What happens
Piggy Lou and Jakey, two drummer boys in the Fourth and Fifth Royal Light Infantry on the northwest frontier of India, get into trouble and are left behind when their regiment marches north to fight Afghan guerrillas. Desperate to prove themselves, they join the regiment anyway. Their regiment, unready for battle, is routed in a confused attack, and the two drummers march alone in plain view of both armies. Ben Wright narrates Rudyard Kipling's story of the Fourth and Fifth, adapted for the Escape series. The episode is broadcast in 1949 and features Ben Wright as Roger Gipling, Hugh Thomas as Piggy Lou and Terry Kilburn as Jakey.
The northwest frontier of British India, the Kaiba Valley and the remote hill country of Afghanistan, around the 1890s.
Characters: Roger Gipling, Piggy Lou, Jakey, Colonel, Chris, Peggy, Tom Kidd, Mr Smithers
Listen for: The drummers' marching in full view of both armies, and the regiment's panicked retreat that gives the Fourth and Fifth its nickname.
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.