The courage of countless generations

The most stirring sermon I ever heard was delivered by a company sergeant-major in the Black Watch to a cadre of young lance-corporals, barely 19 years old, who were about to experience their first deployment to Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Like an old-fashioned Presbyterian minister, he warned them of the dangers of the world, in this case roof-top snipers and stone-throwing rioters, and the temptation these presented to the unwary soul, in this case, as he put it, ‘to run like buggery’.