【Besides the brief description we learnt from books, we should know more about how a soldier feel like it】

【About German Soldiers】

Well, the German solider, he was a very nice fellow as a rule. You know I think he was really a barber or a shopkeeper or sth, and, the same as us, he was stuck in uniform.

They didn’t seem to bear any malice against us. They’d had to do what they were told like us.

They general agreement when we were talking to Germans was how useless war was and why did it have to happen.

I got the impression that most of the german soldiers couldn’t care less who win as long as the war finished. Of course, that’s everybody was thinking about then. We’d had enough.

【During the War】

You could see men dropping, but you didn’t take any notice. If you didn’t get hit, you just carried on.

【When the War Ended】

There was no cheering, no singing-we were drained of all emotion. We were too far gone, too exhausted to enjoy it.

【After the War】

It was a shame, the way ex-servicemen were treated. You weren’t wanted. Some places said, “No ex-servicemen need apply” and that was the sort of attitude you were up against.

People never talked about the war. It was a thing that had no conversational value at all. Most people were absolutely disinterested.

We were a race apart from the civilians, and you could speak to your comrades and they could understood, but the civilians, it was just a waste of time.

I think the magnitude was just beyond their comprehension. They didn’t understand that the people you’d known and played football with were just killed beside you.

They knew the people came back covered with mud and lice, but they’d no idea of the strain of sitting in a trench and waiting for sth to drop on one’s head.

The only thing that really did annoy me was when I was back to work after I’d got demobilised, I went down the stores, and the bloke behind the counter was a bloke who I knew. He said, "where have you been? on nights?"