Butts on the Ground!

Today at the Military Museum, we had a school program with students in Grades 1, 2, and 3 - and because the weather is now sunny and warm, we were finally able to run an outdoor activity as part of our programming: Practising 1812 military drills, using a kid-size corn broom in place of a musket! (We call them 'Broom Drills')

This is actually something that was done in Canadian schools in the 1800's - should the military require your help in an emergency, all students would practice the basic procedures for loading and firing a musket, using brooms as stand-ins for real guns.

This was my first time running Broom Drills, and I was pretty excited. For the most part, my group was very good at listening and responding to my commands of "SHOULDER - ARMS!" "MAKE - READY!" and "COMPANY - FIRE!," amongst other orders. 

But the highlight was definitely the phrase I used to describe the proper resting position, to the command "ORDER - ARMS!" This command asks soldiers to place their muskets vertically, with the base resting on the ground beside their right foot. At first, 'ORDER - ARMS' was a little too confusing for these young kids. Now, the real name the base of the musket is called the 'butt' (one of several cheekily-named musket parts - we've already discussed the "Cocking mechanism"), so I started following up the ORDER ARMS command with "Butts on the ground! Butts on the ground!"  

This became the catch-phrase of the day. Even when we were done the Broom Drills, the kids kept repeating "Butts on the Ground!" to their friends. My apologies to their teachers who may be hearing this phrase the entire bus ride back to school.