I had a very interesting email from my cousin, John. I think it's always important to keep the very unpleasant realities of war in mind. A two day drunk seems like a pretty reasonable response to fighting in the trenches...I'm sorry for the poor sods on both sides:
"I'm back to reading history again, but did manage a short novel while doing
so, "Generals Die in Bed" by Charles Harrison. Never heard of the book or the
author but he was with the Canadian army in the first world war and the
writing is very real, very graphic. It was an international best seller in
the late 20's except in Canada because of all the negative things he says
about Canadian soldiers including the shooting and killing of unarmed
Germans during a battle, looting Arras of all its booze and then having a
two day drunk which only ended when the Germans started shelling the town.
The MP's sent in to stop the melee simply joined in.
Interesting how some myths about the war are being questioned again. There
was a piece in the Globe about how the great battle of Vimy was really
unimportant and rates at most a page in the history books of the war and
some make no mention of it at all. There was also a book some time ago,
called "Meeting of Generals", about the Canadians on D Day having orders to
take no prisoners and they didn't causing the Germans to retaliate with
their own execution of prisoners."
Generals Die in Bed - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
