The Wipers Times (2013 TV Movie)

Julian Rhind-Tutt: Pearson

Quotes 

• Roberts : We've come a long way in the last eighteen months, haven't we?

  Pearson : I'd say approximately thirty yards.

• [the soldiers have found a printing press in an abandoned building in the town that they are patrolling] 

  Pearson : What are we going to do with it?

  Roberts : We're going to "borrow" it.

  Pearson : Isn't that looting?

  Roberts : No, it's "temporary requisitioning of civilian facilities for military purposes".

  Pearson : Oh. Sounds like looting.

• Roberts : There was a young man of Avesnes...

  Pearson : Who took a stroll down a long shady lanes...

  Roberts : He trod on a dud...

  Pearson : Half-hidden in mud...

  Roberts : He never will do it agains.

• [in the trench, the British can hear the German soldiers in the distance, singing in unison] 

  Roberts : Listen! Fritz is in fine voice.

  Dodd : What are they singing, Sir? Sounds like a hymn, Sir.

  Roberts : It is. It's called the Hymn of Hate.

  Pearson : It goes something like this: "You we will hate with a lasting hate. We will never forgo our hate. Hate by water and hate by land. Hate of the head and hate of the hand. Hate of the hammer, hate of the crown. Hate of seventy millions choking down. We love as one, we hate as one. We have one foe and one alone: Eng-e-land."

  Dodd : That's not very nice, is it, Sir?

  Roberts : Spot on, Dodd.

  Dodd : We don't have any songs like that, do we, Sir?

  Roberts : No we don't. And if we did, they'd certainly be a lot funnier.