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The drillmaster’s wisdom quoth that the mark of the true soldier is not the ability to fire, but the courage to hold one’s fire; that the expertise is not in the hot moment of engagement, but in its delay.

“They called him the Drillmaster, because he brought drill instructions to the Continental Army.”

The flamboyant “colonel,” as Forbes styled himself, struck Brown as the perfect drillmaster for the volunteer force he planned to train.

I am learning things gradually by dint of much cussing on the part of our Sergeant, who is also late of the Regular, and who certainly has as choice a vocabulary as our former drillmaster.

But he was more than a drillmaster, fundamental as that is.