for ever. The laying-up resolves this exactly: the old Colour is honourably retired, not destroyed, and is given over to a slow and dignified decay in a place where it is seen and remembered. It is not repaired, because to renew it would be to deny its age and the service that aged it; the fading is the record of its years, and is honoured, not hidden. It is not destroyed, because to destroy a consecrated emblem of the unit's honour would be a kind of dishonour even when kindly meant. It is not put to other use, never cut down for relics, never made into anything else, never sold or given away. It is left whole, in honour, to fade where it was laid. A unit treasures the very last threads of an old Colour for this reason: they were made sacred once, they embody every soldier who marched behind them, and they are allowed the dignity of ending in their own time and their own place.
This too distinguishes the Colour from the flag at the very end of life, and the contrast is worth holding. A worn-out flag is disposed of decently and privately, replaced when it is no longer fit to fly, for a flag is bunting and its replacement carries no loss. A worn-out Colour is laid up to fade in an honoured place, mourned a little in the laying, kept in sight and in memory, for a Colour is the unit made visible and is not replaced so much as succeeded. The flag is renewed; the Colour is honoured into its rest. The way an army ends the life of its emblems says what it believes those emblems are, and the Royal Kaharagian Army, by laying up its Colours to fade rather than discarding them, says plainly that its Colours are sacred and that its honour does not end when the silk wears thin.
In Practice: A Long Day and a Quiet Ending
A Colour Sergeant of the Royal Kaharagian Army is detailed to the escort for a stand of Colours at a long day of ceremonial in the capital, a parade in the morning, a service of dedication at midday, and a reception in the afternoon, and he prepares the escort the night before by walking them through the whole day in terms of the Colour, not the clock. The Colour, he tells them, will be uncased at the start and not cased again until the very end, and for every minute in between it must be in one of three places and no other: in the Colour Officer's hand, socketed in his Colour-belt, or lodged with ceremony under guard. There is no moment, he says, not when the parade is stood easy, not while they wait between events, not when their arms ache, in which the Colour may be leaned in a corner or set down to save trouble. If any of them ever sees the Colour on the ground, something has gone badly wrong, and it will be one of them who answers for it.
He drills them on the day's two traps. The first is the midday service, at which the rest of the parade will remove headdress and may unfix bayonets to enter the church; the escort will do neither, he says, but will stay covered, bayonets fixed and points sheathed, because the guard of the Colour does not stand down while the Colour is out, even in a church, even when everyone around them has eased. The second trap is one of mood: the service is in memory of a soldier of the unit lately dead, and the Colour will be draped, a band of black crape tied near the head of the pike, carried in mourning through the day. He makes them say it back to him: the Colour is draped, not half-masted, because a Colour is on a pike and not a mast, and it is not dipped to the fallen either, because a Colour dips only to the Sovereign, and to The Prince today is not present. The crape shows the grief; the dip is reserved; the two are not the same. And he tells them, last, what these Colours will one day come to, long after his service and theirs: not the fire and not the bin, but a quiet laying-up in the cathedral, to hang and fade where they are laid, honoured into their rest. His escort carries the Colour differently the next day, through the whole long tiring day, because they now know exactly what it is they hold and exactly what they are guarding it for.
Check Your Understanding
- State the rule of unbroken custody and name the three lawful states a Colour may be in while it is out of its case. Explain why "set down for convenience" is never one of them, and why the handling of a Colour is the easiest mark of reverence to judge. Who carries the Colour, who escorts it, and why are the escort drawn from the senior non-commissioned officers rather than the most junior soldiers?
- Explain the heightened standard the Colour party keeps, giving the two examples of staying covered and keeping bayonets fixed when the parade does the opposite, and say what this standard expresses. Then explain how the Colours both receive a compliment and render one, and state to whom alone a Colour dips and why a flag is never dipped at all.
- Describe exactly how the Colours are treated in mourning, and explain why a Colour is draped or cased and never half-masted while a flag is half-masted and never draped. Why is a Colour not dipped to the dead at a funeral? Then describe the laying-up of a retired Colour, and explain why it is left to fade rather than repaired, destroyed, or put to other use.
Reflection (write a short paragraph): This lesson argues that the reverence taught in the first lesson is real only when it lives in the hand: in the Colour that is never set down, the party that never stands down, the Colour mourned by crape and not by half-mast, and the old Colour laid up to fade rather than thrown away. Choose one of these and explain what it expresses about what a Colour is, and what a soldier who treated the Colour as merely the unit's flag would miss. Then consider the difference between mourning a flag and mourning a Colour: why does the course insist so firmly that a Colour is never half-masted, and what does getting this one distinction right, or wrong, reveal about whether a soldier truly understands the thing in their hands?
Summary
- While a Colour is out of its case, custody of it is absolute and unbroken: at every moment it is in the Colour Officer's hand, socketed in the Colour-belt, or lodged with ceremony under guard, and it is never set down for convenience. A Colour on the ground is the unit's honour in the dirt, and how a Colour is handled across a long day is the plainest mark of whether those handling it understand what it is.
- The Colour party is the Colour Officer, the Ensign, a junior officer (a Second Lieutenant or Lieutenant) who bears the Colour absolutely while it is in his charge, together with an escort of the steadiest senior non-commissioned officers, Sergeants and above, armed with bayonets fixed and points sheathed so the blade cannot tear the silk. "Ensign" names the office of the bearer, not a rank.
- The Colour party keeps a heightened standard 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 on parade.
- The Colours receive the salute as the embodiment of the unit, and render a compliment in one case only: they dip, and they dip only to the Sovereign, to H.R.H. The Prince or to one standing in his place, and to nothing and no one else. A flag is never dipped at all.
- In mourning the Colours are draped with black crape near the head of the pike, or in deeper mourning cased, and are never half-masted, because a Colour is carried on a pike and not flown on a mast and has no half-mast position to lower to. Flags are half-masted; Colours are draped or cased. At a funeral the Colour is draped or cased but not dipped to the dead, for it dips only to the Sovereign.
- A retired Colour is laid up in a church or other honoured place and left to age and decay naturally where it hangs, never repaired, destroyed, or put to other use. The fading is the honoured record of its service; a worn flag is replaced, but a Colour is honoured into its rest, because it is the consecrated unit made visible and not a piece of bunting.
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