![]() ![]() For many of their deadly traps and their bullets have found the flesh of his friends, striking them down far away from home, in a theatre of battle halfway forgotten by a world seemingly exclusively focused on the dramatic collapse of the third Reich. Contesting the British forces in this inhospitable land are the soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army who, in their dogged determination and their suicidal bravery, earn both Fraser's grudging respect and his burning enmity. Stationed in Burma, he vividly details the unromantic side of war: the suffocating conditions, the endless marches, the chaotic battles and the blessings of fortune which distinguish the living from the dead. Fraser, a British author and screenwriter, here, reflects upon his time in the British infantry during the second world war. Unfortunately, in every way, Quartered Safe Out Here is incapable of teaching us anything. ![]() This is why we read war memoirs, to remind us of what has come and gone and of those who suffered in the embrace of that most destructive of human inventions. But even though we all, to some extent, understand these truths, war persists because acuteness of its cruelty fades with time, allowing populations to forget its harsh lessons. ![]() For war is an insidious crime that runs longer and cuts deeper than its instigators ever imagine, scarring the world with its pain and ugliness. War is so costly a weapon, in lives and coin, that it must only be used when all else has failed. ![]()
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