“According to Robert, his friend Moses was a soldier in the first war, as he described it. He fought Indians and soldiers in red coats.”

“In battle, in a war, a soldier sees only a tiny fragment of what is available to be seen. The soldier is not a photographic machine. He is not a camera. He registers, so to speak, only those few items that he is predisposed to register and not a single thing more. Do you understand this? So I am saying to you that after a battle each soldier will have different stories to tell, vastly different stories, and that when a was is ended it is as if there have been a million wars, or as many wars as there were soldiers.”

“Water shapes its course according to the nature of the groundover which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relationto the foe whom he is facing.”

“He (the British soldier) is generally beloved by two sorts of Companion, in whores and lice, for both these Vermin are great admirers of a Scarlet Coat.”

“And it was as if fate had betrayed the soldier. In death it exposed to his enemies that poverty which in life he had perhaps concealed from his friends.”

“He recalls what that first German soldier said to his major: No God-not yours or mine-approves of what you're doing.”