Corps of Drums in The British Army
The British Army maintains a corps of drums in each infantry battalion except for Scottish and Irish battalions, which have pipes and drums. In regiments with more than one battalion, each battalion will maintain a corps of drums which may be massed up on occasion.. Rifle regiments such as The Rifles and the Royal Gurkha Rifles, whose original method of fighting was not conducive to carrying a drum, may instead form a bugle platoon. All corps-of-drums soldiers are called drummers (shortened to 'dmr') regardless of the instrument played, similarly to use of the term "sapper" for soldiers of the Royal Engineers, Members of pipes-and-drums units are called "pipers".
Unlike army musicians who form bands and will usually be limited to medical orderly duties in wartime, corps of drums drummers are principally fully trained infantry soldiers, with recruitment into the corps of drums coming after standard infantry training. A corps of drums will deploy with the rest of the battalion, and will often form specialist platoons such as assault pioneers, supporting fire or force protection.
Historically, the drum was used to convey orders during a battle, so the corps of drums was a fully integrated feature of an infantry battalion. Later on, when the bugle was adopted to convey orders, drummers were given bugles, but also maintained their drums and flutes.
Read more about this topic: Corps Of Drums
Famous quotes containing the words corps of, corps, drums, british and/or army:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“There was nothing to equal it in the whole history of the Corps Diplomatique.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)
“It was soldiers went marching over the rocks
And still the birds came, came in watery flocks,
Because it was spring and the birds had to come.
No doubt that soldiers had to be marching
And that drums had to be rolling, rolling, rolling.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“I declare Billy. I like you so much personally I wish I could vote for you. But bein’ a member of the Grand Army of the Republic, I just as leave cut my throat as to vote for a Democrat.”
—Laurence Stallings (1894–1968)