Battling bodies

Having recalled his own childhood while contemplating Sargent and his mother, Stephen once again looks back as he hears the boys' shouts on the hockey field, imagining himself pathetically weak among the scrum: "You mean that knockneed mother's darling who seems to be slightly crawsick?" But the horror of their "battling bodies" also takes his thoughts forward in life to the military struggles for which field games prepare boys.

John Hunt 2012

The battle of Stirling Bridge, 1297, in which Scots led by William Wallace defeated the English. Source: www.dailymail.co.uk.

Dead bodies in a WWI trench. Source: www.wereldoorlog1418.nl.

The Shot at Dawn Memorial in the National Memorial Arboretum near Alrewas, Staffordshire, which commemorates the 346 British and Commonwealth soldiers executed for desertion in WWI after courts-martial (untold others were simply dispatched behind the lines by their officers). The statue was modeled on 17-year-old Private Herbert Burden. Source: Wikimedia Commons.