... accessible tongue. They had, of course, turned the farm buildings where they lay into a little bit of Africa in colour and smell. They had been gassed in the north; shot over and shot down, and set up to be shelled again; and their officers talked of North African wars that we had never heard of—sultry days against long odds in the desert years ago. "Afterward—is it not so with you also?—we get our best recruits from the tribes we have fought. These men are children. They make no trouble. They only want to go where cartridges ... — France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
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