Carry on Sergeant

The latest recruits at the Heathercrest National Service Depot will soon begin their ten week training. While wanting all his platoons to show promise as Her Majesty's potential soldiers, Grimshawe, the training sergeant for the Able platoon, has specific reasons for wanting this one to be better than the rest this go 'round. After getting to know the privates in this platoon, Grimshawe has his doubts. Peter Golightly is a clueless bumbler. James Bailey is an intellectual who reasons his way out of regular army protocol. Andy Galloway would rather be playing his guitar. While coming from a long line of decorated officers, Miles Heywood, with a silver spoon in his mouth, has no interest in military service, grunt, officer or otherwise, in his focus on the opposite sex. Horace Strong is a chronic hypochondriac whose problems are only exacerbated by Nora, a mess hall employee, for the first time falling in love at first sight with a private, Horace, the person at the depot least equipped emotionally to deal with someone showing some romantic interest in him. And Charlie Sage has other things on his mind as he was called up on the day of his wedding, his unconsummated marriage only more so on his mind as his bride, Mary Sage, has sneaked onto the depot without she telling him beforehand that she was going to do so. On top of the twenty-four platoon members, there is an unofficial twenty-fifth, Herbert Brown, a three time training failure who hangs around doing janitorial work in having nothing else to do. The question becomes if this disparate lot of underachievers can prove Grimshawe wrong.