A Symposium of Amusing Musical Incidents, Contributed by Bandmasters 
and Others. 
Lieutenant J. MACKENZIE ROGAN, 
Bandmaster of the Coldstream Guards and Senior 
Bandmaster Brigade of Guards. 
T the moment of writing this 
my attention is partly centred 
upon the Royal Naval and 
Military Tournament, so I 
may be forgiven if I commence 
by recalling an incident con- 
nected with a Tournament of 
some years ago, when it was held at the 
Agricultural Hall. Military tattoos have 
always been a very popular feature (“ We are 
sure of a packed house,” Colonel Ricardo once 
said to me, “ when you have one of your 
tattoos with the massed bands”), and on the 
occasion in question I had trained and 
rehearsed about four hundred soldiers from 
the various regiments in the Brigade of 
Guards to act as torch-bearers and to make 
the necessary complicated evolutions in the 
darkened arena. As luck would have it, two 
guards of honour were required that night, 
one for the King and the other for a dis- 
tinguished foreign visitor who was arriving in 
London. All my trained men were ordered 
for duty at short notice, and I was obliged to 
ask the Naval commander for two hundred 
men of the Royal Naval contingent to take 
their places. There was no time to rehearse 
them. All I could do was to call their petty 
officers into the arena just before the show, 
explain what they had to do as best I could, 
and warn them that if they got into any diffi- 
culty they were to stand fast, wait for a change 
of tune, and look to me for some signal. 
Those who have witnessed a tattoo in the 
comparatively small space available on these 
occasions can hardly fail to have been im- 
pressed by the orderly way the men manoeuvre 
in the arena. The late King Edward sent for 
me to the Royal box after a tattoo on one 
occasion. “ Mr. Rogan,” said His Majesty, 
“ 1 see how you get your men in, but what I 
wonder at is how you ever get them all out 
again ! ” And indeed it is a complicated 
matter for such a closely-packed mass of men 
to unwind themselves, and even a slight mis- 
take on the part of the leaders may put everv- 
thing out. 
