So, in the third quatrain, how to explain this and to justify it? ‘I shot him dead because – ‘ and the dash, the hesitation, says it all. Because what? The glib answer supplied by the powers that be is ‘Because he was my foe, / Just so: my foe of course he was; / That’s clear enough...’ But, for all the assertion, it isn’t clear enough. The assertion is set out and repeated for reassurance: ‘Because he was my foe, /Just so’ ‘of course he was;’ ‘That’s clear enough’. Actually, it isn’t clear at all, as the rhyme of ‘my foe’ and ‘although’ makes clear.
For ‘although’ without any punctuation to follow it leads straight into verse four, with all its spur- of-the-moment whims for enlisting in the army. And the enemy’s reasons for enlisting were precisely the same as the speaker’s. “He thought he’d ‘list’; ‘Off-hand like’, in other words, for no particular reason, he just thought he would. Maybe he ‘Was out of work’, maybe he had ‘sold his traps’ (belongings). ‘No other reason why.’ This wasn’t a thought-out action born of patriotism, just an impulsive one. There are four dashes in this quatrain, suggesting plenty of unconvincing, half- thought-through reasons for enlisting in the army which turned out to be such a momentous step.