Sebastian Faulks

If they could shout loud enough they might bring the world back to it's senses, they might laugh loud enough to raise the dead.

There was only violent death or life to chose between; finer distinctions such as love, preference or kindness were redundant.

I feel guilty that I have survived when all the others are gone.

I don’t value my life enough.

Stephen was appalled by the idea of being separated from the men he had fought with. He despised the war, but could not leave until he had seen it through until the end.

This is not a war. It is an exploration of how far men can be degraded.

Non-believers finding faith in fear.

His own [childhood] seemed so long ago that it was as is someone had lived it for him.

He was surprised by his own brutality, he assumed that it was caused by fear.

He could remember this compassion but he no longer felt it.

He wanted to answer them with steel and explosives, with metal tearing into soft tissue and spinning on the bone. When the war was over there would be a place for contemplation, even generosity, but in the meantime he treasured his hatred as a means of saving his own life and those of his men.

No child or future generation will know what this was like.