Despite the suggestions over the weekend that the British army had mounted a massive operation at Drumcree, there was probably only a company-strength presence of around 120 soldiers between the Orangemen and the Catholic Garvaghy Road estate.
The soldiers are purely in a support role to the RUC's riot squads which will be to the fore in any confrontation. The RUC's primacy in the role of handling street disorder was established by the late 1970s.
The British army role has been, so far, confined to the use of specialist corps, mainly the logistics corps, as well as a small medical unit.
The logistics corps began work on Thursday with two mechanical diggers deepening and widening the small stream that runs across the bottom of the meadow beside Drumcree church. It is now about 12 feet wide and eight feet deep and filling with water and mud. It will be difficult but not impossible for the Orangemen to cross it.
The road itself is blocked by two military lorries with hydraulic metal barriers lowered on to the road in the path of the marchers. There are concrete bollards in front of these barriers. Any breach will take place around this.
Immediately past the stream is open ground with three fences of coiled razor-wire, again difficult but not impossible to negotiate. The wire fence stretches across the fields from the road to the Catholic John the Baptist church and primary school at the top of Garvaghy Road. The top of the road is blocked by armoured personnel carriers (APCs) and police Land Rovers.
There are a further dozen or so of the army's Saxon APCs in the school playground and a few more parked in the immediate vicinity.
In contrast to last year when there were thousands of police and soldiers in the Garvaghy Road, this year's operation has left the Catholic area almost entirely free of security presence and is concentrated on providing a buffer zone between the estate and the Orangemen collected in the meadow beside the church.
The razor-wire and ditch led to inevitable comparisons with the trench warfare of the first World War, something which has resonances for the assembled Orangemen who are commemorating the members of the 36th Ulster Division, formerly members of the original Ulster Volunteer Force, who died at the Somme in 1916.
This reporter counted about 2,500 Orangemen in the initial parade to the church yesterday morning, with a few hundred civilian followers. The parade also included three bands.
There is a loyalist paramilitary presence at Drumcree. Three men, formerly prominent figures locally in the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), surveyed the scene through binoculars and were passing orders to messengers who were moving in and out of the main crowd.
The role of co-ordinating the loyalist paramilitaries in previous years at Drumcree had been assumed by Billy Wright, a former UVF member who broke away after it declared its ceasefire in 1994 and formed his own organisation, the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF). Wright was shot dead in the Maze Prison last December.
The man said to have succeeded him as leader of the LVF was present yesterday and watched the Orangemen marching past the Protestant Corcrain housing estate on its way to the church but he then appeared to drift into the background and the three other, older men gave the appearance of being in charge.
It is understood that in the past 10 days reinforcements from three Scottish regiments - the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, the Scots Guards and the Highland Regiment - took up position in Mahon Road barracks, on the south side of Portadown. There is also a regiment of the Royal Irish Regiment (RIR) based at the barracks but this is a locally raised militia that is entirely Protestant and was formed to replace the Ulster Defence Regiment and align it more closely with the main body of the British army.
The overall British army strength in the North is something of a secret. It is supposed to have around 12,000 soldiers but many of the regiments are said to be "paper" forces with most of the regimental strengths remaining in Britain on standby.
There is a brigade structure, the 3rd Brigade, covering the Border area from Armagh to Fermanagh and this could be expanded quickly if the need were to arise. However, the 3rd Brigade's main disposition is designed to respond to republican terrorist violence and much of its strength is still concentrated in barracks along the Border. There are 31 posts and camps in south Armagh alone.
The British army does not have a notable record of confronting widespread street disorder from either republican or loyalist sources. It was originally placed in a role similar to its current role in Drumcree when it was positioned along the "peace lines" between communities in Belfast and Derry. Its role was eventually reduced to one of supporting the civil power - the RUC - and to handling bomb disposal, engineering, logistics and patrolling in republican areas where it is unsafe for the RUC.
The army could be called on to help in clearing barricades and in riot control if violence spread throughout the North and the RUC became over-stretched but until that point it would be kept in reserve. The policy of "police primacy" was established during the late 1970s when the RUC was reformed and greatly expanded under the leadership of Sir Kenneth Newman.
The RUC's riot squads have probably more experience than any police force in the world. It is equipped and trained to the highest standards but a concerted, widespread civil strike by the loyalist community could stretch the police to breaking point.
This was shown in the 1996 standoff at Drumcree when loyalists brought the North to a standstill for a week before the Orangemen were allowed to march along Garvaghy Road. The 1974 Ulster Workers' Council strike defeated both police and military efforts to contain it. But the 1977 loyalist workers' strike collapsed within a week in the face of concerted action by the reformed and strengthened RUC under Sir Kenneth Newman.
The RUC is, undoubtedly, still determined to maintain its primacy over public order in the North and will be unlikely to cede control of operations to the British army in any but the gravest of situations.