In 1886 Major Lombard retired from the post of Adjutant, having served to the full limit of age allowed by the War Office Regulations in force on his appointment. The Corps now came under the operation of the rule at present in force, by which an officer on the Active List of the Army is appointed for five years only, when he returns to his regiment. Under this rule Captain A. G. S. Beadnell, of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, was appointed, _vice_ Major Lombard.
The Volunteer “events” which marked the Jubilee Year of 1887 will ever make it memorable to those who took part in them. The Civil Service Corps were fully represented at each of these--The Royal Procession to the Abbey; the March Past the Queen at Buckingham Palace, when the Corps had the honour of being led by H.R.H. the Prince of Wales; and last, but not least, the gigantic Military Review at Aldershot. On the last-mentioned occasion, in order to parade at the early hour of four in the morning, the detachment was billeted for the previous night at Somerset House.
No history of the Corps could be accepted as complete which omitted an account of the Wimbledon Ranges; for it is around them that, with many of us, the pleasantest memories of volunteering life will cling--some of its sweetest triumphs, and also, perhaps, some of its keenest disappointments. _Here_ we have endeavoured to learn, with more or less success, how to bear the pride of victory, as well as the sting of defeat, with that impassive demeanour which is held to become the well-bred Briton.
Then, too, are they not the more interesting because they are, in themselves, _glorious_ ranges? Not, perhaps, with regard to their adaptability to good shooting. They have a fish-tail wind that is trying, and a semaphore that is--worse. But the grand view! Across the wide common, with its gorse, heather, and fern, its quiet dells, its shady copses, and its broad, open, wind-swept plateaux, to the beautiful glades of Richmond Park, and far, far away to the distant Surrey Hills. Then, the pure, bracing breeze, coming as it does just over the top of Leith Hill, straight from the sea, giving more health and vigour in one short afternoon than any doctor’s tonic taken for a month.