It is practically a cupboard, a diminutive one. Inside, I found two cigars which had been forgotten, some additional quinine (what huge amounts our Gallic allies seem to require) and a thin book in French. A book! How many months since I had set eyes upon one! Snatching this specimen up avidly, I discovered it to be a pornographic pamphlet meant for young adolescents, the kind which, using the pretense of ‘science,’ informs the teenager about the ugliest perversions of the sexual instinct, complete with outlandish details. The booklet made me realize that French soldiers, and indeed all soldiers of the world’s nationalities – including the Greeks – dedicate the long and interminable days in the trench to smut. Millions of men everywhere, underground, sitting there in the dirt: filthy, stinking, covered with whiskers and lice…, and they babble about women! Although I am extremely ashamed to admit the pleasure I experienced in finding this booklet, I have read it over and over with a glee which seems insatiable.
