Every morning in 1768, he and Abigail, to their intense annoyance, were woken by the sounds of fife and drum, the soldiers making a great show in Brattle Square, in front of their house.
The speeches end, and to the sound of booming drums the soldiers march past the stage.
The bassist Percy Heath may be gone, but his masterly siblings, the saxophonist Jimmy and the drummer Albert, soldier on.
The guitarist Steve Jones and the drummer Paul Cook soldiered on and recorded "No One Is Innocent (A Punk Prayer By Ronald Biggs)" in Brazil with Biggs, a member of the Great Train Robbery gang on the run.
He was also a member of the Buffalo Soldiers' drum and bugle corps, and performed at funerals in Arlington National Cemetery, where he himself would later be buried.
He was later transferred to Virginia, where he took care of President Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor's horses and was a member of the Buffalo Soldiers' drum and bugle corps.
Under Anni's motherly care -- she is big on folk remedies involving mud patches and the beating of drums -- the soldiers are nursed back to life, and something like a truce grows between them, though mutual suspicion remains in the background.
From the late 20s, still involved with Riding, there is his much-anthologised "The Cool Web": Children are dumb to say how hot the day is, How hot the scent is of the summer rose, How dreadful the black wastes of evening sky, How dreadful the tall soldiers drumming by.
So researchers opened up the mounds of Macrotermes natalensis termites in a South African mountain range and filmed the soldiers' drumming signals using a high-speed video camera.
And to the sound of massed drums and trumpets, soldiers marched past a reviewing stand holding Venezuelan officials and visiting leaders, including three Latin American presidents - Evo Morales of Bolivia, Fernando Lugo of Paraguay and Jose Mujica of Uruguay.
