Sergeant Nelson of the Guards

Sgt Bill Nelson of the Guards is an Everyman – or more accurately, an Every NCO. He is one of what John Thomasen referred to as “the old Breed…regarding the service as home and war as an occupation.” Highly profane, profoundly ignorant of things outside his ken, “shorn of superfluities, living cheaply, surviving economically, and only dying dearly.” Nelson and those of his ilk are the glue that held together the mass of frightened teenagers thrown into the ranks when civilization was bracing itself against the blood and horror that was World War Two. Nelson and those of his ilk are the men who never discussed honor and scorned the idea that is war there is glory. Nelson and those of his ilk are the men about whom Housman wrote his epitaph on an army of mercenaries, “they stood, and earth’s foundations stay – what God abandoned, these defended, and saved the sum of things for pay.” Although their traditions have left their traces in the professional non-commissioned officer corps of the UK, the US, Canada and Australia today, we will not see their like again.