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Freezing your butt off night after night, dealing with body lice (louses), eating your often spoiled food out of greasy pannikans (Spanish term for dish that soldiers carried in the field), having to perform your bodily functions in a steaming trench full of raw sewage and a dozen other discomforts and hardships that no modern soldier would tolerate for very long.

Yeah, this book pretty much killed the notion of War being some great adventure. Maybe it's great for armchair warriors but just imagine being out in the field and being tortured by the constant biting of lice. No respite even in sleep. UGH!

An excellent book overall. I had only read Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm prior to this and figured those two works were pretty much all that was worth reading from Orwell.

I could definitely see where Orwell got his ideas for Animal Farm when reading this book.

I think it was Guy Sajer in "The Forgotten Soldier", his story of the Eastern Front, who said war stories should be read, in a muddy, water filled hole in your back yard, while you neighbor tries to blow your head off.