You acted, not like soldiers, but like a herd of steers.

The difference between a herd of steers and a battalion of soldiers, in the face of sudden danger, is only this:--the steers break blindly for God knows where, and end piled up over a cut bank; soldiers stand steady listening for the word of command." If the O.C.handled the men with a light hand, the sergeant major did not.

His tongue rasped them to the raw.

No one knows a soldier as does his N.C.O., and no N.C.O.is qualified to set forth the soldier's characteristics with the intimate knowledge and adequate fluency of the sergeant major.

One by one he peeled from their shivering souls the various layers of their moral cuticle, until they stood, in their own and in each other's eyes, objects of commiseration.
"There's just one thing more I wad like ta say to ye." The sergeant major's tendency to Doric was more noticeable in his moments of deeper feeling, "but it's something for you lads to give heed ta.