Back in 1924, when she and Christopher Robin went down to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, A. A. Milne's Alice sympathetically remarked: "A soldier's life is terrible hard." Neither she nor England had seen anything yet. In those days the rigid young sentries in their scarlet tunics and high black bearskins were symbols of imperial glory: Englishmen and foreigners alike respectfully held their tongues and kept their distance. But after World War II was won with a minimum of pomp and circumstance, and the blitz took away war's glamour,...
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