we have so much to say, and we shall never say it.

Through the years our business has been killing;-it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of lif eis limited to death.

We are not youth any longer. We don’t want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces.

The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom.

At school nobody ever taught us how to light a cigarette in a storm of rain, nor how a fire could be made with wet wood-nor that it is best to stick a bayonet in the belly because there it doesn't get jammed, as it does in the ribs.

The days, the weeks, the years out here shall come back again, and our dead comrades shall then stand up again and march with us, our heads shall be clear, we shall have a purpose, and so we shall march, our dead comrades beside us, the years at the Front behind us:—against whom, against whom?

Never do anything complicated when something simple will serve as well. It's one of the most important secrets of living.