[Edward Stewart-Humphries failed to pass the medical examination to join either the Royal Marines or the Royal Navy. In 1906 he enlisted in the 1^stBattalion Royal Scots Regiment, the event after which his memoir of childhood ends]. 

The main gate of the Royal Marine Barracks in Durnford Road is a hundred yards or so from where we lived and I was to enter the main gate, a year or so later [the family moved to Durnford Road in 1898], to carry out my intention of joining the Royal Marines as a drummer boy. I was received kindly by the Recruiting Sergeant and all who met me on the day I arrived,—maybe some of the elder Marines had served on the same ships as my father. For one day and night I was allowed to live in the drummer boys’ barrack room. I felt on top of the world and loved the huge white holy-stoned wooden floors and tables, the drums and sticks and the rat-tat-tat. I was allowed and even encouraged to practise. The lovely red tunics, the pip-clayed accoutrements, the fifes, the bugles, and the big drum, but best of all the comradeship of the drummer boys, all, who, like myself, felt tremendously proud of belonging to the Royal Marines, made a great impression on me.