“Defeat is worse.”

“I do not believe it,” Passini said still respectfully. “What is defeat? You go home.”

“They come after you. They take your home. They take your sisters.”

“I don’t believe it,” Passini said. “They can’t do that to everybody. Let everybody defend his home. Let them keep their sisters in the house.”

“They hang you. They come and make you be a soldier again. Not in the auto-ambulance, in the infantry.”

“They can’t hang everyone.”

“An outside nation can’t make you be a soldier,” Manera said. “At the first battle you all run.”

“Like the Tchecos .”