War Horse

I can hate you more, but I'll never love you less.

Any problem can be solved between people if only they can trust each other

That's what this war is all about, my friend. It's about which of us is the crazier.And clearly you British have an advantage.You were crazy beforehand.

This one isn’t just any old horse. There’s a nobility in his eye, a regal serenity about him. Does he not personify all that men try to be and never can be? I tell you, my friend, there’s divinity in a horse, and specially in a horse like this. God got it right the day he created them. And to find a horse like this in the middle of this filthy abomination of a war, is for me like finding a butterfly on a dung heap. We don’t belong in the same universe as a creature like this.

They fight a war and they don't know what for. Isn't that crazy? How can one man kill another and not really know the reason why he does it, except that the other man wears a different color uniform and speaks a different language?

I tell you, my friends,’ he said one day. ‘I tell you that I am the only sane man in the regiment. It’s the others that are mad, but they don’t know it. They fight a war and they don’t know what for. Isn’t that crazy? How can one man kill another and not really know the reason why he does it, except that the other man wears a different colour uniform and speaks a different language? And it’s me they call mad!

If it is possible to be happy in the middle of a nightmare, then Topthorn and I were happy that summer.

But just as soon as this war's over and finished with,I'll get back home and marry her.I've grown up with her, Joey, known her all my life. S'pose I know her almost as well as I know myself, and I like her a lot better.

He laughed to himself he said because if he did not laugh he would cry.

My Albert married his Maisie Brown as he said he would. But I think she never took to me, nor I to her for that matter. Perhaps it was a feeling of mutual jealousy.

But try as I might, I never got to eat any of her pastries, and do you know, she never even offered me one.

As he did so, he held out his other hand in a gesture of friendship and reconciliation, a smile lighting he worn face. 'In an hour, maybe, or two,' he said, 'we will be trying our best again each other to kill. God only knows why we do it, and I think he has maybe forgotten why. Goodbye Welshman. We have shown them, haven't we? We have shown them that any problem can be solved between people if only they can trust each other. That is all it needs, no?

...and then quite suddenly I found that I had no rider, that I had no weight on my back, and that I was alone out in front of the squadron.

Blind terror drove me on, with my flying stirrups whipping me into a frenzy. With no rider to carry I reached the kneeling riflemen first and they scattered as I came upon them.

Headquarters phoned through about the horses, Herr Hauptmann,’ said the man in white. ‘And they say I am to keep them for the stretcher cases. I know your views on the matter Hauptmann, but I’m afraid you cannot have them. We need them here desperately, and the way things are going I fear we will need more. That was just the first attack – there will be more to come. We expect a sustained offensive – it will be a long battle. We are the same on both sides, once we start something we seem to have to prove a point and that takes time and lives. We’ll need all the ambulance transport we can get, motorised or horse.

Why does this war have to destroy anything and everything that’s fine and beautiful?