[Merrill]

It would seem that our soldiers current experience would be most like that of the British Army soldiers of the late-Victorian era from the Crimean War to the Boer War, when they were largely engaged in policing the colonies of the British Empire in mostly small scale and guerrilla engagements.

Is there a literature from ordinary British soldiers forming "the thin red line"?

Kipling is probably unreliable. "Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' Tommy, 'ow's yer soul? / But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes' when the drums begin to roll,"

https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/tommy.html

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, / And the women come out to cut up what remains, / Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains / An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/young_british...