The Bee and the Soldier
A bee, heavy with pollen and still greedy for more, clover-hopped in front of me as I crawled. I remember I spoke to him. “We’re much alike, bee, you and me,” I said. “You may carry your pack underneath you and your rifle may stick out of your bottom. But you and me, bee, are much alike.” The bee must have taken offense at this, because he took off and flew away (page 112).
This image evokes the English countryside with its mentions of bees and clover. This light-hearted mood even inspires Tommo's comment that he and the bee have a lot in common.
The Corpse in No Man's Land
Some in grey uniforms and some in khaki. There is one lying in the wire with his arm stretched heavenwards, his hand pointing. He is one of ours, or was. I look up where he is pointing. There are birds up there, and they are singing. I see a beady-eyed blackbird singing to the world from his barbed-wire perch. He has no tree to sing from (page 144).
This passage describes the corpses that litter the battlefield. They are numerous and it is impossible to tell who they might have been in life. This evokes horror, but the fact that one corpse is pointing to a singing bird offers a morbid ray of hope.
The Town of Wipers
As we marched through Wipers that evening I wondered why it was worth fighting for at all. So far as I could see there was no town left, nothing you could call a town anyway. Rubble and ruin, that's all the place was, more dogs and cats than townspeople. We saw two horses lying dead and mangled in the street, as we passed by what was left of the town hall; and everywhere there were soldiers and guns and ambulances on the move, and hurrying (page 142).
The soldiers march through a Belgian town that they will fight to defend, but there isn't much of it left. The atmosphere of destruction is emphasized by the words "rubble" and "ruin," along with descriptions of the dead and living animals that populate its streets.
The Airplane
An airplane! We watched, spellbound, as it circles above us like some ungainly yellow bird, its great wide wings wobbling precariously. We could see the goggled pilot looking down at us out of the cockpit. We waved frantically up at him and he waved back. Then he was coming in lower, lower. The cows in the water meadow scattered (page 74).
This imagery focuses on the airplane, which seems to the children like a visitor from another world, comparable only to a strange bird. Even the cows run away frightened from this strange apparition.
