So this is kind of a small thing, but I thought it was pretty interesting. On page 48, Glory and Shaftoe are interrupted by wailing sirens. Glory asks what it is, and Shaftoe "sees searchlights. And it ain't no Hollywood premiere. 'It's war, baby,' he says." I thought the juxtaposition here was really funny. Here Shaftoe is, saying that this isn't some Hollywood thing, and then some terribly cliche Hollywood line comes flying out of his mouth. Maybe he wants it to be Hollywood, because then it wouldn't be real? I'm not sure, but it's amusing nonetheless.
I really liked this scene, I don't know why. You're right, this whole section with him and Glory seems terribly Hollywood. The way they met secretly, kissed in the cab, all his friends ogled her when they walked by... I totally pictured Kate Beckinsale and Ben Affleck in Pearl Harbor. It all seemed very fantastic.
Kate Beckinsale to Ben Affleck: "I didn't even know until the day you turned up alive--and then all this happened." "All this" of course being Pearl Harbor. Just genius.
I saw this paragraph a little differently. I think Shaftoe is well aware that his time with Glory is just another scene from a movie. It's a total romantic cliche- the note, the running away from the house, the need to have each other right then and there in the cab. I felt like he was saying was that he was in a foreign country with this beautiful woman and he forgot about the war. Then there were searchlights and they couldv'e fit right into the scene--they couldv'e been the searchlights at a premiere, but they weren't, and they take him out of his scene. But then, at the last moment he says, "It's war, baby," just to be a part of his own movie, to extend the time it takes him to mentally go back to the war.
baby...babies. Glory will probably end up with his, child, it seems. I think he might suspect that, too. That's why he can't help thinking about those women who keep searching for the father of their child among the marines.