Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition

Robert Graves wrote about his experience in World War I in his book GOOD-Bye To All That. He was a famous British poet who served in the trenches in France as a 19 year old lieutenant. He saw much action.

He tells how in late 1915 he boarded in the house of a woman he called Old Adelphine while waiting to go back to the trenches. He says she told him "all the girls in Annezin prayed every night for the war to end, and for the English to go away - as soon as their money was spent."

About that time he wrote home saying about the French, "I have not met a single case of the hospitality that one meets among the peasants of other countries. It is worse than inhospitality here, for after all we are fighting for their dirty little lives."

He goes on a little later to tell how the British and local French loathed each other saying, "We failed to realize that the peasants did not much care whether they were on the German or British side of the line. They just had no use for foreign soldiers, and were not at all interested in the sacrifices that we might be making for 'their dirty little lives.'”

One can only regret that almost ninety years after Graves experienced the feelings of the French to the English our leaders would not realize that basic fact. People do not like foreign soldiers on their land no matter what their motives. .