V. C by David Christie Murray

Here we are, fifteen months later, with Balaclava and Inkerman behind us, and the world ringing with the story of our valour; and something here and there being said about the staring incapacity of our commanders and the crass dishonesty and stupidity of our contractors. The army which left home in such bright array is transformed to a crowd of ragged vagabonds, and all the services are mixed together in the trenches and the camps before Sevastopol. Here are men of the Horse Artillery whose batteries have lost their horses; and here are cavalrymen dismounted, whether by reason of warlike misadventure or the sheer starvation of horseflesh. And since folks must do something for their bread in campaigning times, as at more peaceful seasons, the rules and regulations of special branches of the military service are cast aside, and men of every arm are working in the trenches together.

A crowd of vagabonds we are to look at, to be sure; but a year of war, if you only think of it, makes a boy a veteran, and the bronzed, weatherbeaten, and ragged lads of whom the army is in the main composed, have lived in an atmosphere of powder for a year past; have gone marching and counter-marching under shot and shell; and charging, and repelling charges, until the imminent peril of their lives is a great deal more familiar to them than their daily bread. The peril is there always, and the bread turns up with extreme fitfulness.