quotes_madonna2.htm



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‘It was a bit by Sampoux, that we had taken over from the French. They’re tough, but you wouldn’t call ’em tidy as a nation. They had faced both sides of it with dead to keep the mud back. All those trenches were like gruel in a thaw. Our people had to do the same sort of thing—elsewhere; but Butcher’s Row in French End was the—er—show-piece.

  

This is from “A Madonna of the Trenches”, collected in Debits and Credits.

A young soldier recalls the horrors of the trenches in Winter, frozen bodies lining the walls, that creaked in the cold. Later he reveals that there were worse horrors.