The Wipers Times (2013 TV Movie)

Ben Chaplin: Roberts

Quotes 

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

  Pearson : I'd say approximately thirty yards.

• Roberts : There are various types of courage, there are many kinds of fear. There are many brands of whisky, there are many makes of beer. There is also rum which sometimes in our need can help us much. But tis whisky whisky whisky and the courage it brings is Dutch

• [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.

• Lieutenant Colonel Howfield : Is there anything more dangerous to a soldier than idle hands?

  Roberts : No sir! apart from gas and flamethrowers.

• 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.