Birdsong

by Sebastian Faulks

Finally I stood beneath the great arch at Thiepval, where the names of the missing – not the dead, just those of whom no trace was found – are like small-print footnotes in the sky.

Tyson found a clean corner, to which he invited Shaw and Firebrace. They disliked each other’s habits, but they were familiar with them and feared worse.

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

The next day there was a letter for Jack from Margaret. He decided not to open it until he had come back from underground. He might be killed in the tunnel and it would be better to die in ignorance if the news from the hospital was bad. If it was good, then it would seem all the better for having been kept.

They were frightening to the civilians because they had evolved not into killers but into passive beings whose only aim was to endure.