let's go back to davies, shall we, with warnings for *gasp* het sex

Davies has never been as miserable in his life as he is in the trenches in December. He is cold and wet and muddy and sleep-deprived and occasionally sick. At least he's not alone, as everyone else in his platoon – indeed, in the entire battalion, it seems like – is in the same straits. His one consolation is that he hasn't been buried by a trench wall again, and he doesn't have trench foot.

But he is still at risk of being shelled, or shot, or infected with trench fever. The men have taken to attempting to get their water from shell craters, and every so often they'll find a dead body in the crater, bloated and contaminated, which sends them off to find a new water source. Davies does not bother to detail all these things in his letters, telling his parents and half-sisters only that he is still alive, Powell is still alive, he is cold and wet, the shelling is incessant, and could they send him another muffler.

( Both Captain Bradford and his second in command, Captain Harris, are temporarily out of commission )

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note: the idea of common soldiers only getting two minutes in a brothel i stole from regeneration. i admit this without shame. :D but the thing about drinking water from shell craters, and finding a dead body in your water source, and then having to find a new crater - that did happen. at this point in the war, a front-line trench was probably one of the least hygienic places on the planet.

chugging through to 1917 in the cold and the mud!

For once, Davies is glad that the captain isn't even in France. He's not sure if he could face the man's discipline, or his care, and even if he did want to explain, which he doesn't, he doesn't think the good captain's personal experiences contain anything that would make him likely to understand.

"They did what?" Powell cackles on the way back to the battalion. Because as sick as he feels, Davies can't lie when Powell asks him about the girl at the brothel. The part about the madam and the next soldier bursting into the room and interrupting him makes a good story, anyway.

"I was almost finished," Davies continues. "If they'd just waited a minute...."

Powell cackles again. "Did they let you?"

( They didn't really have a choice. )

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note: a dixie is basically a metal pot that soldiers and cooking staff and would use to carry food back and forth between the trenches and the mobile kitchen. it would have have straw in it to theoretically keep food hot, and yet stuff would still manage to be cold by the time it got to the men.