Only a Subaltern by Rudyard Kipling

Not only to enforce by command but to encourage by example / the energetic discharge of duty and the steady endurance of / the difficulties and privations inseparable from Military / Service. -- Bengal Army Regulations.

They made Bobby Wick pass an examination at Sandhurst. He was a / gentleman before he was gazetted, so, when the Empress announced that / "Gentleman-Cadet Robert Hanna Wick" was posted as Second Lieutenant to / the Tyneside Tail Twisters at Krab Bokhar, he became an officer and a / gentleman, which is an enviable thing; and there was joy in the house / of Wick, where Mamma Wick and all the little Wicks fell upon their knees / and offered incense to Bobby by virtue of his achievements.

Papa Wick had been a Commissioner in his day, holding authority over / three millions of men in the Chota-Buldana Division, building great / works for the good of the land, and doing his best to make two blades / of grass grow where there was but one before. Of course, nobody knew / anything about this in the little English village where he was just "old / Mr. Wick" and had forgotten that he was a Companion of the Order of the / Star of India.

He patted Bobby on the shoulder and said: "Well done, my boy!"

There followed, while the uniform was being prepared, an interval of / pure delight, during which Bobby took brevet-rank as a "man" at the / women-swamped tennis-parties and tea-fights of the village, and, I / daresay, had his joining-time been extended, would have fallen in love / with several girls at once. Little country villages at Home are very / full of nice girls, because all the young men come out to India to make / their fortunes.

"India," said Papa Wick, "is the place. I've had thirty years of it, / and, begad, I'd like to go back again. When you join the Tail Twisters / you'll be among friends, if every one hasn't forgotten Wick of / Chota-Buldana, and a lot of people will be kind to you for our sakes. / The mother will tell you more about outfit than I can, but remember / this. Stick to your Regiment, Bobby -- stick to your Regiment. You'll see / men all round you going into the Staff Corps, and doing every possible / sort of duty but regimental, and you may be tempted to follow suit. Now / so long as you keep within your allowance, and I haven't stinted you / there, stick to the Line, the whole Line, and nothing but the Line. Be / careful how you back another young fool's bill, and if you fall in love / with a woman twenty years older than yourself, don't tell me about it, / that's all."

With these counsels, and many others equally valuable, did Papa Wick / fortify Bobby ere that last awful night at Portsmouth when the Officers' / Quarters held more inmates than were provided for by the Regulations, / and the liberty-men of the ships fell foul of the drafts for India, and / the battle raged from the Dockyard Gates even to the slums of Longport, / while the drabs of Fratton came down and scratched the faces of the / Queen's Officers.

Bobby Wick, with an ugly bruise on his freckled nose, a sick and shaky / detachment to manoeuvre inship, and the comfort of fifty scornful / females to attend to, had no time to feel homesick till the Malabar / reached mid-Channel, when he doubled his emotions with a little / guard-visiting and a great many other matters.

The Tail Twisters were a most particular Regiment. Those who knew them / least said that they were eaten up with "side. " But their reserve and / their internal arrangements generally were merely protective diplomacy. / Some five years before, the Colonel commanding had looked into the / fourteen fearless eyes of seven plump and juicy subalterns who had all / applied to enter the Staff Corps, and had asked them why the three / stars should he, a colonel of the Line, command a dashed nursery for / double-dashed bottle-suckers who put on condemned tin spurs and rode / qualified mokes at the hiatused heads of forsaken Black Regiments. He / was a rude man and a terrible. Wherefore the remnant took measures / (with the half-butt as an engine of public opinion) till the rumour / went abroad that young men who used the Tail Twisters as a crutch to the / Staff Corps had many and varied trials to endure. However, a regiment / has just as much right to its own secrets as a woman.

When Bobby came up from Deolali and took his place among the Tail / Twisters, it was gently but firmly borne in upon him that the Regiment / was his father and his mother and his indissolubly wedded wife, and / that there was no crime under the canopy of heaven blacker than that / of bringing shame on the Regiment, which was the best-shooting, / best-drilled, best set-up, bravest, most illustrious, and in all / respects most desirable Regiment within the compass of the Seven Seas. / He was taught the legends of the Mess Plate, from the great grinning / Golden Gods that had come out of the Summer Palace in Pekin to the / silver-mounted markhor-horn snuffmull presented by the last C. O. (he / who spake to the seven subalterns). And every one of those legends told / him of battles fought at long odds, without fear as without support; of / hospitality catholic as an Arab's; of friendships deep as the sea and / steady as the fighting-line; of honour won by hard roads for honour's / sake; and of instant and unquestioning devotion to the Regiment -- the / Regiment that claims the lives of all and lives forever.

More than once, too, he came officially into contact with the Regimental / colours, which looked like the lining of a bricklayer's hat on the end / of a chewed stick. Bobby did not kneel and worship them, because British / subalterns are not constructed in that manner. Indeed, he condemned them / for their weight at the very moment that they were filling him with awe / and other more noble sentiments.