Dominic Sandbrook

I think so.

Because here's the test.

When Allied observers went to the Italian lines, they said, oh my God, I didn't think anything could be worse than this.

what we're experiencing, but this is absolutely awful.

So in that fourth battle, by the way, the Italians lost 49,000 men, the Austrians 30,000.

So again, the Italians lost more.

And the conditions in the Italian trenches over the winter were absolutely appalling.

They have these shallow trenches.

Their uniforms are in rags.

A lot of them don't even have guns.

Their boots fall apart.

They've all got typhoid and cholera.

And actually the thing that I was about to say amuses me, it both appalls and amuses me,

British visitors who went to the Italian camps, they couldn't get over the toilet conditions.

They had no respect for Italian hygiene.

One British visitor said, the Italian camp was literally a field of filth.

I had never seen such a disgusting sight, and I wondered what kind of epidemic was being bred amidst the excreta and soiled paper.

They're always very sniffy about that.

Or a columnist in the Daily Telegraph whose children have just been to Glastonbury.

And is appalled by that.