That morning's work is all very confused to me. I remember seeing men cut down as they ran. I remember a fine horse coming past me lurching, clattering his stirrups, before leaping into the river. I remember the stink of powder over all the field; the strange look on the faces of the dead; the body of a trumpeter, kneeling against a gorse-bush, shot through the heart, with his trumpet raised to his lips, the litter everywhere, burnt cartridges, clothes, belts, shot, all the waste of war. They are in my mind, those memories, like scattered pictures. The next clear memory in my mind, is of a company of cavalry in red coats, under a fierce, white-faced man, bringing in a string of prisoners to the King's camp. A couple of troopers jumped down to examine me. One had the face of a savage; the other was half drunk. “You're one of them,” they said. “Bring him on.” They twisted string about my thumbs. I was their prisoner. They dragged me into the King's camp, where the white-faced man sat down at a table to judge us.
I will not talk of that butchery. The white-faced man has been judged now, in his turn; I will say no more of him. When it came to my turn, he would hear no words from me; I was a rebel, fit for nothing but death. “Pistol him” was all the sentence passed on me. The soldiers laid hands on me to drag me away, to add my little corpse to the heap outside. One of the officers spoke up for me. “He's only a boy,” he said. “Go easy with the boy. Don't have the poor child killed.” It was kindly spoken; but quite carelessly. The man would have pleaded for a cat with just as much passion. It was useless, anyway, for the colonel merely repeated “Pistol him,” just as one would have ordered a wine at dinner. “Burgundy.” “No, the Burgundy here is all so expensive.” “Never mind, Burgundy.” So I was led away to stand with the next batch of prisoners lined against a wall to be shot. My place was at the end of a line, next to a young sullen-looking man black with powder. I did not feel frightened, only hopeless, quite hopeless, a sort of dead feeling. I remember looking at the soldiers getting ready to shoot us. I wondered which would shoot me. They seemed so slow about it. There was some hitch, I think, in filling up the line; a man had proved his innocence or something.