037- The Drums of the Fore and Aft -Gil Stratton Jr

Worrying about those bills piling up, dreaming about that coming vacation, Wanna get away from it all? We offer you escape. You are deep in the remote hill country of Afghan, face to face with the fierce faith and warriors, Trapped into a hopeless fight from which there seems no escape.

Escape, designed to free you from the four walls of today for a half hour of high adventure. Tonight, we escaped to the north of India and to a battle long remembered, as Rudyard Kipling described it in his famous story, the drums of the foreign aft.

When I came out from England to serve as a news correspondent with the British troops on the North Indian border, Regiment number 329A was called the Four and Fit, Princess Herron-server in Zern-Royal-Light Infantry. Four and fit.

But now, behind their backs, men call them the Four and Aft. You know, in certain words are shouted in front of other barracks, the troops may come out with belts and fists. But the mere whisper of Four and Aft brings out the men of this regiment, with rifles in their hands and murder in their eyes.

I think perhaps the story of how the fore and aft got its name. Maybe really more the story of Jakin and Peggy Liu, two with the toughest and most lovable little monsters who ever banged a drum or two to the five-finem military band.

They were both about the same age, with curly hair and the faces of cherubs, and inside were two souls that should have belonged to a pair of devils. Oh I must have seen them before, of course. But the first occasion I can recall was an informal regimental court the colonel was holding in the orderly room one morning.