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)
“The Washington press corps thinks that Julie Nixon Eisenhower is the only member of the Nixon Administration who has any credibility—and, as one journalist put it, this is not to say that anyone believes what she is saying but simply that people believe she believes what she is saying ... it is almost as if she is the only woman in America over the age of twenty who still thinks her father is exactly what she thought he was when she was six.”
—Nora Ephron (b. 1941)
“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)
“When a man wants to write a book full of unassailable facts, he always goes to the British Museum.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“Ladies and gentlemen, I have a grave announcement to make. Incredible as it may seem, strange beings who landed in New Jersey tonight are the vanguard of an invading army from Mars.”
—Orson Welles (1915–1984)