Contents
The daily concerns of trench soldiers all make an appearance in the articles, sometimes explicit and sometimes as in-jokes for which outsiders would not have the key.
Shelling (whether from the enemy or one's own side): is referred to all through the magazine. There are occasional small ads purportedly from Minnie (German trench mortar) to Flying Pig (British ditto) and various poems complaining about, or apologising for, incidents where British guns shelled their own lines.
Sex: the collections of pornography known to the Division as "The Munque Art Gallery" and "Kirschner's" are frequently mentioned and occasionally advertised, as are the local brothels: the Fancies, the Poplar tree and Plug Street.
Drink: the continued supply of rum and whiskey was a prime concern for all at the front. In one serial story, Narpoo Rum, a certain 'Herlock Shomes' spent five issues tracking rum-thieves round Hooge. Brief references also turn up to panic buying of supplies by unnamed individuals in the Division after rumours of a whiskey drought.
Rats: these bred in enormous numbers in the trenches, chiefly fed on corpses but with an eye for anything left in a dugout. One poem in the paper describes how a rat and his wife opened a tin of sardines, ate the contents then sealed the tin back up for the author to find.
Read more about this topic: Wipers Times
Famous quotes containing the word contents:
“Yet to speak of the whole world as metaphor
Is still to stick to the contents of the mind
And the desire to believe in a metaphor.
It is to stick to the nicer knowledge of
Belief, that what it believes in is not true.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“The permanence of all books is fixed by no effort friendly or hostile, but by their own specific gravity, or the intrinsic importance of their contents to the constant mind of man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Such as boxed
Their feelings properly, complete to tags
A box for dark men and a box for Other
Would often find the contents had been scrambled.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)