The bloodless faces above the blankets express what the blankets hide, mangled limbs, bloody wounds, open stomachs and infested cuts. These men have been through hell, and to hell they may return. "For King and country" the recruiting Sergeant shouted in Hyde Park, and a dozen of them signed up on those words alone. Like lambs led to the slaughter they smiled and laughed, ignorant of the future, till they entered the trenches.
Those bloodless faces, young and smooth; mere boys in everything but the eyes. Those eyes, they belonged to men twice there age. The eyes could not hide the truth the brave smiles covered when the nurses nursed them. They knew they were going to die.
Of course some will survive, but have they survived? Two years of shells and bombs, bullets and screams, a man cannot peel that off as easily a sock.