The front-line soldier wants it to be got over by the physical process of his destroying enough Germans to end it. He is truly at war. The rest of us, no matter how hard we work, are not.

All the rest of us - you and me and even the thousands of soldiers behind the lines in Africa - we want terribly yet only academically for the war to get over.

War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth

If you go long enough without a bath, even the fleas will leave you alone

War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.

The closest fires were near enough for us to hear the crackling flames and the yells of firemen. Little fires grew into big ones even as we watched. Big ones died down under the firemen's valor only to break out again later.