The character of Willie, of course. All kinds of things suggest themselves. They quickly get very drunk there. Willie, extremely drunk, finds that he is being propositioned by a prostitute. Willie gives himself to the woman with wonder and lust, and thus loses his virginity. They make their way back to their billet through the city night.
Willie, still working in the support trenches, writes a long letter to Gretta. He tells her he is now in a quiet sector of the front, though the weather is now icy. Though this is a longer letter, it has the same structure as his previous missive: Willie writes in careful detail telling of his life at the front, and ends with an outpouring of passionate declarations of love for her.
He continues to have trouble ending his letters satisfactorily. As he writes, a wish to confess about his night with the prostitute weighs on him. It seems that Willie, luckily, does not. It remains a quiet sector.
One day he is drinking tea in a corner of the trench when a soldier new to the front, a Private Byrne, carelessly lifts his head above the line of the parapet. He is shot in the eye: blood gruesomely jets from the wound. Willie wants to ignore the incident at first but then attends to the young man. He is struck by his own uselessness in the face of this violence.
The young man is tormented for hours as they wait for the medical corps to arrive. Willie responds to the incident with cold despair; he has become hardened by the war. He reflects that the youth would be better shot dead on the spot.
