"You see, we’ve lost everything that was harmless and mundane. When I sat down to write this, I realised I’d forgotten how to hold a pen. It’s so long since I did something so ordinary."
“You won’t remember… but when you were small, mum used to tell you to be brave, before me and her would go into the woods — and you were. You were so brave, Tom. And you have to be now. You’re gonna be brave, aren’t you?”
— Anthony McNair to a six-year-old Tom. (The Pack.)
Family Don’t End With Blood : The McNairs’ family
A man and a boy walked from the battlefield scarred and broken yet every break of a bone, every cut of a skin made them stronger as their bond grew. Though a man waged an endless war, mostly with himself and a boy was robbed of his childhood and innocence, though a man trained a boy like a comrade, and a boy didn’t know any better, despite the blood, violence and lies they found family in each other. A father and a son, not brothers in arms, in the end.