(By the way, I wonder when people will stop calling them "Tommy" and call them "Bill." I never heard the word "Tommy" in a soldier's mouth: he was a red-coated man. "But every mate's called 'Bill,' ain't 'e, Bill?")
From the camp across the road the words of command float in through the ward window.
"Halt!" and "Left wheel!" and "Right wheel!..."
They float into the ward bearing the sense of heat and dust, and of the bumping of the saddle. The dairyman has perhaps put me a bit against the camp across the road.
When the dressings are finished and we scrub the enamel bowls in the annexe, one can see all the dairymen and all the plumbers, chefs and shopwalkers bumping up and down in a ring amid a cloud of dust, while the voice of the sergeant cries out those things that my dairyman used to think of in his sleep.
Then the jumps go up. "Left wheel!" "Right wheel!..." And now, "Cross your stirrups!" One out of every four of them is clinging, grabbing, swaying.
The seventh is off! It was a long fight.... He went almost round the horse's neck before he fell.
We must win the war, win the war, win the war!
Every sort of price must be paid, every Mud of curious coinage—the pennies and farthings of fear and despair in odd places, as well as the golden coin of life which is spent across the water.
All day long the words of command come over the ward window-sills. All day long they bump and shout and sweat and play that charade of theirs behind the guns.