Soldiers Three

The three soldiers of the title are Learoyd, Mulvaney and Ortheris, who had also appeared previously in the collection Plain Tales from the Hills.

The current version, dating from 1899 and more fully titled Soldiers Three and other stories, consists of three sections which each had previously received separate publication in 1888; Learoyd, Mulvaney and Ortheris appear only in the first section, which is also titled Soldiers Three.

The soldiers comment on their betters, act the fool, but cut straight to the rawness of war in central Asia as the British began to loosen their Imperial hold.

The first publication of a collection of seven stories called Soldiers Three was as No 1 of A.H. Wheeler & Co.’s Indian Railway Library, a slim volume of 97 pages printed at the “Pioneer” Press, Allahabad in 1888 called Soldiers Three: a collection of stories setting forth certain passages in the lives and adventures of Privates Terence Mulvaney, Stanley Ortheris and John Learoyd, done into type and edited by Rudyard Kipling.

(The phrase 'Soldiers Three' may be used in writings about Kipling to group the three heroes of this collection: see Learoyd, Mulvaney and Ortheris.)