What happens? The
natural thing, of course. They get so they hate each other like poison.
They go around with a mad on. They carry hate against the commander and
the cook and the fellow whose berth creaks every time he shifts. Each
man thinks the shipload is the rottenest gang ever thrown together. He
wonders why they didn't bring somebody decent along. He gets to scoring
up grudges against the different people, and waits his chance to get
back."
He stopped a minute, and looked around at the doctors, who were giving
him close attention. Then he went on with the same intensity.
"Now that's war, only war is more so. Here you are in one place for
sixteen months. You shovel yourself into a stinking hole in the ground.
At seven in the morning, you boil yourself some muddy coffee that tastes
like the River Thames at Battersea Bridge. You take a knife that's had
knicks hacked out of it, and cut a hunk of dry bread that chews like
sand. You eat some 'bully beef out of a tin, same tinned stuff as you've
been eating ever since your stomach went on strike a year ago. Once a
week for a treat, you cut a steak off the flank of a dead horse. That
tastes better, because it's fresh meat. When you're sent back a few
miles, _en 'piquet_, you sleep in a village that looks like Sodom after
the sulphur struck it. Houses singed and tumbled, dead bodies in the
ruins, a broken-legged dog, trailing its hind foot, in front of the
house where you are.
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