Isak Dinesen's Quotation Analysis

--"Mr. Fleming, you never was frightened much in them battles, was you?"
The veteran looked down and grinned. Observing his manner, the entire group tittered. "Well, I guess I was," he answered finally. "Pretty well scared, sometimes. Why, in my first battle I thought the sky was falling down. I thought the world was coming to an end. You bet I was scared."

In this quotation from "The Veteran," the author suggests that war is traumatic. Despite the fact that Old Fleming's service in the military took decades ago, he has vivid memories of the fear and horror he felt during his first battle. One gets the sense that when he admits to having been, "pretty well scared, sometimes," he is using understatement and irony. The pause between the question and when the veteran "finally" gives his answer suggests that this is not an easy topic for him to discuss and that he is choosing his words carefully. He wants to admit to having been afraid, but he does not want to revisit those memories. Thus, he seems to be consoling himself with the word "sometimes." War was scary, and even remembering it causes discomfort. He "grinned" as he talks about his fear to soften the blow of the admission that he had been a coward. Although the phrase," the sky was falling down" alludes to the child's nursery tale of Chicken Little, there is nothing childish about the experience. The phrase suggests an upheaval and failure of the natural order of things; the sky is up, it is not supposed to fall down. The phrase also suggests constant bombardment and being showered with debris. If not the actual sky, then certainly something fell on the troops. Finally, he speaks about the "world... coming to an end." This apocalyptic phrase borrows from the Biblical idea of Judgment Day, when the world as we know it ceases to exist. On the day of his first battle, Mr. Fleming's world of peace and security ended and he was plunged into hell. This quotation shows that war is traumatic. Even dozens of years later, Mr. Fleming speaks of it with fear.