re: #155 prairiefire

Kipling is so bleak.

As a man he was anything but gloomy, but he often wrote about military life and war. He also did so without much bullshit. That meant that much his work had to deal with unhappy matters, but he did help raise awareness among the British public of what soldiering and war really were, and generations of soldiers ever since have found him as an artist who understood them as they are, rather than as stereotypes.