How it opens
You were gazetted an ensign of the 23rd Royal Welch Fusiliers in the spring of 1854, with your commission six weeks old and the colours not yet in your eye.
War with Russia had been declared in March, and the camps and the dockyards had gone mad together, in the good old way that England has of discovering an army it forgot it owned.
Ensign, is it. Well, the dragon wants feeding. Walk with me and learn the names of your new family.
Choose
Give him your papers, your lineage, and your purchase money, in that order.
Ask him what he wants of a new ensign, and take your law from him.
Own that you have never heard a shot fired, and ask to be told plainly what that is like.