Putting up with It
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.