From Kipling’s “The Irish Guards in the Great War, the First Battalion.”

December 1918: “. . . on Boxing Day the full and complete Christmas dinner was served, and for the fifth and last time their Commanding Officer performed the sacred ritual of “going round the dinners.

“They sat them down, twenty-two officers and six-hundred and twenty-eight other ranks, and none will know till Judgement (sic) Day how many ghosts were also present. […] The two Battalions had lost in all two thousand three hundred and forty-none, including one hundred and fifteen officers. Their total wounded was five thousand seven hundred and thirty-nine. Of both these the 1st Battalion, by virtue of thirteen months longer in the field, could reckon more than a generous half. {..}

Final sentence of the book: “‘But ye might tell that we was lonely, most of all. Before God, we Micks was lonely.'”

UK birth control.