ABSTRACT
A.A.Milne, When We were Very Young (1924) In a letter home Amias Steynings described how terrible hard was a soldier’s life during a campaign. Noting that ‘[we] are in great want for lack of victuals’, he wrote how depressing he found the destruction of the lush countryside and prosperous cities. Conditions were so bad that to stay alive even senior officers had to dig fortifications and forage for themselves. Worse still the weather was wretchedly cold and wet: often he was lucky to get a couple of hours’ sleep every twenty-four. ‘Good Uncle,’ Steynings concluded, ‘it is a great deal of misery that a soldier doth endure, besides danger, every minute of his life.’1
