Nell Kimball, Her Life As An American Madam (1918)

In a house and outside a house in everyone's life I soon saw the dullness of being was kept from full despair and boredom by talking about small things - as if they were great big answers. You go on building little joys and small irritations and fights into big ones. Soldiers told me war was like that for all the fine colored pictures and flag waving, battle songs. Mostly it was waiting, going stale, being bored. When killing and dying came, they came fast, so that a soldier could only catch a foggy corner of what was going on. One told me of the battle of Cold Harbor - it was like bits of faces in a broken mirror. One young fellow, a horse soldier from the Sioux wars, told me he began to love killing.