Sebastian Faulks

The place from which the boy had came was not just a better place but a better world.

He spoke no French and viewed all buildings, fields and churches as profoundly alien.

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

Any man shirking his duty would be shot on the spot.

There was a perverse appeal in the thought he could complete what no enemy had managed.

They were breaking free into the darkness of normality, with food and drink, the sound of women and the sight of men whose first thought would not be to kill them.

Non-believers finding faith in fear.

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

They mocked him for still being alive.

Perhaps in some way he did not understand, that was what the two officers had been doing: perhaps all that talk about life-drawing was just a way of pretending everything was normal.

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.