There are few sounds as menacing as a bayonet being fixed. — George MacDonald Fraser

[Re the Piat anti-tank weapon] Like many British inventions, it looked improbable, unwieldy, and unsafe - and it worked.

We all have kindly impulses, fostered by two thousand years of Christian teaching, gentle Jesus, and love thy neighbour, but we have the killer instinct, too, the murderous impulse of the hunter...

Only very young soldiers and head-cases object to boredom in war-time.