"Saul" a play whose title suggests the first king of Israel. In I Samuel 31:3–13 through II Samuel 1:1–27, David discovers Saul's body alongside that of the prince, Jonathan, and mourns their wretched deaths on the battlefield.
saveloy a highly seasoned, dried English sausage.
Saxon a member of an ancient Germanic people of northern Germany; here, a blue-eyed, blond European.
schnapps any strong alcoholic liquor.
second sight the hypothesized ability to see things not physically present or to foretell events; clairvoyance.
shell-shock a psychological condition characterized by anxiety, irritability, depression, etc., often occurring after prolonged combat in warfare.
skat a card game for three people, played with thirty-two cards.
skittle-alley a narrow expanse of lawn where players roll a wooden ball at a tight arrangement of ninepins.
Soldiers' Home a recreation center, similar to the American U.S.O.
Somme a river in northern France, which flows past Amiens, where both sides battled in 1916 and then again in 1918. The first battle, costing a million lives, was a Pyrrhic victory, with so much loss to combatants that neither could claim advantage.
Stations of the Cross a series of fourteen crosses, as along the walls of a church, typically placed above representations of the stages of Jesus' final sufferings and of his death and burial, visited in succession as a devotional exercise. The foreboding image connects Paul's wartime sufferings with Christ's final days.
stickle-backs small, bony fishes with two to eleven sharp spines in front of the dorsal fin.
storm-troops the first wave of the infantry assault.
tea-cosy a knitted or padded cover placed over a teapot to keep the contents hot.
territorial a volunteer home guard.
the battle of Zama a reference to the Battle of Zama of 202 B.C.; in which Scipio (237?–183? B.C.), a Roman general, defeated Hannibal (247–183? B.C.), a Cathaginian general who occupied what is now Tunisia, ending the 2d Punic War.
the well-known phrase from Goethe's "Götz von Berlichingen" the reference is to the phrase "lick my ass."
tommy [British informal] a private in the British army.
trench mortars any of various portable mortars for shooting projectiles at a high trajectory and short range.
Un moment [French] one moment.
