Final answer:
The quote indicates that the soldiers who survived war did so through their willingness to obey and support one another, finding strength in their shared experiences and the absence of other sustenance.
Step-by-step explanation:
The passage given reflects the grim realities of wartime experiences and the inner turmoil soldiers face. The statement 'Those men who survived - those eager to obey, eager to live for one another, since they had nothing else to ______ them - those men could neither carry on, nor preserve what they had received.' suggests that survival during war depended not just on obedience and camaraderie but also on an unspoken bond or a shared purpose that sustained these men in the absence of other comforts or certainties of life.
Warfare's evolution to mechanization devalued personal bravery and made survival random, a stark contrast to earlier notions of honorable combat. Such scenarios place soldiers in positions where they may have to face death or carry through extreme hardships, thereby challenging their reasons to persist and demonstrating the depths of human resilience and interdependency in the face of adversities.