습니다 그러다

"…," they said — quoting formal speech

A sentence in the formal polite -습니다 style with a form of 그러다 right after, reporting the words as spoken: "I've been here two years, I'm leaving," he says; "we struck Iran," they say; "understood," I said, and went in the next day. The quoted part stays formal while 그러다 stays casual. Watch out — several lines here are not quoting at all: 그러나 and 그러지만 mean "but", 그러면 means "then", and one line's 그런 is simply "that kind of".

Register: casual narration of formal speech