We soon figured out what had happened. Tom, (not his real name), had gone into the toilet, taken down his battle dress trousers, and had made the mistake of sitting on a toilet that was plugged, full, to the brim!
His battle dress trousers, with their high waist and short suspenders, unbuttoned behind, and up around the back of his neck, prevented him from straightening up after he fell off the toilet.
Lance and I gingerly picked him up, still unconscious, and carried him to his bunk in Eighteen Platoon, heaved him up and covered him with his blankets, clothes, hemorrhoid, effluent, the works.
Poor guy, he was unable to keep up on parade, largely because of an old ankle injury. He was discharged in Sussex, for reasons of, "Not likely to become an efficient soldier." He went back to his home town, continued his drinking, and was found dead on the beach some years later not far from his home.
Pat, (not his real name), a fellow from a place not far from where I was brought up, had joined the Royal Rifles about the same time as I had. He was a bit of a maverick, and didn't take kindly to army discipline. He spent an awful lot of time AWL, and most of the rest of the time in detention barracks.
At any rate, one dull, rainy Saturday morning, the whole Regiment was assembled in a hollow square on the muddy Parade Ground. Pat was marched in, and his crimes were read off. Then an officer stepped foward and ripped off his epaulettes, and whatever other insignia he wore and the sentence was read, "Dishonourably discharged!"
What good did it do? I have always suspected that these same powers were seeking some diversion, and reasoned that no further harm could be done by Drumming the poor fellow out, rather than giving him a simple dishonourable discharge. Pat, whatever personal shame he harboured for the rest of his life, died only recently.
When I recently met my old Sargeant-Major, and mentioned the incident to him, he told me that there had been no "Drumming Out" in the British Army since the eighteen-hundreds. Maybe it wasn't a "Drumming Out" in the conventional meaning of the term, but that's what we were told it was, and the results were the same.
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