And also why do they still exist? Can’t a regular soldier do the same thing?
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When I was in college, I was part of a group that wasn’t military, but had similar stoicism rules and we stood at attention for extended periods of time like the palace guards. It boils down to practice. You can practice standing totally still for extended periods the way you practice anything else. We’d have to do push-ups if we broke attention while at our practices, and part of every practice was the new guys would stand there and the older guys would do the funniest things they could think of to try to get them to break. I’d wager that most Buckingham Palace guards are kind of an odd mixture of totally calm and extremely pissed off at the tourists doing the most basic bits during most of their shifts.
I think the longest I had to stand at attention at a public event was about an hour and a half. It starts to suck big time after more than an hour, but you can subtly shift your weight between your feet and bend your knees slightly to keep from totally going numb without moving too perceptibly. I think the Buckingham Palace guards do occasional patrols back and forth to get them moving a bit, but it might vary based on the post.
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