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We pull three of them together in a circle and make ourselves comfortable. We shan’t be getting up again for the next couple of hours.

I can still remember how embarrassed we were at the beginning, when we were recruits in the barracks and had to use the communal latrines. There are no doors, so that twenty men had to sit side by side as if they were on a train. That way they could all be seen at a glance – soldiers, of course, have to be under supervision at all times.

Since then we’ve learnt more than just how to cope with a bit of embarrassment. As time went by, our habits changed quite a bit.

Out here in the open air the whole business is a real pleasure. I can’t understand why it was that we always used to skirt round these things so nervously – after all, it is just as natural as eating or drinking. And perhaps it wouldn’t need to be mentioned at all if it didn’t play such a significant part in our lives, and if it hadn’t been new to us – the other men had long since got used to it.

A soldier is on much closer terms with his stomach and digestive system[22] than anyone else is. Three-quarters of his vocabulary comes from this area and, whether he wants to express extreme delight or extreme indignation, he will use one of these pungent phrases to underline it. It is impossible to make a point as clearly and as sufficiently in any other way. Our families and our teachers will be pretty surprised when we get home, but out here it’s simply the language that everyone uses.

Being forced to do everything in public means that as far as we are concerned, the natural innocence of the business has returned. In fact it goes further than that. It has become so natural to us, that the convivial performance of this particular activity is as highly valued as, well, holding a cast-iron certainty of a hand[23] when we are playing cards. It is not for nothing that the phrase ‘latrine rumour’[24] has come to mean all kinds of gossip; these places are the army equivalent of the street corner or a favourite bar.