I have been away for a few days and, although I had time to send Jane Keskar my vote for ‘slippy’ as the correct word, I had to leave the rank and file question.  Here is my somewhat lengthy comment but I think it covers all the points raised.

Together with Bob Johnston of California, I spent some time in 1995-96 researching, amongst other things, 19c drill commands on behalf of the late John Whitehead for his excellently edited Centenary Edition of the Barrack Room Ballads (Hearthstone Publications 1995, Revised Edition 1997).  In so doing, Bob and I consulted every late 19c Drill and Rifle Instruction, Field Exercise Manual and Musketry Handbook that we could track down.

That Kipling himself had knowledge of some of these can be inferred from his writing.  In Stalky and Co he specifically mentions Perowne, in ‘The Flag of Their Country’, “refreshing his memory by glimpses at a red-bound, metal clasped book” before drilling his school-fellows for ten minutes.  At the time that Kipling was at school, this book was Field Exercise 1862, Pocket Edition or, if Kipling first met the book whilst in India, it would have been the 1877 edition.  His description fits both editions exactly.

It can also be seen from internal evidence in the barrack-room ballad ‘Back to the Army Again’ (The Seven Seas, Methuen 1896) that Kipling knew the combined rifle drill  movements of ‘Carry arms’ followed by ‘Port Arms’ from the line: “who would have thought I could carry and port?”. This combination of movements is unique to the ‘Drill and Rifle Instruction for the Corps of Rifle Volunteers’ first issued in 1859.  In the Field Exercise Manuals mentioned above and in other rifle drill instructions for the regular army, the movement ‘Carry arms’ is called ‘Shoulder arms’ in this context, although the descriptions are identical.  Kipling had, for a very brief period, been a member of the 1st Punjab Volunteer Rifles, so he may well have had his own copy of the Volunteers’ drill instructions beside him when he wrote the ballad in the1890s.  It seems that he never attended the Punjab Volunteers regularly enough to have learnt the drill himself.  (Rudyard Kipling , Andrew Lycett, Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1999).

In all these manuals and instructions it is clear that all drill movements from squad drill to a battalion in attack were carried out in two ranks so that, when facing to their front, the rear rank could fire over the kneeling front rank.  A file was always two men, one from each rank, one behind the other.

For marches, and only for marches, a body of any size formed of two ranks could ‘form fours’; a complex manoeuvre which formed four files facing in the direction of movement.  Each file of four employed a sort of ‘buddy-buddy’ system on the march, being provided with rations for 4 to share, helping each other on and off with knapsacks and, when halted, piling arms together.  They were also allowed to exchange places as they marched so that no one man was always in the gutter or being splashed by passing cavalry. This still applied in WWI (Field Service Pocked Book 1914).  The change to drill in three ranks came after that war when the concept of firing shoulder-to-shoulder in ranks was finally abandoned.  I cannot remember seeing any direct evidence to support Jeffrey Lewin’s idea that ‘files on parade’ in Danny Deever was a form of report but it makes sense and gives an added meaning to its use in the poem.  I do have one description of a battalion being “drawn up in 250 files”, i.e., 500 men on parade, so he might well be right and I will continue my research in this direction.  However, the phrase used in Danny Deever was ‘His was right-‘and cot to mine’ – nothing to do with files.

After all this, did Kipling write ‘front-ranks’ or ‘front-files’? I suspect that he wrote ‘front-files’, since that is in the earliest Methuen editions, but changed it to ‘front-ranks’ when finding that he was in error, and that this change was not picked up in all later editions.  We did find one or two similar errors in other ballads, such as the incorrect use of ‘take open order’ in ‘The Young British Soldier’ but in general Kipling was remarkably accurate.  It was finally proving, after thorough searching, that he was correct on a number of points on which he had appeared at first sight to have made a mistake that made a second, revised, edition of John Whitehead’s Centenary Edition necessary.


Yours Sincerely,
Roger Ayers
Honorary Membership Secretary,
The Kipling Society