Rudyard Kipling
The Big Drunk Draf'
Summary
First published in The Week's News on 24 March 1888, and collected in Soldiers Three (Indian Railway Library No. 1) the same year, and in Soldiers Three and other Stories in 1899.
This story is told by Mulvaney, now working as a foreman on railway construction after leaving the army. The previous week he had encountered a draft of discharged men from the 'ould regiment on their way to Bombay, drunken and insubordinate because they were technically out of the army. Mulvaney dealt summarily with the drunkest of them, and encouraged their young officer to ignore the regulations and keep them under draconian military discipline. He did so, they knuckled down and behaved themselves, and were delivered to the docks chastened and sober.
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