Meaning: Enlist in the army.
Background:
Each regiment in the British Army has a flag, called its `colour'. This dates
back to at least the 16th century. In this citation from Certain discourses
concerning the forms and effects of divers sorts of weapons, and other verie
important matters militarie, 1590, Sir John Smythe appears to be disparaging
about what must then have been new practice of calling an ensign (flag) a
colour:
"Colours is by them so fondlie & ignorantly given, as if they should (in
stead of Ensignes) be asked how manie Colours of footmen there were in the
Armie."
The word `colour' in this context is now best remembered via the annual
ceremony in London of `Trooping the Colour', in which various regiments of
the British Army, notably the Household Division, parade their regimental
colours before the monarch.
- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]
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The Manchus that conquered China in the early 1600s were called the bannermen
under eight military regiments, each dubbed a flag: plain white, bordered white,
plain blue, bordered blue, etc. I don't imagine it easy for the masses in those
days to just sign up, however, as bannermen were a higher social class, like the
samurai in Japan. Joining the colours would've been a promotion, a coveted
honor.
80 years after the dynasty, a college buddy was still proud of his bordered
yellow toff heritage. The eldest son of a well-to-do family in the capital, he
was tall, handsome, smart, brawny, generous, true-blue, let in first by the
party, had a graphic memory for fighter jets and aircraft carriers, and dated
the hottest girls. We hated his guts!
