“She is the last link between what I am leaving and the war. In a few minutes she will be gone. I am afraid now. I forget all my fine heroic phrases.”

The narrator has been caught up in the celebration and the mythical ideas of war following his enlistment. He imagines he will find fame and glory. Now, however, he suddenly understands that he is leaving everything and everyone behind and that he could die. As the novel progresses, his Disillusionment and Distrust of Leadership will deepen.

“The boys lie like sacks of potatoes in the red plush-covered seats.”

On the train from Montreal, the narrator observes his fellow recruits. Harrison foreshadows what the recruits will face in the war: Many of them will die, as motionless as a sack of potatoes, in pools of blood as red as the seats on the train.

“The officers occupy a deserted chateau. My section is quartered in a large barn with a gaping roof.”

The contrast between the officers’ housing and that of the common soldiers is one way Harrison demonstrates the class system of the army. The men who must live in the trenches during battles also must live in cold, vermin-filled barns while the officers sleep between clean sheets in large houses. Harrison critiques a military and class system that treats fighting men with such disregard, reflecting The Dehumanization of Common Soldiers.

“He is tall and blond and takes insufferable pride in his uniform. He wears very light, smart buckskin riding breeches in and out of the trenches.”

This description of Captain Clark reveals the narrator’s dislike and contempt for his commanding officer. Harrison uses this description to emphasize the unfair class system of the army and to introduce the men’s growing distrust of their officers.

“This is war; there is so much misery, heartaches, agony, and nothing can be done about it. Better to sit here and drink the sour, hard wine and try to forget.”

The narrator feels powerless over his situation. He has seen first-hand the horrors of men violently killed and has lived in the terrible conditions of the trenches. In this statement, Harrison thematically explores how the narrator cannot stop remembering the horror and how he attempts to forget through self-medication with alcohol. The narrator’s distressed state of mind reflects The Psychological Impact of Combat.

“They take everything from us: our lives, our blood, our hearts; even the few lousy hours of rest, they take those, too. Our job is to give and theirs is to take.”

The narrator’s friend Fry expresses his anger, disillusionment, and sense of betrayal in these lines. “They” refers to the commanding officers, the government, and even the people at home. The class structure as it existed at the time had those of the lowest status and rank bear the greatest sacrifices of war, leading to The Dehumanization of Common Soldiers.

“A thousand thundering orders! A thousand trivial rules, each with a penalty for an infraction, has made will-less robots of us all.”

The narrator complains that the common soldier has little agency in his life: He must do what he is ordered to do without question or incur extreme penalties if he does not. Thematically, Harrison here shows the dehumanizing climate of the military, in which individual soldiers lose their individuality and often develop Disillusionment and Distrust of Leadership over their poor treatment.

“We never escape this ominous thunder. It is the link which binds us to our future. Out on rest, miles behind the lines, we hear it. It is a reminder to us that the line is still there; that we must return.”

Harrison uses the thunder to represent the war itself. The noise is an auditory image that echoes throughout the book. The soldiers can never get away from it, and it serves as a reminder that the war is endless and that they will serve the war’s purpose, even to the point when it kills them. Harrison constructs the thunder as ominous and omnipresent, a reverberation that continues to build until the final pages of the book.

“Our food has been too good. We are being fattened up for the slaughter.”

Harrison uses Biblical allusions to suggest that the narrator and other foot soldiers are being offered as sacrifices to the war. Throughout the Biblical Old Testament, the Israelites offer fatted calves as burnt offerings, as specified in Leviticus 4:8-28. In addition, Isaiah 53:7 reads, “He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter” (RSV). This phrase has come to represent innocent and naïve people being led to their deaths.

“Our day is spoiled by this lonely dead soldier, carried to us from the front by the sparkling, sunlit water of the Somme.”

There are two significant elements in this passage. First, the soldiers are more concerned with their own pleasant day than with the dead soldier. They are upset because their day is ruined, without considering that the soldier’s death is a greater tragedy. The soldiers cannot think too deeply about the dead soldier because such a fate may await them. Second, the passage refers to the Somme River. By describing it as beautiful and sunlit, the passage contrasts its peaceful appearance with the horror of the Battle of the Somme, where over three million men fought, with 1 million men killed or wounded.

“Camaraderie—esprit de corps—good fellowship—these are words for journalists to use, not for us. Here in the line they do not exist. We fight among ourselves.”

Many war novels and poems champion comradeship among soldiers at the front, but Harrison deviates from this common trope. He instead asserts that friendship among soldiers is a myth when they are under the pressures of the front lines. Rather than the self-sacrificial stories of men who give up their lives for their comrades, Harrison tells the story of men fighting over the meager food rations, further emphasizing The Dehumanization of Common Soldiers.

“What god is there as mighty as the fury of a bombardment? More terrible than lightning, more cruel, more calculating than an earthquake? How will we ever be able to go back to peaceful ways again and hear pallid preachers whimper of their puny little gods who can only torment sinners with sulphur, we who have seen a hell that no god, however cruel, would fashion for his most deadly enemies?”

