Worst of all is the smell. [WWI]

>The conditions in the trenches were far worse than he [**Sir Steward Gore-Browne**] had imagined. *I have never seen such utter desolation*, he had written to Ethel [**his aunt**]. *Flies like you’d expect at a buzzing swamp in the tropics, stumps of trees, two or three feet of mud and maybe some wet straw to sleep on. Worst of all is the smell – a mixture of rotting bodies, cordite, and the lingering remnants of gas from attacks, a sort of sickly sweet smell like being suffocated by the hothouse flowers*. Afterwards the *vile taste* would remain on his tongue all night. _________________________ **Source:** Lamb, Christina. “Part One: 1914-1927, Chapter 4.” *The Africa House: The True Story of An English Gentleman and His African Dream*. Harper Collins Publishers, 2004. 44-5. Print. _________________________ **Further Reading:** [Dame Ethel Locke King, DBE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethel_Locke_King) [Lieutenant Colonel Sir Stewart Gore-Browne, DSO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Gore-Browne)