Private Peaceful - Chapter 10
Statements
1 The soldiers felt Lieutenant Buckland was too young
to be the company's leader.
2 The trenches were covered in mud, water and blood.
3 No Man's Land was a dreadful area filled with rotting
bodies.
4 After having experienced such death and destruction,
Thomas couldn´t believe in heaven any more.
Evidence
“Lieutenant Buckland was doing his best, but he
was straight out from England. He might have been very
properly spoken, but he knew even less about fighting this war
than we did”
“Nipper said he was just a young pipsqueak, and
that he belonged back at school. And it was true, he seemed
younger than any of us, even me”
“There was a
sickly-sweet stench about the place that had to be more than
stagnant mud and water. I knew well enough what it was, we
all did, but no one dared speak of it. Word came back that
from now on we should keep our heads down because here
was where we could be most easily spotted by their snipers”
“But nothing moves out there in no-man's-land but the crows. It is
a dead man's land”
“I could no longer even pretend to myself that I
believed in a merciful god, nor in a heaven, not any more, not after
I had seen what men could do to one another. I could
believe only in the hell I was living in, a hell on earth, and it
was man-made, not God-made”
 Private Peaceful - Chapter 10
5 Charlie was going home and Thomas couldn't feel
happy for him.
6 Thomas was extremely shy around Anna.
7 Wipers explosions could be amazing.
8 The company was devastated after learning who the
new sergeant was.
“I knew I should be pleased for him, and I wanted to be,
but I just could not bring myself to think that way. All I could
think was that we'd come to this war together. We'd stuck
together through thick and thin, and now he was breaking the
bond between us, and deserting me. Worst of all he was going
home without me, and he was so unashamedly happy about it”
“I wanted to speak, but I did not trust myself to do so. I
felt suddenly overwhelmed by tears, by longing for home and
for Molly.”
“We stood for some moments listening to the thunder of the guns
as a heavy barrage opened up over Wipers, the sky lit up over the
town like an angry sunset. Flares rose and hovered and fell over the
front line”
"It is beautiful," she said. "How can it be beautiful?"
“Every one of us hated him like
poison, a great deal more than we had ever hated Fritz”