In what ways did you find Lucius’s service the same or different to his father's? Why do you sense his father only started to show him love after he returned from the war?

Lucius’s father was also a war veteran, and had been wounded. In what ways did you find Lucius’s service was the same, and in which ways different? Why do you sense his father only started to show him love after he returned from the war? Do you feel his father understood that he was in some way damaged, even though he wasn’t physically wounded?

Their service was the same because Major Krzelewski returned with a bullet lodged in his body and Lucius returned with a mental wound in his heart. Lucius realized that they both came from a world now lost after the war so they had that in common too. The difference between them was that the father felt proud of his service where as Lucius did not.
Before Lucius served in the war, he and his father didn't share any common interest or experiences. That all changed afterwards, bringing them closer together as often happens to men who have been to war.

Agree with renem. For the father being a soldier was everything its what made him.

His father was still trying to relive the glory of his days as a soldier. He took great pride that he'd served and been wounded. It was also a generational point of pride for the men in their family. Lucius fought the war trying to save lives. He had that one experience in battle which revealed how awful it really was. After his return, his father finally felt pride that Lucius had lived up to the family honor of being soldiers. For the first time, they had something in common.

I wondered if his father really saw much war. It didn't seem like his father had a very accurate perspective of what it would be like to be fighting in a horrible war.

For the father, military service was probably expected and it would have been a very different experience. WW1 was the first war with tanks, machine guns and chemical warfare so the father would have had no idea what kind of injuries Lucius would have had to treat. He seemed to be totally lacking in understanding of the horror Lucius was trying to express in telling about his accidental interaction with the Cossacks. But that shared war experience was the only thing that linked them together. Lucius was horrified but the father was proud of him.

The only thing that made father and son's war experience the same was that father had become wounded physically while Lucius was emotionally damaged by invisible wounds.

From the perspective of his father, Lucius's service was not the same as Lucius was behind the lines treating soldiers who were injured, perhaps a good thing but not a "manly" war time job. It is only when Lucius explains being behind enemy lines and escaping from the Russians that his father feels his service is noble. As others have said - both were wounded in differing ways.

peggyt: right on! Also, after Lucius describes "fighting Cossacks" his father feels that his son has "followed in his footsteps" and no more information is required. He has, at last, common ground with his last son and is proud to say that his son fought Cossacks too. Of course, he cannot comprehend WWI to Crimea or other wars. Cavalry was finished as of WWI.