- [first lines]
- Prologue: I see a long, straight line athwart a continent. No chain of forts, or deep flowing river, or mountain range, but a line drawn by men upon a map, nearly a century ago, accepted with a handshake, and kept ever since. A boundary which divides two nations, yet marks their friendly meeting ground. The 49th parallel: the only undefended frontier in the world.
- Andy Brock: The government says, "We want men to fight the Nazis, join today." So I joined. I figured they were in a hurry. That was three hundred and eighty seven days ago. Four divisions and a lot of drafts have gone overseas, and what's number B987642 doing? Guarding the Chippewa Canal. Who'd want to steal it anyway?
- Johnnie, the Trapper: Sure thing, I stay 'til the boat come. And wait'll you see my skins, ah, the best year I never had! And now I'm going get so busy doing nothing, yes sir! I'm going do nothing like she's never been done before!
- [last lines]
- Andy Brock: Put 'em up Nazi... No not that way.
- [He raises his hands to fight]
- Andy Brock: This way. Cuz I'm not askin for those pants... I'm just taking 'em.
- Andy Brock: [to Hirth] I can grouse about the food, and the C.O. and anything I blamed please. And that's more than you with your Gestapo and your stormtroopers and your Aryan bushwa. Ahhh, nuts. What's the good of talking to you? You can't even begin to understand democracy. We own the right to be fed up with anything we damn please and say so out loud when we feel like it. And when things go wrong we can take it. And we can dish it out too.
- [I don't ask where you come from and what brought you here, although you've left us in no doubt as to your beliefs. Someone has given you, no doubt deliberately, a completely false impression of us. We are only one amongst many settlements in Canada. They are thousands of them in this part of the world and they have been founded, some recently, some 80 years ago, by people who've left their homes in Europe because of famine, because of starvation, because of racial and political persecution and some, like ourselves, because of their faith. Some only came to find new land, new boundaries and a new world, but all have found here in Canada peace, security and tolerance and understanding, which in Europe, it is your Fuhrer's pride to have stamped out. You call us Germans, you call us brothers, yes most of us are Germans, our name is German, our tongue is German, our handwritten books are in German scripts, but we are not your brothers. Our Germany's dead, however hard this may be for some of us older people, it's a blessing for our children. Our children grew against new backgrounds, new horizons and they are free! Free to grow up as children, free to run and to laugh without being forced into uniforms, without being forced to march up and down the streets singing battle songs! You talk about the new order in Europe! The new order, whether or not be one corner, not a hole big enough for a mouse where a decent man can breathe freely. You think we hate you, but we don't, it is against our faith to hate, we only hate the power of evil which is spreading all over the world, you and your Hitlerism are like the microbes of some filthy disease, filled with the longing to multiply yourselves until you destroy everything healthy in the world. No, we are not your brothers.]