Excerpt from My Life in the Army I had to go for a soldier: it was written. Was not my godfather one Wyatt of the 10th Hussars; and did he not carry me to the font in his arms, with my head against his glorious frogged jacket, the plume of his busby towering above me, his spurs clanking on the flagged aisle, and his pelisse - pride of the ladies' hearts - keeping the draughts from my devoted feet? And then, my first recollections are of the grim Crimean War. For we stayed very often in garrison towns; and my mother's people had friends who were officers in the Army. Quite well I can remember - I must have been between three and four years old - a regiment of cavalry starting for the war; and I can remember, or think I can, some wounded soldiers landing, and a wee drummer-boy being carried ashore in a blanket. And, again, the officers, after the war was over, came often to our house; and I heard them talk of camp and battle, and divers strange matters. And yet, again, I lived in Portsmouth all through one beatific summer, when I spent all my leisure time on the fortifications, or witnessing sham fights on Southsea Common, or watching gun drill on the walls, or infantry manoeuvres in the barrack squares. And my toys were soldiers; and I fought battles with battalions of buttons; and I fell, running after a military band, and broke my collar-bone. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.