Humphrey Cobb

“He saw the delicate blades of grass which the bodies of his comrades had fertilized; he saw the little shoots on the shell-shocked trees. He saw the smoke-puffs of shrapnel being blown about by light breezes. He saw birds making love in the wire that a short while before had been ringing with flying metal. He heard the pleasant sounds of larks up there, near the zenith of the trajectories. He smiled a little. There was something profoundly saddening about it. It all seemed so fragile and so absurd.”

“...too weary and dazed by unfinished sleep even to swear. There comes a degree of numbness in fatigue and exasperation which can be expressed only by a sullen silence.”

“Flesh, bodies, nerves, legs… things were getting all mixed up in his mind. It seemed to be filled with flesh, cloyed with the sweetish smell of flesh that is torn open and over which blood is pouring. It was his flesh, their flesh, lying about still alive, but dying, dying so slowly, dying so fast…”

“Silly…but the mere issuing of a command always inspires confidence. It doesn't matter whether it is a necessary command, or even a correct one…it inspires self-confidence even in the man who issues it.”

“Rarely," said Dax to himself, "does a soldier see with naked eyes. He is nearly always looking through lenses, lenses which are made of the insignia of his rank.”

“Who said anything about justice? There's no such thing. But injustice is as much a part of life as the weather.”

“Silly," Dax thought, "but the mere issuing of a command always inspires confidence. It doesn'tt matter whether it is a necessary command, or even a correct one.: Then , a little later, an afterthought came to him: "It inspires self-confidence even in the man who issues it.”

“Soon he would see war. Jis romanticism and inexperience insulated him from the thought that he might feel it, too.”