The Boys' Brigade of the early years had a winter session of drill and club room, a weekly parade night and Sunday morning Bible class, and a glorious week of Camp to look forward to each summer. Today, the B.B. has moved out of the church hall of its origins into the wider community and the open air. It enjoys a diversity of activities all round the year and all round the world.
Here are some glimpses of the B.B. Year. It starts, as it always did, in the month of September. And what better tune-up for the Session than the stirring sound of the band? The first of all B.B. bands, in William Smith's original company, was a flute band of 16 performers and the instructor was a former band-sergeant of the regular army. In a year or two there were bugle, brass, drum and fife, and pipe-bands. Today, an annual inspection or display would be almost unthinkable without the brave sound of brass and pipes and drums.
Nothing will draw a crowd quicker, or welcome Royalty with more loyal tribute. What small boy has not envied the glory of the big drum with its leopard-skin apron and tornado of sound?
Proficiency in the band leads to badges, prizes and trophies. It is not surprising that the booklet Bugle calls and marches, priced 6d., remained in print for nearly fifty years.
A few years ago, new instruments were added to the traditional military-style bugles, pipes and drums - the trumpet, bell lyra, tympani, cymbals, bongo drums, triple timp-toms and timbales. The Drum-Major adds white gauntlets and sash to the uniform of his rank and twirls and flings his premier mace in magnificent arcs. The ultimate prize in the B.B. Trumpet Band world is to be named Supreme Champions in the National Marching Bands Contest. It appeals especially to the Senior Boy. All young people respond instinctively to rhythm, and the sight and sound of a marching band in full accoutrements and equipment truly lifts the heart. The marching band has also brought a new and lively style of drill, not always approved by the old brigade. But one must remember that formal drill is largely out of date, even in the modern Armed Forces. The marching band combines attractive, disciplined and healthful physical movement with the sheer joy of rhythm and skill of tune.
The Awards structure involves Boys in the needs of the community. Christian service is not a vague impulse for do-goodery. It is a disciplined life-skill for helping and caring. So B.B. Boys up and down the land volunteer for work in children's homes, Special Schools and general hospitals. They visit physically handicapped children and share in their games, and do cheerful work for elderly folk who can no longer look after their own gardens or decorate their homes. The open-air awards for Queen's Men take in life saving, cave rescue, mountain leader training and many other service tasks. The Boys keep a diary to show the duties they have chosen and the times and details of their commitment.Service is the watchword, and its patient days and weeks and months lead a Boy to notice and to ponder the many and changing needs of the community where he lives.
The Achievement Scheme for Junior Sections has the same aim. For example, as part of his social achievements a Boy may come to know something of the life of a handicapped person by regular visiting over a period of time, or write to a society which specializes in a particular handicap and produce a scrapbook with press cuttings, pictures, writing, and detailed information. A number of B. B. Companies have special sections for mentally handicapped and physically handicapped Boys.
In a very different part of the B.B. world, September in Lesotho is the beginning of Spring, and the B.B.0rganizer sets out through the morning frost to visit villages in the white-capped mountain country.October brings Founder's Day which commemorates the birth of William A. Smith in Thurso on 27th October 1854.
'B.B. Supplies' are fully stocked in more than 25 centres up and down the country, with everything from buttonhole badges to complete uniforms for every shape and size of Boy or Officer. Brigade House has to point out that some training in jersey drill is needed: Try an experiment in your Junior and Pre-Junior Section.Ask the Boys to pretend to remove their jerseys and then stop them. It's the Boys you find who are gripping the neck of the garment who are doing the damage. Mums don't always teach them the correct way, which is to cross the arms in front, grip the bottom hem in both hands and then pull the jersey up and over the head.
Meanwhile, in the tropical forest of Cameroon it is raining heavily, but the B.B. are on parade as usual. Find them on the map!
November used to be memorable in the B.B. Company for 'B.B. Week' when the Boys raised money for the continuing work of the Movement by going round their relatives and friends with collecting cards. It was an idea of R.S. Peacock, former H.Q. Secretary and Captain of the 76th London Company, just after the first World War. Nowadays the Boys themselves prefer to put their loyalty, ingenuity and enthusiasm to good use by a great variety of sponsored eventsall night non-stop table tennis or badminton, sponsored silence, marathon wood chops, car washing, a mile of pennies in the high street, hill-climbs, and countless other activities of every imaginable and unimaginable kind.
In Finland's Poikien Keskus the boys and their leader are planning their weekly club meeting - games, arts and crafts, acting, discussions, Bible reading and prayers. Meanwhile, on the B.B. farm in Zambia, the mangoes and avocado pears are ripening fast.
