Apparently this aviator, whom the narrator refers to as the "Hun patrol leader," was the pilot who shot down Sartoris' brother's plane. He may in turn have been shot down by Sartoris; Hume says that Sartoris "must have got him" during the week he spends in the sky seeking to avenge his brother, but as the narrator says, "we didn't know" if the enemy pilot Sartoris shot down was the one he was after (414). (During the First World War, "Hun" was a derogatory term for the German enemy.)
World War I combat aviators were often measured by the number of enemy planes they shot down; each plane was assumed to be piloted by a single German officer. As reported by Hume, Sartoris shoots down three German aviators in his effort to avenge his brother's death (414). Monaghan asserts that he is responsible for the death of "thirteen Huns" - a derogatory term for German combatants during the War (416).
"My people" is how the Indian subadar refers to these men, colonial troops brought to Europe to fight for England during the First World War (424). He also calls them "children" (425), who thought of the rifles they were issued as "spears" (424). His account suggests that their British officers were indifferent to their training. When a "whole battalion" went into battle without loading those rifles, less than twenty survived (425). (During World War I a British battalion at full strength contained a thousand men.)
This icon represent the British officers who were placed in charge of the Indian soldiers serving in World War I. According to the subadar, when they ordered their troops to "'Go there and do this,' they would not stir" (415). A particularly dreadful consequence of their lack of responsible procedure is the death of almost an entire Indian battalion which advances on the enemy without loaded rifles.
In the revolutionary fighting that breaks out in Berlin at the end of the war, this unnamed soldier assassinates the German aviator's brother Franz, a General serving on the army's general staff.
In "Ad Astra" the captured German aviator explains that one of his brothers was shot and killed by this resident of Berlin, presumably after the man discovered his wife's affair.
It seems apparent that this Berlin woman is having an affair with one of the German prisoner's twin brothers; according to the captive, at least, in 1912 his brother is reported in the Berlin newspapers as "dead of a lady's husband" (418). This is the extent of her appearance in this story.
The German prisoner reports that his own aristocratic family profoundly disapproves when he tells them "I haf married the daughter of a musician who was peasant" (418).
