Status Updates From Tage ohne Ende

17. Suspense, ambush and shots fired. Concerns for Winona. All of a sudden it’s become a captivating pageturner, while Thomas’ voice hasn’t changed. It’s probably the human dimension compared to the mass action of war. And yet, Th. account keeps a distance and lets the beating heart sound through ever so slightly.

16. After much hardship in the camp, returning to Titus Noone, Mr. McSweney and Winona. Long time needed to recover and never get back to their young selves (despite not even being thirty). Then Thomas & John Cole get married by a half-blind priest and, together with Winona, leave for Lige Magan’s farm down south.

Men so sick they are dying of death.

15. Southern prison camp. Amidst war crimes, torture and hunger and threat, all bluecoats must try for months on end to survive. And then at the last sentence, an inkling of proof that love is still around. Nothing sentimental, just the slightest sense of connection…

How come we lying here and guarded and inside four walls and the camp lying within this wooded land and the dogs of winter biting and scraping at our limbs?

The Sun of Death burns out innards and the moon of Death pulls at our blood. Our blood slows and youth is cancelled and we feel like aged men full of years.

The mind is a wild liar and I don’t trust much in it that I find there.

14. Juxtaposition of human sentiment after the fighting, goodbyes to army mates. Lovely chapter!

We ain’t maybe what people do call human since we ain’t partaking of that bread of heaven. But if God was trying to make an excuse for us He might point at that strange love between us. Like when you fumbling about in the darkness and you light a lamp and the light come up and rescue things […] The lamplight touching his eyes and another light answering. (p. 177/178)

13. Mourning the dead if the first battle, and then comes the next. Can’t discern Barry’s point for all the words. The uselessness of it all. The drummer boy McCarthey, who lost his head even before the end of the first fight. Starling Carlton not even knowing what he ‘s fighting for, and not caring for a black man’s freedom. Boring madness, really. In a language hard to follow…

12. Outbreak of the Civil War. Blue against grey, brother against brother