The penultimate stanza demonstrates the speaker’s guilty subconscious. The speaker stresses the eerie similarities between himself and his enemy, “… Off-hand like - just as I -/ …” In pointing out their similarities, the speaker is also establishing the idea that the two have no reason to be at war against each other. Furthermore, both the speaker and the enemy are obviously not a die-hard patriots, because the only reason why they “ ‘listed ” (enlisted) in the military was because they were out of work and needed a source of income, “… Was out of work - had sold his traps -/ No other reason why./“ Thus the soldier feels guilt for shooting the man lined-up across from him because the two have no reason to be at odds with each other, along with
