He glared at Frances and Anthony. What was the good of telling them, of trying to make them realize it? If they'd only given some sign, made some noise or some gesture, or looked at him, he might have spared them. But the stiff, averted faces of Frances and Anthony annoyed him.
"And if you're a poor wretched Tommy like me, you'll have to sweat in a brutal sun, hauling up cases of fizz from the railway up country to Headquarters, with a thirst on you that frizzles your throat. You see the stuff shining and spluttering, and you go mad. You could kill the man if you were to see him drink it, when you know there's nothing for you but a bucket of green water with typhoid germs swimming about in it. That's war.
"You think you're lucky if you're wounded and get bumped down in a bullock wagon thirty miles to the base hospital. But the best thing you can do then is to pop off. For if you get better they make you hospital orderly. And the hospital orderly has to clean up all the muck of the butcher's shop from morning to night. When you're so sick you can't stand you get your supper, dry bread and bully beef. The bully beef reminds you of things, and the bread--well, the bread's all nice and white on the top. But when you turn it over on the other side--it's red. That's war."
Frances looked at him. He thought: "At last she's turned; at last I've touched her; she can realize that."
"Morrie dear, it must have been awful," she said. "It's too awful. I don't mind your telling me and Anthony about it; but I'd rather you did it when the children aren't in the room."
"Is that all you think about? The children? The children. You don't care a tinker's cuss about the war. You don't care a damn what happens to me or anybody else. What does it matter who's wounded or who's killed, as long as it isn't one of your own kids?
"I'm simply trying to tell you what war is. It's dirt and stink and funk. That's all it is. And there's precious little glory in it, Nicky."
"If the Boers won there would be glory," Michael said.
"Not even if the Boers won," said Maurice.
"Certainly not if the Boers won," said Anthony.