Who Guards the Guardsmen?

Back in 1924, when she and Christopher Robin went down to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, A. A. Milne's Alice sympathetically remarked: "A soldier's life is terrible hard." Neither she nor England had seen anything yet. In those days the rigid young sentries in their scarlet tunics and high black bearskins were symbols of imperial glory: Englishmen and foreigners alike respectfully held their tongues and kept their distance. But after World War II was won with a minimum of pomp and circumstance, and the blitz took away war's glamour, the solemn and expressionless sentries marching mechanically 25 paces this way and 25 paces that no longer seemed to inspire the same old respect. At least not to tourists, especially Americans.

In fact, something about the sight of automated soldiering seemed to provoke an irrepressible urge in passers-by to make the sentries convict themselves of being still human. Girls took to throwing their arms around the guards while chums snapped pictures to be sent home. Some sentries suffered the indignity of having toffee apples stuck on their bayonets; others found as they started off on their 25 paces that their shoelaces had been tied together. This summer has been especially galling: tourists have poked, tickled, thrown banana peels or ice-cream cups underfoot, sung out derisive marching orders, brazenly grabbed at the guards and screamed: "Look, he's real!" But no matter what the tourists did--"They seem to think we're exhibits in a zoo"--the guards had no defense except an official but effective maneuver in which they abruptly cut short their beat and went into a high-stepping about turn.

Last week, after 300 years of iron discipline, a break finally came. Shortly after 9 o'clock one evening, an American tourist complained to a policeman that the Guardsman on duty in front of Buckingham Palace had deliberately kicked her in the shins. Within hours--though it happened to be the day-that the Queen returned from Canada--all London was talking about the revolt of the 20-year-old Guardsman of No. 1 Company, Coldstream Guards,* who bore the appropriate name of Victor Footer. He steadfastly denied that he had intentionally kicked the woman, even though she was "sniggering" at him. But he was marched off to Wellington Barracks and charged with "irregular conduct while on sentry-go" and with being "extremely idle"--a brigade term used to cover anything unbecoming a guardsman. By the time Footer got his ten days CB (confinement to barracks), he was a national hero.

Snapped the Evening News: "Sentries have been tormented--there is no other word for it--by visitors who should know better." "Are guards to fall in line as tourist attractions along with Swiss yodelers and Indian snake charmers?" demanded the News Chronicle. The Daily Sketch, hinting that the "American Mom" had got exactly what she deserved, asked: "Why should our soldiers have to put up with this kind of treatment?" At week's end there was desperate talk of a reinforcement of extra bobbies to guard the guards who guard the palace.

*One of the regiments that make up the Brigade of Guards. The others: the Grenadier, Scots, Irish and Welsh Guards.

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