‘Not as many as some, but yes, a few. Enough, by Christ. And we’ve got new blokes, of course, reinforcements like you, since we’ve been here in France. Pretty good fellows, all in all.’
‘Can you tell—I mean, will I know, who’s been on the peninsula, and who’s new?’
‘It doesn’t matter, really. It’s just about who we’ve got here now. We’ve only got ourselves, see? And we just have to keep going. Forget about home, forget about the bloody newsmen, forget about who’s running the show and what it’s all for. It’s about nothing and everything. On Gallipoli, we saw Johnny, we talked to him, we fought him man to man, face to face. We threw food at each other, and stopped now and then to bury our dead. Civilised war, that’s what I thought. Here, it’s bloody raining death and no one knows where it’
