An officer was surprised one day when searching the letters of his
detachment to read in one of them a passage that was something like
this:
“We have just got out of shell-fire for the first time for two months.
It has been a hard time. The Germans were determined to take our
field bakery, but, by gee! we would not let them. We killed them in
thousands.”
This was a letter from one of the bakers to his wife. None of the
detachment had been a mile from the base, and they had never seen a
German, except as a prisoner. My friend knew the writer well, and could
not help (although it was none of his business) asking him why he told
such terrible lies to his poor wife. The soldier said:
“It’s quite true what you say, but it’s like this, sir. When my wife
and the wives of the other men in the place where I live are talking
it all over in the morning I couldn’t think to let her have nothing to
say and the others all bragging about what their men had done with the
Germans. That’s the way of it, sir.”