The Seed of Empire by Fred M. White

The short days and long nights dragged on in the trenches; the heavy rains had poured down, flooding the whole of the dreary country far and wide, and yet the British were holding their lines with a dogged tenacity as marvellous in its way as their more brilliant feats of arms. In all the work the British army has done in the course of its long career there has really been nothing greater than that dogged patience turned against the German front during all those terrible months before Ypres. It was different from anything that Tommy had ever done before. Hitherto he had fought to conquer; he had learnt how to fall back doggedly when disaster threatened; but to sit quietly down month after month, up to his knees in water, frost-bitten and starving, was a new experience to him.

But he stuck it, stuck it in a way that the pleasure-loving section of the people at home leading their lives just in the ordinary way will never know, and will never appreciate if they do. But all this was coming to an end now. The floods were drying up, and life was gradually becoming endurable. So far our small army had borne all the heat and burden of the day; so far it had been a stone wall against which the flower of the German army had flung themselves in vain. Now it was felt that the tide had turned, and it was for the British to make the advance, though the Germans had not realised it as yet.