A. A. Milne

“ As I point out, our soldiers have already earned a reputation abroad for gaiety and high spirits, and it is all to the good that the War Office should show that it has a sense of humour equally keen. When the invasion comes, and music-halls, cinemas and football matches are closed down, the amusement of the country (as the War Office has foreseen) will depend entirely upon us. Let us, then, obey rigidly the seven commandments of "recognition" and see how funny we can be. ”

“ Recognition, you told yourself, would only mean that we were immediately to be employed as waterproof sheeting for the new huts or concrete foundations for the new guns. Aha! Now you wish you had joined us. We are allowed to go on living!
But I was forgetting. The War Office is being even more generous than that. In return for our not bothering them any more, it will allow us to wear (and pay for) a small red armlet with "G.R." on it; the red colour, I suppose, informing the Germans that we have just been vaccinated, and the "G.R." ("got rash") warning them that the left arm is irritable. ”

“ If the worst befalls him—and all the time when I was writing "prisoner" above I seemed to see James in that position—if the worst befalls him, his partner will at least be able to bring an action against somebody. For we are not "civilians." ”