Guilty Love

Lieutenant Cross is in love and its with this girl Martha who is sending him things from the states and gives him hope that he has something to live for through this war. He felt guilty for loving her because he would think about her when he was suppose to be thinking about his team while doing these dangerous acts. The quote "but his love  was too much for him, he felt paralyzed, he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breath her blood and be smothered. He wanted her to be a virgin and not a virgin , all at once. He wanted to know her. Intimate secrets: Why poetry? Why so sad? Why that grayness in her eyes? Why so alone? Not lonely, just alone-riding her bike across campus or sitting off by herself in the cafeteria-even dancing, she danced alone-and it was the aloneness that filled him with love." Just from that quote it solidifies the thought that he mightn't really love her but the idea of her, because he knows deep down that she really doesn't really love him. that she is seeing other boys and spending time with other people. But "men" boys during the war needed and still need something to live for in order to get through the gruesomeness of war.