While experiencing a particularly intense bombardment, the men pray and promise God to repent of their sins. The narrator reflects that, while men may pray while under duress, their faith is short-lived. The narrator asserts that a belief in a god cannot be sustained in the face of such evil, suggesting that men who experience such terror will never be whole again due to The Psychological Impact of Combat.

“We’re bloody shock troops, that’s what we are.”

Shock troops lead an overwhelming assault on the enemy, attempting to overrun and break through an enemy line. Historically, the Canadian forces displayed such grit and determination early in the war that the British generals chose to use them as shock troops in all later engagements. This meant that the Canadian forces were often brought in to lead the most difficult battles. Along with the Australian forces, they earned the reputation of being the hardest fighting and most successful of all Allied troops.

“All our letters, pay books, and other means of identification are left behind. I have left my papers with Cleary.”

The soldiers literally leaving everything behind reflects both the threat of imminent death and The Dehumanization of Common Soldiers. The raiders are left without identity—they have become no more than fodder for the machine gun fire that awaits them, and the chances are good that they will not return. In addition, the passage also contains irony: The narrator leaves his papers with Cleary on the assumption that Cleary will be safe, but Cleary gets killed while the narrator is on the raid.

“Back home our lives were more or less our own—more or less, there we were factors in what we were doing. But here we are no more factors than was the stripling Isaac whom the hoary, senile Abraham led to the sacrificial block.”

The passage alludes to the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac to illustrate the way that old men control the fates of the young men during the war, reflecting the narrator’s Disillusionment and Distrust of Leadership. The narrator expresses anger over not overseeing his own life. The old men—generals and politicians—are willing to sacrifice his life in battle as if his life were worth nothing at all.

“We march toward the city singing our smutty marching songs. Songs laden with humor—gallows humor, the Germans call it. There is something terrifying in the way we sing these songs.”

Harrison includes several pages of the soldiers singing as they march away from the front lines. The narrator says that they sing the songs to forget the horrors of war, and yet, the narrator finds the singing terrifying because the singing itself grows out of the fear of death.

“We pass an encampment for war prisoners. The emaciated-looking Germans stand looking, as silent and motionless as owls. One of them waves his hand at us as we ride past. We wave back at them. We throw them cigarettes and cans of bully beef.”

In this passage, the Canadian foot soldiers leaving the front for rest in London are sympathetic to the German foot soldiers who have been captured. At some level, they hold more in common with their German counterparts than with their own officers. This attitude changes by the Battle of Amiens.

“The fat comic—the half-undressed actresses—somehow make me think of the line. I look about me. There are very few men on leave in the theatre. The place is full of smooth-faced civilians. I feel they have no right to laugh at jokes about the war.”

The narrator on leave in London is suffering from The Psychological Impact of Combat and finds himself hating civilians who have no inkling of the horror their fellow countrymen are facing in the trenches. He does not believe that they have the right to joke about the war without having been there themselves. Historically, such sentiments are well-documented in memoirs and first-person histories of the war.

“[B]ut the best thing about the war, to my way of thinking, is that it has brought out the most heroic qualities in the common people, positively noble qualities.”

An Anglican curate outside of Westminster Abby invites him the narrator to have tea. The curate has many opinions about the war, drawn from newspaper accounts. His description of heroism irks the narrator because it reveals the ignorance of the people at home.

“The recruit does not move. The officer takes him by the scruff of the next and hauls him to his feet. ‘You yellow-livered little bastard. Fall in.’”

This scene illustrates the mistreatment of a new recruit by an officer. The narrator describes Renaud as a very small French Canadian who struggles with the weight of his pack. He is suffering from severe groin pain. The implication is that he may have a hernia from the weight he is carrying. The officer’s rough treatment of Renaud reflects The Dehumanization of Common Soldiers.

“In the front ranks of the attackers is a man carrying a square tank strapped to his back. A jet of flame comes from a nozzle which he holds in his hand. There is an odor of chemicals.”

Flame throwers were one of the most feared weapons used in the war. Not only did they do terrible damage to soldiers, but their use also invoked panic among troops. The development of weapons using chemicals and chlorine gas demonstrates the mismatch between new technology and outmoded war strategies during WWI.

“Our officer, a lieutenant from Company ‘D’ is in charge of us. He calls the roll. Broadbent and I are the only survivors of our section.”

After terrible scenes of fighting and suffering, the narrator and Broadbent manage to survive. However, as the only survivors of their unit, they have lost their friends and comrades. The narrator does not comment on what this means to him, suggesting that The Psychological Impact of Compact has rendered him numb.

“We are to go into action tomorrow morning. We are to take no prisoners. We say this on all sides. It has become an unofficial order. It is an understood thing.”

This passage describes the preparations for the Battle of Amiens. The soldiers, who have listened to officers calling for vengeance against the Germans, understand that they are to kill any Germans who surrender to them rather than take them prisoner. Whereas earlier in the book they had shown compassion toward prisoners of war, now they are ruthless in the need for revenge. This shift in attitude marks a significant moment in The Dehumanization of Common Soldiers in the novel.