gungapur

Updated: June 17, 2025

And Captain John Robin Ross-Ellison was away on an alleged shikar-trip across the distant Border. Colonel Dearman knew his battalion-drill. He also knew his Gungapur Fusiliers and what they did when they received the orders of those feared and detested evolutions. They walked about, each man a law unto himself, or stood fast until pushed in the desired direction by blasphemous drill-corporals.

Percival Christopher Wren - Driftwood Spars: The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who: Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life

"I shall inspect your corps in camp," General Murger had said, "and the question of its disbandment may wait until I have done so." Disbandment! The question of the disbandment of the fine and far-famed Fusiliers of Gungapur could wait till then, could it? Well and good! Ha! and likewise Ho!

Percival Christopher Wren - Driftwood Spars: The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who: Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life

Quite genuine decadence this time, with nothing picturesque about it, involving doctors' bills, alimony, and other the fine crops of wild-oat sowing. At Gungapur he determined to "settle down," to "turn over a new leaf," and laid a good space of paving-stone upon his road to reward.

Percival Christopher Wren - Driftwood Spars: The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who: Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life

"The treasure will be removed at once this night, or I will remove myself from Gungapur with all my followers and go where deeds are being done. I weary of waiting while pi-dogs yelp around the walls they cannot enter. Cowards! Thousands to one and ye do not kill two of them a day. Conquer and slay them?

Percival Christopher Wren - Driftwood Spars: The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who: Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life

Augustus Clarence Percy Marmaduke Grobble to lend his countenance, as well as the rest of his person, to the European Company of the Gungapur Fusilier Volunteer Corps which it was the earnest ambition of Ross-Ellison to raise and train and consolidate into a real and genuine defence organization, with a maxim-gun, a motor-cycle and car section, and a mounted troop, and with, above all, a living and sturdy esprit-de-corps.

Percival Christopher Wren - Driftwood Spars: The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who: Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life

The Brigade Major's demy-official letter, bearing the intimation of the impending visitation fell as a bolt from the blue and smote the Colonel of the Gungapur Fusiliers a blow that turned his heart to water and loosened the tendons of his knees.

Percival Christopher Wren - Driftwood Spars: The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who: Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life

On parade he saw it for what it was a mob of knock-kneed, sniffling lads with just enough strength to suck a cigarette; anaemic clerks, fat cooks, and loafers with just enough wind to last a furlong march; huge beery old mechanics and ex-"Tommies," forced into this coloured galley as a condition of their "job at the works "; and the non-native scum of the city of Gungapur which joined for the sake of the ammunition-boots and khaki suit.

Percival Christopher Wren - Driftwood Spars: The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who: Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life

The adjective that General Murger used with the noun he called the Gungapur Fusiliers is not to be printed. The address he made to that Corps after it had once more found itself would have led a French or Japanese regiment to commit suicide by companies, taking the time from the right.

Percival Christopher Wren - Driftwood Spars: The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who: Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life