“The essential absurdity of the soldier’s life: look at us, standing here well groomed and housed and fed, all at our ease—while up there a few miles men are living and fighting and hiding and dying like some particularly odious species of ferret. A few miles away … I shouldn’t trouble myself over such thoughts; a good soldier wouldn’t, I suppose. But I can’t help it. I can harden my heart, but I cannot alter it. What an awfully lonely calling it is!—you continually find yourself alone with your speculations, your afterthoughts, your fears. I should never have been a soldier;
