regiment’s facing colour used by sergeants. These sticks began life as a silver-headed cane, evolving over the years into the pace-stick – sometimes used to measure off a regulation pace of 30 inches, but more usually, in its glossy splendour of varnish and burnished brass, carried as a badge of rank, echoing the vine-staff of the Roman centurion. William Cobbett’s early promotion to sergeant major, straight from regimental clerk, shows that in these early days, the post was primarily administrative, and the sergeant major spent much of his time closeted with the adjutant, working on the rolls and returns that could wreck a man’s career as surely as a bullet.
In 1813 there was more significant change. The old cavalry rank of troop quartermaster, the senior non-commissioned member of the troop, was replaced by that of troop sergeant major. In the infantry the rank of colour sergeant was introduced, squarely between sergeant and sergeant major. There was to be one colour sergeant for each of the ten companies then found in a battalion, chosen from ‘the ten most meritorious sergeants in the regiment’. For the next century the colour sergeant was the captain’s right-hand man, his position equating to that of first sergeant in an American company. One of the company’s sergeants was responsible for its provisioning, and he was known as the company quartermaster sergeant (CQMS). Sergeants on the strength of battalion headquarters, grave and clerkly men concerned with pay and administration, ranked as staff sergeants, a term which still defines the senior sergeants’ rank in all arms except the infantry.
It is impossible to dwell too much on administrative detail here, for the quantity of troops and companies within units often changed. The most significant change, though, was the introduction of grenadier and light companies, one of each per battalion, into the infantry, and a compensating reduction to bring the ‘battalion companies’ to eight. Grenadier companies (‘tow-rows’) were traditionally composed of the sturdiest men in the battalion, just the fellows for rushing an enemy post or for waiting at the colonel’s supper-party, beery faces and big thumbs everywhere. The ‘light bobs’ of the light company were lithe and nimble and were specially trained in skirmishing – and, said their critics, apt at making off with other people’s property. It was common for these ‘flank companies’ to be swept together to form combined grenadier or light battalions. A commanding officer enjoyed having smart flank companies, but losing the best of his battalion to someone else’s command was wholly infuriating. Flank companies, officers and men alike, wore distinctive caps and short coats. While the grenadiers applied symbolic grenades to any vacant surface, the light companies were as fond of the corded bugle – their own badge of expertise. The flank companies went in 1862, as part of the post-Crimea reforms, to muted mourning.
The tactical revolution of the late nineteenth century, a reflection of the increased range and firepower of modern weapons, encouraged armies to seek larger groupings so as to place more combat power in the hands of individual commanders. The combination of cavalry troops into squadrons, not taken too seriously when Wully Robertson was an NCO, became standard towards the end of the nineteenth century. In 1913 an infantry battalion’s eight companies were merged into four. These changes required the creation of, first, squadron sergeant majors (SSMs) in the cavalry, and then company sergeant majors (CSMs) in the infantry. In the latter process the four senior colour sergeants in each battalion were promoted, and the remaining four took over the function of quartermaster sergeant. This arrangement remains in use today, and Colour Sergeant Frank Pye, who makes his incisive appearance on this book’s first page, was responsible for keeping his company of 2 Para fed and watered in the Falklands in 1982. Promotion from sergeant to company sergeant major now takes a man through the rank of colour sergeant, but during the First World War it was felt that the qualities that made a man a good quartermaster sergeant did not necessarily make him a good sergeant major.
Ronald Skirth, whose account of his wretched time in the army is aptly titled The Reluctant Tommy, took over from his battery quartermaster sergeant when the latter contracted typhoid, although he himself was only a junior NCO. ‘The Q.M.’s job I would say is the most envied in the whole service’, he wrote,
and so there was both disappointment and consternation when I was appointed temporary, unpaid ‘Quarterbloke’… The Q.M. is in charge of stores – clothing, food and equipment and, most important to many, tobacco and rum. I think I made a reasonably efficient QM. Nobody ever ‘drew’ anything from my stores without a ‘chit’ bearing the duty officer’s signature. Nobody, that is, except ME! It didn’t seem right that I should do extra work without financial reward, so I used the opportunity to look after No 1.13
Ernest Shephard, in contrast, simply leapfrogged quartermaster sergeant on his way on up. He happily copied the relevant extract from his own battalion’s daily orders into his diary:
Bn Orders by Major Radcliffe DSO commanding 1st Dorset Regiment … No 8817 Sgt Shephard: Appointed Acting CSM from 25.4.15 vice CSM Searle wounded 24.4.15, and promoted CSM on 1.5.15 vice CSM Searle, died of wounds.14
In a process wholly typical of the army’s need to find a spare ‘line serial’ into which to promote a man, he had bypassed colour sergeant altogether, and replaced the three stripes on his arm (‘tapes’ in soldier’s jargon) with a crown on his forearm, leaving his company’s colour sergeant (three tapes with a crown above them) in his dusty world of tables: six-foot, and lamps: hurricane. The process of promoting to fill a vacancy echoed William Todd’s elevation to corporal in 1758:
Sergeant William Bennet of our company was broke by the major’s orders for being drunk when he should have attended the hospital … and that James Crawford, corporal, was appointed sergeant and that I was appointed corporal in the room of Corporal Crawford preferred.15
When Shephard was promoted his company commander was the 28-year-old Captain W. B. Algeo MC, a clergyman’s son from Studland, Dorset. Their relationship typified the warmest of associations between figures who, at this crucial level, were headmen of their own distinct tribes. But on 17 May 1916 Algeo and the battalion’s intelligence officer crossed into a wood on the German side of the lines. There were shots, and they did not reappear. Shephard raced to battalion headquarters, where the commanding officer authorised him to send a follow-up patrol ‘but not to go myself on any account, although I wished to do so’. The pioneer sergeant, Sergeant Goodwillie – ‘very well liked by the captain’ – set off with Sergeant Rogers a little way behind. There was more shooting, and Rogers returned to report that he had lost Goodwillie and could not find the officers. Shephard was distraught:
The loss of my gallant Captain to the Battalion, my Company and myself cannot be estimated. He was the bravest officer I have ever met, his first and last thought was for the good and honour of the Bn, his Coy and his men. ‘An officer and a gentleman’.
We now know that Algeo and Goodwillie were both killed, and now rest, three long strides apart, in Miraumont Communal Cemetery.
The responsibilities of company commander and CSM remain distinct but interlocked. One friend told me of striding across to speak to his CSM who was chatting to the CQMS and the three platoon sergeants. He was greeted with a cracking salute, and the words ‘It’s all right, sir, you can fuck off: knobber.’ It seemed a bad moment for decisive confrontation, so he withdrew to his office, dignity narrowly preserved. When the sergeant major appeared later, the officer cautiously raised the issue of that last word. The sergeant major was aghast. It was the acronym NOBA: ‘Not Officers’ Business: Admin’. Another officer recalled how his own attempt to tinker with his company’s daily programme produced the as-if-by-magic materialisation of the CSM. ‘Sir,’ announced that worthy, ‘you command this company, but I run it.’ When the relationship works well there are few finer, as Major Justin Featherstone of the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment tells when describing the way he and CSM Dale Norman used to conduct after-action discussions in the Iraqi town of Al Amarah, scene of fierce fighting in 2004:
We shared what became termed ‘DVD time’. During tactical pauses we would watch a DVD on his laptop
