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Updated: June 8, 2025
For the gray automobiles and the gray motorcycles bearing messengers one side of the street always was kept clear; and so compact was the column, so rigid the vigilance of the file-closers, that at the rate of forty miles an hour a car could race the length of the column and need not for a single horse or man once swerve from its course.
At that part of the road, or street, was an embankment about eight feet high, and a drunken fellow tried to pass over it to the people opposite. One of the regular sergeant file-closers ordered him back, but he attempted to pass through the ranks, when the sergeant barred his progress with his musket "a-port."
Catching sight of Bowersox lying motionless on the grass, he ordered, "Two file-closers from the right, go and bring in that man!" But at that moment Bowersox moved, sat up and looked about him, and, suddenly remembering where he was, struggled to his feet and half-ran, half staggered to his friends in the street.
In ten minutes they ride with foaming reins in behind a low ridge on which, flat on their faces and cautiously peering over the crest, some hundred infantrymen are disposed. Others, officers and file-closers, are moving to and fro in rear. They are of Rayner's battalion.
If distance be taken, the leader can be seen, the file-closers see, the platoon that follows watches the preceding. Dropping out always exists, but it is less extensive with an open order, the men running more risks of being recognized. Stragglers will be fewer as the companies know each other better, and as the officers and men are more dependable.
"Well, we need our assured brave ones to lead going back." "That's where the baseball squad comes in, then," nodded Purcell. "School nine and subs first, second team following. Then let the chilly-footed ones bring up the rear." "We can go back in column of fours," proposed Dick, as he fastened on his collar, "with no leaders or file-closers. Then it will be hard to guess at any ring-leaders."
As the testudo moved down the Palace Road and towards the wooden barrier of the north gate, it was to be observed that the front-rank men and the file-closers carried their shields in the ordinary fashion, in order to ward off horizontally flying missiles.
We become aware of a populace of boys, the file-closers of England's nineteenth century worthies, and her coming veterans of the twentieth. We may contemplatively view them in that light, but it has little place in their reflections. Their ruddy faces and somewhat cumbrous forms belong to the animal period of life that links together boyhood, colthood and calfhood.
The Smyrna Ancients were file-closers of the parade; Hiram Look had chosen his position with an eye to effect that made all the other companies seem to do mere escort duty. The orderly lines of spectators poured together into the street behind, and went elbowing in noisy rout to the village square, the grand rallying-point and arena of the day's contests.
The colonel is again at the head. All are on foot. "Left front into line, double time;" the first company throws its long double rank from curb to curb, Drummond, its commander, striding at its front; Wing, his subaltern, anxiously watching him from among the file-closers.
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