Word: mudding
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Along with Sir Douglas Haig, British commander in chief during World War I, mud is the villain of this excellent book. It deals mostly with the British campaign around Ypres ("Wipers" to the troops) in 1917, when British soldiers learned on Belgian soil the dread military truth uttered by Napoleon: "God-besides water, air, earth and fire-has created a fifth element-mud...
...course that trench fighting is way out of date now. But it was a stinking business: trench-foot, wet, trenchmouth, lice, mud, flu. I remember we used to open our tins of food and they'd be all blown up with gas and poison." He looks out over the dump silently, gazing...
...climbed the vanguard of 900 solemn men, women and children, arms laden with bundles, eyes filled with bewilderment and doubt. What they saw gave them no cause for rejoicing: a bleak wilderness surrounded by stern, snowcapped mountains, and in the wilderness a dismal tent city sprawling in the mud under a dour sky. This was the Matanuska Valley, 50 miles northeast of Anchorage, in south-central Alaska. This was the promised land-promised by the wide-eyed Federal Emergency Relief Administration to depression-ridden, red-blooded American families who wanted to leave home and make their way, in fine...
...hardy few managed to surmount the follies of the planners. The first settlers-drawn principally from Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin-were granted 40 acres apiece, plus 30-year loans (at 3%). The Government had promised concrete foundations and basements for cabins, but foundation timbers were laid in the mud. Families received a grindstone, and 20 sacks of coffee beans were sent in, but axes were scarce, and there were no coffee-grinders...
...Come on in, it's the circus. It's an educational show for the gentlemen, the ladies and the children. Come on in out of the rain, you dumb Dutchmen. Come on in out of the mud and into the dust...