the men had rum served out to them, and the officers used to have coffee as well as other things [this was generally known as ‘coffee-stop’]. One of the favourite songs was of a most revolutionary character; it had about thirty verses and a long chorus. I forget the song, but I recall that ‘Confound our Officers!’ held a place in the chorus, and used to be lustily shouted. At first the men would not sing this song – they thought it would hurt our feelings, but it had such a good tune that nearly every night one of our captains would call for it.91
The level of banter accepted on the march varied from unit to unit. Gunner Bancroft marched from the Bengal Artillery depot at Dum Dum for the Upper Provinces in February 1842. With the column were 400 recruits of the 1st Bengal European Regiment (popularly known as the 1st Yeos) marching to join their unit without their own officers or senior NCOs. Bancroft remembered:
jolly times they were on that blessed march, wiling away the tedium of the marches by whistling, singing, cracking jokes, playing practical tricks, and all sorts of what is commonly called ‘divilment’! There was a very large contingent of Irishmen among the number, and the well-known tendency of the Hibernian to mind everything humorous was very fully developed. There was little or no restraint imposed upon them. If a dispute arose between any two of the number which could not be amicably settled, they turned off the road and had a set to, discovered who was the best man, and manfully resumed their march, after having afforded no small gratification to a crowd of admiring lookers-on and settled their dispute to their own satisfaction. There was no officer in charge of the recruits; usually two mounted non-commissioned officer of the [horse artillery] troop were told off to keep them together if possible, a task as difficult as that of Sisyphus.92
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