I feel like one / Who treads alone / Some banquet-hall deserted, / Whose lights are fled, / Whose garlands dead / And all but he departed!

He . . . felt towards those whom he had deserted that peculiar malignity which has, in all ages, been characteristic of apostates.

Where are they now that we, the men whom they sent off to war, have returned? These are commanders who have deserted their troops, and there is no more serious crime in the law of war. The Army says they never leave their wounded. The Marines say they never leave even their dead. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. They have left the real stuff of their reputation bleaching behind them in the sun in this country.

I don't feel embraced. I feel like a survivor. I was almost like we were on a deserted island. But we survived.

My touch deserted me in that opening spell and Ewan didn't give me a look-in as his consistency just overwhelmed me but, hopefully, I will learn from the experience,

A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party; there is no battle unless there be two