| Title | A Red and White Guidon |
| Message Text | Okay, I'm transcribing \"A Red and White Guidon\": CHAPPELL: Quiet, please. (SEVEN SECONDS SILENCE) CHAPPELL: Quiet, please. (MUSIC ... THEME ... FADE FOR) ANNOUNCER: The Mutual Broadcasting System presents \"Quiet, Please!\" which is written and directed by Wyllis Cooper and which features Ernest Chappell. \"Quiet, Please!\" for tonight is called \"A Red and White Guidon.\" (MUSIC ... THEME ... END) NOAH WELLMAN: A Troop's ... got a guidon now. It's nice. It's red and white. It's got all the old silver rings on the lance pole with names of places engraved on 'em: Cold Harbor, Spotsylvania, all them places. And some new ones: Samar, Leyte. It looks fine. But it ain't the right one. It ain't the old silk one, the battle guidon. That's the one I lost for 'em. And I'm payin' for it. Oh, 'tain't that. You know the sayin' in the army: whatever you lose, you're gonna find it on the payroll. 'Tain't that. I'm payin' for it different. I walk into Fiddler's Green once, twice a year and first thing some fella hollers at me, \"You get out o' here, Noah Wellman! You're the fella lost A Troop's guidon.\" And that free whiskey there on the bar looks awful good to me but - [sighs] - I wipe my mouth on my sleeve and - turn around, go out again, change out o' my old blue uniform with the wide yellow stripes on my breeches' legs, my upside down sergeant's stripes. And I put on GI cotton and pick up my rifle and my bayonet - go back to A Troop. [disgusted] Rifle and bayonet. Imagine a cavalryman with a bayonet! Well, if you can imagine a cavalryman without no horse, I guess you can imagine a bayonet, too. Yeah, they won't lead me into Fiddler's Green. But, once in a while, somebody'll stop me as I'm leavin'. Maybe it'll be Shamus Dailey, that was guidon before me. And he'll say, kind o' homesick, \"Hey, Noah,\" he'll say, \"The band still playin' 'Garry Owen' in the old outfit?\" I'll say, \"You bet your life, Shamus. When they don't play 'Garry Owen' no more, there won't be no Seventh Cavalry.\" [chuckles] Shamus, he kind o' grins and he slips me a half-pint o' that Monongahela Rye. And I come away and maybe there's a - maybe there's a little nip in the bottle for some of the other boys that's - in the same fix I'm in. And I walk along a ways with these other fellas and, most generally, we meet the Old Man. SOUND: (Spurs JINGLE.) NOAH WELLMAN: He'll be walkin' along slow and his spurs jinglin'. Them big Mexican spurs he always wore. And we'll snap it up and throw him a big sal-ute and he'll grin at us and holler, \"Howdy, boys!\" And we'll say, \"Howdy, sir!\" And he'll walk on slow, down towards Fiddler's Green. An' we'll feel worse'n ever. 'Cause the Old Man, he can't get into Fiddler's Green either. (MUSIC ... AN ACCENT) NOAH WELLMAN: I don't know. Maybe I ought to tell you about this guidon, huh? You know what a guidon is. Well, it's a kind o' little swallow-tailed flag. Nowadays every outfit in the army has one. Company flag, you know. All colors. Even the MPs, they got one that's yellow and green. But there was a day when nobody but cavalry had a guidon. Red and white. Top half red with the regiment's number in white. Lower half white with the troop letter in red, like 7-A -- A Troop, Seventh Cavalry. Only when I first enlisted, they still called 'em companies, just like in the doughboys. Yes, quite a while ago. (MUSIC IN AND UNDER ... \"GARRY OWEN\") NOAH WELLMAN: A troop -- uh, a company o' cavalry -- was quite a sight in them days. Bold red and white guidon cracklin' away in the wind. Sixty-three men in blue suits with their sabers flashin' in the sunlight. And we had mounted bands! Yes, sir. Drum major out in front with his saber beatin' time, twenty-eight men on horseback blowin' horns, and a big ol' white drum horse with kettle drums big as a keg o' beer. [chuckles] Quite a sight. Nowadays ... Ah, well, it's still cavalry even if we do have our own feet. But I still kind o' miss them horses. (MUSIC OUT) SOUND: (TROOP'S HOOFBEATS IN AND OUT) NOAH WELLMAN: I met this Shamus Dailey when I first joined up with the old outfit. I'd been in the war and when they mustered us out in 'sixty-five, I fooled around home for a while and then I got kind o' restless so I just up and left. Went out West and took on another blanket, like the sayin' was. They put me into the Seventh Cavalry, A Troop. A Company, I mean. That was where I first got to know this Shamus Dailey. He was guidon of A Company. Oh, yeah, the guidon and the fella that carries it, both called guidon. |
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| Ownership | MS |
| Views | 1,417 views. Averaging 0 views per day. |
| Submission Date | Sep 10, 2003 |