“This is not a war. This is a test of how far men can be degraded.”
“Blood thirsty and forever thinking *********** the enemy.”
“Some crime against nature is about to be committed”
“They had seen things no human eyes had looked on before, and they had not looked away.”
“They were frightening to the civilians because they had evolved not into killers but into passive beings whose only aim was to endure”
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Love, Sex and Relationships: (6)
“I believe I have fallen in love”
“Because I love you. Can’t you see that? From all that’s gone wrong I want to make something good. We must try”
“What he really needed, it occurred to him, was the closeness of human contact, not forced by the proximity of war, but given willingly, from friendship.”
“I would have killed a man that so much as laid a hand on him.”
“She began to feel dependent and helpless and despised herself for it.”
“Turning like a key in the split lock of her flesh.”
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Death and Loss (5)
The unexpected bullet through the head provided a quiet, relatively clean death, but it was demoralising to the nerves of others.”
“He saw a picture in his mind of a terrible piling up of the dead…the row on row, the deep rotting earth hollowed out to hold them, while the efforts of the living, with all their works and wars and great buildings, were no more than the beat of a wing against the weight of time”
“Death had no meaning.”
“They saw young men dying in quantities that they had not dreamed possible.”
“He had thought himself immune to death.”
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Conflict: (5)
“The sound was like nothing on earth. Jesus said Stephen, Jesus, Jesus.
“He was hunched like an old woman in the cocoon of tearing noise.”
“In his mind, Stephen saw only one outcome: his company’s bodies stacked like sandbags one on another.”
“Jack thought of meat, the smell of it.”
“Once more in ragged suicidal line they trudged towards the pattering death of mounted guns.”
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Nature: (5)
“The war lifted from him. It is just a piece of field beneath French heaven, he thought. There are trees beyond the noise and down the valley is the fish-filled river.”
“All of them, he thought, would be taken back by this earth.”
“Petrol cans, shell cases, wooden boxes, tins the packages all kinds of supply goods and ammunition lay on either side of the tracks. After ten minutes they saw their first green tree.”
“organic changes.”
“A faint rainbow was coming up above them as the sun began to press back the stormclouds.”
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Alienation: (3)
“He expected he would soon feel at home…he was waiting for the moment when the familiar wash of normality would come over him and he would be restored to his old self.”
“You don’t want me here, do you?”
“Stephen found the soup too strong to be pleasant; the taste of fresh beef stock and seasoning confused him”
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Patriotism: (4)
“Should we fight for fields and hedges and trees? Perhaps we should. Perhaps if they’re filled with the affections that people have brought to them, then they are worth dying for”
“Most people in this war want to survive so that we can win it. We are fighting for our country.”
“I don’t want to fight the French…and I particularly don’t want to fight the English. But thigs is my country and our home. I must do my duty.”
“The sight of his homeland had not brought any feeling of affection or deep welcome.”
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Family: (5)
“She was the youngest of five sisters and had disappointed her father by not being the son he wanted.”
“I didn’t have parents…At least not ones I knew.”
“Where there is real love between people, as there was between us, then the details don’t matter. Love is more important than the flesh and blood facts of who gave birth to whom.”
“Jack talked about the boy’s innocence and how it had changed him.”
“She was preoccupied by an intense curiosity about her child.”
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