Chapter 2

• Rivers meets Sassoon for the first time "A posture that could have easily been taken for arrogance, though Rivers was more inclined to suspect shyness" Showcases Rivers meticulous methods of understanding his patients
• p16 - "Yes i am quite good at bombing. No, i do not still dislike the Germans" "Does that mean once you did?"

  Sassoon looked surprised. For the first time something had been said that contradicted his assumptions" - Sassoon is being tested by the intelligence of Rivers
• p17 - "The maddest thing i ever did was under orders"
• p-19 Rivers wants to see Sassoon's poems he wrote whilst in hospital. A way outside of therapy to see the state of his psyche
• p-19 - First glimpse at Sassoon's hatred for civilians "Lost heavily in that last scrap. You don't talk like that if you've watched them die
• p-21 War agony is the worst type of agony "You must've been in agony when you did that" (Throwing MC ribbon into Merseyside River) "N-no, i Agony's lying in a shell-hole with your legs shot off. I was upset"
• p-22 Rivers to Sassoon - "You seem to have a very powerful anti-war nuerosis"
• P-23 Rivers about Sassoon "I found him.. much more impressive than i expected"
• p-24 Burns appears "a thin yellow-skinned man was on his feet, choking and gagging"
• p-24 Barker bringing CL to the front line + making CL human "Pipes lined the walls, twisting with the turning of the stair, gurgling from time to time like lengths of human intestine"
• p-25 Rivers acts as a father figure "Fetched Burns's coat from the peg behind the door and wrapped it round his shoulders. Would it be easier to eat in your own room?"
• p-25 "The most distressign feature of his case was the occasional glimpse of the cheerful and likeable young man he must have once been"
• p-26 "You know waht the worst part is... that it's a joke" War was extremely unprecedented and soldiers were not prepared for this level of trauma to inflict upon their minds. It almost comically caught them off guard.
• p-26 "Rivers had become adept at finding bearable aspects of unbearable experiences, but Burns defeated him. What had happened to him was so vile, so disgusting, that Rivers could find no redeeming feature"
• p-26 "He had been thrown into the air by the explosion of a shell and had landed, head first, on a German corpse, whose gas-filled belly had ruptured on impact"
• p-27 "Before Burns lost consciousness, he'd had time torealise that what filled his nose and mouth was decomposing human flesh. Now whenever he tried to eat, that taste and smell recurred" Inescapable.
• p-27 "Retching up the last ounce of bile, hardly looked like a human being at all" War is not something that the human body is meant to experience. Its inhumane.