Answer

In stanza 4 he thinks they both enlisted ‘he’d list’ in an ‘off hand’ way, almost casually because he was ‘out of work’ and neeed the money and had ‘no other reason why’ again making it seem as if they had a casual attitude to the war, not really knowing quite what it was they were letting themselves in for. Perhaps if he had known then he would not have enlisted at all. As a reader looking on at this from a third party perspective we can see ho bad the war was and know that their decision to fight was a crazy one, but they weren’t to know that at the time. Neither of them have joined up to fight because they love their countries and want to fight!