The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

Sartoris drunkenly tries to work off his resentment toward Spoomer by making this corporal - "who was an ex-professional boxer" - wear a captain's uniform and pretend to be "Cap'm Spoomer" while fighting him with his fists (514).

As England's Secretary of State for War, a Cabinet Minister, Kitchener expanded the British army from twenty to seventy divisions between 1914 and 1916, hence the reference in this story to "a mob of soldiers" (514).

"Kit" is the nickname given by the troops to the "girl" Sartoris has in London (514). They derive it, derogatorily, from General Kitchener - "because she had such a mob of soldiers" (514). The narrator and Ffollansbye don't know whether Sartoris knew about her reputation, but they bear witness to Sartoris' rage and grief after she "goes off" with Spoomer (514).

The narrator of "All the Dead Pilots" displays considerable sympathy for the impact of war on women who remain at home while the men in their lives are at the front, going so far as to say that they "died" on the day war was declared (514). This group includes the "mothers and sweethearts" to whom the soldiers write letters from the war (512), and the "three day wives and three-year widows" whom the soldiers marry hastily on their way to the war (514).

Elsewhere in Faulkner's texts, Aunt Jenny is the maternal head of the present-day Sartoris family, and even in this story she emerges as a no-nonsense, rather imperious presence whom Johnny might seek to manipulate in his letters but obviously cannot ignore. In one letter, she orders him home from the "Yankee" war (531), indicating that for her the only war that matters was the Civil War - which is not over yet.