Birdsong

by Sebastian Faulks

however rough and ready, was a novelty. But on 1 July 1916 on the Somme, seeing their friends and compatriots mown down before them, many lost their religious faith; some German machine gunners choked on their work and refused to

The function of music is to liberate in the soul those feelings which normally we keep locked up in the heart.

All of them, he thought, would be taken back by this earth:

The difference between living and dying was not one of quality, only of time.

talking to a truer version of her.

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