Richard Fidler

And he's just appalled at the conduct of these wounded men in Malta.

Some of them lightly wounded, their privileged behaviour, the arrogance with which they carried themselves, the breaking of every rule.

He was really quite angry.

And then he hears stories of soldiers on Gallipoli who had not gone to the front lines and attacked them.

They'd hidden in gullies.

They'd taken refuge on the shore.

And while Dexter believed exaggerated versions of that, there was truth in it.

I agree.

And Dexter's a harsh judge.

He's as harsh on others as he is on himself.

He's got very high standards that he meets and he expects those standards of his fellow chaplains and some of them don't meet them.

He expects them of the replacement soldiers who come to fill in the gaps.

And he's quite

damning of these men who come through he feels they haven't got the the stamina and the the iron in their soul that the that the first recruits had but the war proves him wrong the war shows that they they became effective soldiers the battle of lone pine was a traumatic low point this is when the war starts to get properly hellish like he's never seen before how did he describe those days

He talks about sorting the living from the dead, stacked three or four deep in the trenches, of walking over bodies in order to get from one place to the other because there was nowhere else to walk.

The horror of hearing the wheeze of the air from a dead man's lungs get pushed out when you step on his chest.

And the funerals, the funerals and the funerals.

He was dreaming of dead bodies and funerals.

It was so overwhelming.

He was shocked, horrified, and he begged to stay.