But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony - forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?

That is the remarkable thing about drinking: it brings people together so quickly, but between night and morning it sets an interval again of years.

The things men did or felt they had to do.

This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.

I wandered through the streets thinking of all the things I might have said and might have done had I been other than I was.

I felt the first soft glow of intoxication that makes the blood warmer and spreads an illusion of adventure over uncertainty.

My rage outweighs my shame, as always happens when one is really ashamed and knows he ought to be.