Order to consume 'gunfire' may raise soldiers' hackles

PITY the poor unmarried soldiers down at Stanley Fort this morning.

They will have been woken rudely at the dawn hour of 6.30 am (known in army lingo as reveille and pronounced, with the best Glaswegian accent, as ''revalley'') by a horde of enormous sergeants racing into their regimental living quarters with war-like whoops.

Then, as if that shock isn't enough to ruin the last day of their holidays, the lads will have had served to them in bed what has been described as a ''spiritual concoction'' called gunfire.

The recipe is a closely guarded secret, although our sources could reveal that it was ''highly spirited and very explosive''.

The early call is just the beginning of an annual Black Watch celebration called ''Red Hackle Day'' named after the distinctive red plumes worn by the men of the Black Watch. ''Nothing to do with Red Hackle whisky,'' a Garrison spokesman told us.

January 5 is always celebrated by the Black Watch in memory of the day in 1795 on which, according to regiment tradition, the men of the brave 42nd recaptured some guns from the French in Flanders and won the right to wear their red hackles from the 11thLight Dragoons, who apparently helped lose the guns in the first place.