DIY History | Transcribe | World War I Diaries and Letters | Conger Reynolds correspondence, May-December 1916 | 1916-08-16 Conger Reynolds to Mr. & Mrs. John Reynolds Page 20

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Conger Reynolds correspondence, May-December 1916

1916-08-16 Conger Reynolds to Mr. & Mrs. John Reynolds Page 20

Just think of his telling about these things in that light, fatalistic way. Yet he had his grimmer moments. Once he said that he wished the German sniper had finished him while he was at it. And he told of the pests of the trenches as if they were worse than the shells and bullets. "One day I was calling my roll," he said,"when a fellow by the name of Davis did not answer. Someone spoke up and said he had bowled over a few minutes before. 'Lucky devil,' I said,'he won't have to scratch any more. 'Oh, the lice were awful, crawling all the time , nearly driving a fellow wild. Every British soldier in the trenches from private to general is lousy. You can't get rid of 'em. It's impossible to keep clean, and wherever dirt is they breed. I have shed every garment, bathed in [trin oline?], put on an entirely new outfit, and been alive with 'em again in twenty four hours. And the rats! We used to have shooting parties and kill hundreds. We used to drawn them out and turn the gas on them until we had killed thousands.  But we could never get rid of them."
   "You and I are at least of average intelligence," he said again.  "We know how to get along.  And one would hardly think that in an age that is supposed to be civilized we could go into the business of killing men wholesale and enjoy it, but that is just what those fellows in France do. After

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Just think of his telling about these things in that light, fatalistic way. Yet he had his grimmer moments. Once he said that he wished the German sniper had finished him while he was at it. And he told of the pests of the trenches as if they were worse than the shells and bullets. "One day I was calling my roll," he said,"when a fellow by the name of Davis did not answer. Someone spoke up and said he had bowled over a few minutes before. 'Lucky devil,' I said,'he won't have to scratch any more. 'Oh, the lice were awful, crawling all the time , nearly driving a fellow wild. Every British soldier in the trenches from private to general is lousy. You can't get rid of 'em. It's impossible to keep clean, and wherever dirt is they breed. I have shed every garment, bathed in [trin oline?], put on an entirely new outfit, and been alive with 'em again in twenty four hours. And the rats! We used to have shooting parties and kill hundreds. We used to drawn them out and turn the gas on them until we had killed thousands. But we could never get rid of them." "You and I are at least of average intelligence," he said again. "We know how to get along. And one would hardly think that in an age that is supposed to be civilized we could go into the business of killing men wholesale and enjoy it, but that is just what those fellows in France do. After