No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck.

In any case, the bayonet isn't as important as it used to be. It's more usual now to go into the attack with hand-grenades and your entrenching tool. The sharpened spade is a lighter and more versatile weapon - not only can you get a man under the chin, but more to the point, you can strike a blow with a lot more force behind it. That's especially true if you can bring it down diagonally between the neck and the shoulder, because then you can split down as far as the chest. When you put a bayonet in, it can stick, and you have to give the other man a hefty kick in the guts to get it out.

... but that's what mankind is like: they only prize what they no longer possess.

They are more to me than life, these voices, they are more than motherliness and more than fear; they are the strongest, most comforting thing there is anywhere: they are the voices of my comrades.

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

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.

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