Life Is A Disease, Brother, And Death

Courage Is The Fairest Adornment Of Youth.

To No Man Does The Earth Mean So Much As To The Soldier. When He Presses Himself Down Upon Her Long And Powerfully, When He Buries His Face And His Limbs Deep In Her From The Fear Of Death By Shell-fire, Then She Is His Only Friend, His Brother, His Mother; He Stifles His Terror And His Cries In Her Silence And Her Security; She Shelters Him And Releases Him For Ten Seconds To Live, To Run, Ten Seconds Of Life; Receives Him Again And Again And Often Forever.

And Even If These Scenes From Our Youth Were Given Back To Us We Would Hardly Know What To Do. The Tender, Secret Influence That Passed From Them Into Us Could Not Rise Again. We Might Be Amongst Them And Move In Them; We Might Remember And Love Them And Be Stirred By The Sight Of Them. But It Would Be Like Gazing At The Photograph Of A Dead Comrade; Those Are His Features, It Is His Face, And The Days We Spent Together Take On A Mournful Life In The Memory; But The Man Himself It Is Not.

Suddenly I Become Filled With A Consuming Impatience To Be Gone.

They Are More To Me Than Life, These Voices, They Are More Than Motherliness And More Than Fear; They Are The Strongest, Most Comforting Thing There Is Anywhere: They Are The Voices Of My Comrades.