Letter
Philip Gibbs, after the war in his book The Pageant of the Years (1946).
The cheery optimism of our generals always thought we were going forward, and therefore it
was not worth while making ourselves comfortable and safe. We never made a dugout
worthy of the name. But the Germans worked like beavers, and after their retreat I went
down into dugouts, forty feet deep, connected with passages and with separate exits. Many
of them were paneled, and had excellent bathrooms for the officers with a little gadget where
the gentleman in the bath might place his cigar during his ablutions - a very German idea.
Why did the British generals not care
for the comfort of their troops?
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Describe the German dug-outs.
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Why were the Germans willing to go to such effort?
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