“none of these soldiers were going to hit her”
That’s because they are the kind of men who kiss each other. Wusses,,,
They’re Coldstream Guards.
If they had laid a finger on her, they would have been drummed out of the Regiment for dishonouring it. I mean that literally, the ceremony and everything, even without a Court Martial. Banished to a lesser Regiment.
Sometimes it means being publicly humiliated by allowing yourself to be beaten up by a “slip of a girl”.
Sometimes it means “Birkenhead Drill”. These are the people who invented that, go look it up. That was the 73rd Regiment of Foot, who have had a rivalry with the Coldstream Guards since Waterloo.
I notice that her husband, when he added his 2c, got his nose bitten off in the course of being rendered hors de combat. They were... upset.. at having to take this from her. But they didn’t have to take it from him.