'I am certainly not in it for my health.' He looked at my leg, where the doctors had dug out the shrapnel fragments, and smiled quizzically.
'Pretty fit again ?' he asked.
'Tough as a sjambok.

I thrive on the racket and eat and sleep like a schoolboy.' He got up and stood with his back to the fire, his eyes staring abstractedly out of the window at the wintry park.
'It is a great game, and you are the man for it, no doubt.

But there are others who can play it, for soldiering today asks for the average rather than the exception in human nature.

It is like a big machine where the parts are standardized.

You are fighting, not because you are short of a job, but because you want to help England.