Fighting’s kindergarten work compared with lying in your damp clothes
in the washed-out trenches night and day, with maybe not a chance of
getting any more warmth than you can get from a wax match. That you
may have in the day-time, but you’ll get into trouble if you fit it on
in the night, when the least sign of light will bring the enemy’s fire
down on you, besides the court-martial next day. You’re lying there
until you’re as stiff as if you were dead, and your body’s twisted and
torn with the pains of rheumatism and lumbago or quinsy, or your whole
frame shakes with the ague. That’s the sort of work that tells you
whether a man’s made of the right stuff, but you needn’t think there’s
any grumbling. Our chaps can put up with that just as well as anybody,
and they’ll come through it all right: _Pte. Cook, Coldstream Guards_.