In December, B.B. Companies keep Christmas with 'Operation Goodwill': food parcels for old folk, a Christmas party at the children's home, carol services in hospital wards and old people's homes. Down under in New Zealand it is high summer and the B. B. are under canvas, with canoes on the fast-flowing rivers for Seniors and hill walking for the Juniors.
The turn of the year brings competitions, parents' evenings and preparation for the annual Inspection and Display, as well as some serious training. At a recent Queen's Badge Training Course the candidates were asked to consider these questions:
Should the Brigade be giving more training for life - for example, on finance (mortgages), fashion, cars, family relationships, alcohol, sex, drugs? If so, how should it be put over? The Company is part of the Church. In your experience, is this relationship as close as it should be? If not, how can it be improved?
The B.B. Organizer in Nigeria has travelled thousands of miles to visit remote B.B. Companies in the mat-roofed villages. It is harmattan season, the season of dry dusty winds, and the mornings are chilly!
The month of May brings the big-scale Battalion and District events, and the full panoply of the Albert Hall Display. One can be assured that the 2nd Enfield Company will once again put on an outstanding show.
Boys of the Senior Section of the lst Ottawa make a canoe trip on Oplongo Lake and River in the Algonquin Park for a weekend.The Singapore Companies are at camp at Changi, of fateful wartime memory.The most popular activity there is a jungle survival course.
High summer means the joy and adventure of Camp, and countless other outdoor pursuits. One candidate for the Duke Edinburgh's Award makes aircraft his project. He had a detailed record of civil, R.A.F., and foreign types of aircraft visiting his local airport. He has taken and logged photographs of various aircraft observed at air displays. He has flown in a club aircraft for at least ten hours and kept a log of his flying time.He knows something about the aesthetics of aircraft design and international aviation projects.
Singapore, jungle survival.
A new Company is enrolled in Papua New Guinea, and the Boys 'fall in' in traditional style. Every year more and more teams of enthusiastic Boys take part in a variety of endurance hikes. The annual Cleveland Hike, for example, may have an entry of 300 teams, some of them from as far away as Denmark. The West Lowland Hike takes place over the Cumnock and Muirkirk hills of Scotland with 27 miles to cover and 'incidents' to endure and overcome at an assault course on the way. The Charnwood Hike, Waltham Walk and Kilbryde Hike set over a thousand young men on a strenuous 48-hour course which involves B.B. tests, scrambling across a river, initiative tests and an obstacle course.It is, in short, endurance hiking against the clock and against constant hazards, carrying full camping gear, safety equipment and rations. Here is the B.B. out-of doors at its best, with challenge, adventure, fellowship, sense of achievement, and spirited fun for everyone.
Dalguise, in Perthshire, is one of a number of Battalion Outdoor Centres which is a doorway to the open-air world all the year round.
London District display at the Royal Albert Hall.
It is a l7th-century Scottish manor house set in grounds of 50 acres with the Grampians for a horizon, a nearer prospect of moors, lochs and rivers, and some of the finest forest in the kingdom, full of oak, pine, fir, red maple, silver birch and larch. Dalguise is leased by the Glasgow Battalion of he Boys' Brigade as a centre for all manner of outdoor activities - canoeing on the River Tay, archery, orienteering, rock-climbing on the sheer faces at Craig-y-Barns, sküng on the slopes of Ben Lawers or Glen Shee, pony-trekking, swimming and water-sküng, learning to handle a dingy on Loch Tay, hill walking and camping. It is heaven on earth for adventurous Boys. For the challenge of the Duke of Edinburgh's Award there are six gold standard expeditions - on Dartmoor, in the Peak District, North Wales, the Lake District, and two in the Cairngorms.
All B.B. Activities make great demands on the Officers and Instructors, whether their work lies in the back streets of grey cities, in scattered rural districts, or up and down the exotic islands and tropical lands far round the world. Wherever they serve, they remember the words of the Founder:
An Officer can never afford to forget that the Brigade is made up of Companies, and that his own Company is for him the most important and supreme bit of work that he is called upon to do.
And wherever they meet, indoors and outdoors, generation after generation of Boys learns to sing of the emblem that binds them all together:
There's an emblem fair that is known to all,
a sign to help us through;
It stands for strength and it stands for right,
An Anchor tried and true.
The emblem of The Boys' Brigade it helps us on our way
Our fathers knew in days gone by the sign we know today.
CHORUS:
Sure and stedfast, the Brigade Boys' motto clear
That's our watchword when troubles and trials are near.
Sure and stedfast, to the flag that flies above
In all that we do we'll try to be true to the Anchor that we love.
