Then he started on the soldiers and slanged the officers ('gentry pups' was his name for them), and the generals, whom he accused of idleness, of cowardice, and of habitual intoxication.

He told us that our own kith and kin were sacrificed in every battle by leaders who had not the guts to share their risks.

The Scots Fusiliers looked perturbed, as if they were in doubt of his meaning.

Then he put it more plainly.

'Will any soldier deny that the men are the barrage to keep the officers' skins whole ?' 'That's a bloody lee,' said one of the Fusilier jocks.
The man took no notice of the interruption, being carried away by the torrent of his own rhetoric, but he had not allowed for the persistence of the interrupter.