By Captain Alexander Stewart who spent two years fighting with the 3rd Scottish Rifles during World War I before being sent home with a shrapnel injury in 1917. His diary, letters were published by his grandson last year.
June 2, 1916
Return to trenches. The dugouts in this part of the line are infested with rats. They frequently walk over one when asleep. I was much troubled by their licking the brilliantine off my hair; for this reason, I had to give up using grease on my head.
June 30
The finest thing that ever happened in the trenches was the rum ration, and never was it more needed than on the Somme. Yet some blasted, ignorant fool of a general-damned in this world and the next-wanted to stop it and, for a time, did. The man must be worse than the lowest type of criminal, have no knowledge of the conditions in which troops exist, and be entirely out of touch with the men who are unfortunate enough to have him as their commander. He should have been taken up to the line and frozen in the mud. I would have very willingly sat on his head, as he was a danger to the whole army. Curse him. Those who have not spent a night standing or sitting or lying in mud with an east wind blowing and the temperature below freezing may think that I am extravagant in my abuse of the man who denied the soldiers their rum rations. Those who have will know I am too temperate.
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