"Well, if I was in disgrace, I was also in good health, and that's what matters. ... The Russian wounded lay in piles by the hundred round our bivouacs, crying and moaning all through the night — I can hear their sobbing "Pajalsta! pajalsta!" still. The camp ground was littered with spent shot and rubbish and broken gear among the pools of congealed blood — my stars, wouldn't I just like to take one of our Ministers, or street-corner orators, or blood-lusting, breakfast-scoffing papas, over such a place as the Alma hills — not to let him see, because he'd just tut-tut and look anguished and have a good pray and not care a damn — but to shoot him in the belly with a soft-nosed bullet and let him die screaming where he belonged. That's all they deserve."