soldiery

By L.A.’s yardstick of history, its story goes way back, like Queen-Victoria-and-first-movie-camera far back, to when it was first dedicated to the nation’s suffering soldiery, and then back a century before then.

Now days are dragon-ridden, the nightmare Rides upon sleep: a drunken soldiery Can leave the mother, murdered at her door, To crawl in her own blood, and go scot-free.

My gaze was fixed without object upon the encampment, the dim figures who, an arm or a cheek caught in the distinguishing gesture of flame, huddled or moved about the mob of soldiery.

He it was that now rode out, and with him came only a small company of black-harnessed soldiery, and a single banner, black but bearing on it in red the Evil Eye.

He lost his wife and son to an epidemic carried by the soldiery, his royal patron was deposed, and he was excommunicated by the Lutheran Church for his uncompromising individualism on matters of doctrine.