But it was a driving instinct--to come and get it off his chest.
And on and on he talked, over his wine and soda.

He was not conceited--he was not showing off--far from it.

It was the same thing here in this officer as it was with the privates, and the same with this Englishman as with a Frenchman or a German or an Italian.

Lilly had sat in a cowshed listening to a youth in the north country: he had sat on the corn-straw that the oxen had been treading out, in Calabria, under the moon: he had sat in a farm-kitchen with a German prisoner: and every time it was the same thing, the same hot, blind, anguished voice of a man who has seen too much, experienced too much, and doesn't know where to turn.

None of the glamour of returned heroes, none of the romance of war: only a hot, blind, mesmerised voice, going on and on, mesmerised by a vision that the soul cannot bear.
In this officer, of course, there was a lightness and an appearance of bright diffidence and humour.