His voice is so strong and clear that I could almost believe that he will get back and that some day I shall look up and see him standing at my garden gate.
Mercifully, when I tell him to go to sleep again, he does go to sleep. And his voice is a little clearer and stronger every time he wakes.
And so the morning goes on. The only thing he wants you to do for him is to sponge his hands and face with iced water and to give him little bits of ice to suck. Over and over again I do these things. And over and over again he asks me, "Do you mind?"
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He wears a little grey woollen cord round his neck. Something has gone from it. Whatever he has lost, they have left him his little woollen cord, as if some immense importance attached to it.
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He has fallen into a long doze. And at the end of the morning I left him sleeping.
Some of the Corps have brought in trophies from the battle-field—a fine grey cloak with a scarlet collar, a spiked helmet, a cuff with three buttons cut from the coat of a dead German.
These things make me sick. I see the body under the cloak, the head under the helmet, and the dead hand under the cuff.
[Afternoon.]