War Is A Shitty Business Poem by Keith Shorrocks Johnson

Hannibal traipsed thousands of men,
Horses and mules and 37 elephants over the Alps
At the Col de la Traversette in a brilliant ruse
That saw a bog en route being seeded
With the faeces of ruminants like elefantidae
And that of their accompanying primates,
Such that the hunt is now on for tapeworm cysts
Which were deposited in the peat as keepsakes for posterity.

Humans create around 1.4 litres of urine a day
And around 125 grams of faeces:
Assuming a Punic army of 40,000 men
This equates to 56 cubic metres of urine
And 5 tons of human excrement a day
[Never mind the elephants] -
Because as we all know
Armies march on their stomachs and like a drink or two.

And if Darius had an army of one hundred thousand
At the Battle of Gaugamela [modern Erbil in Iraq]
It would have been relieved of 12.5 tons of poop
And 140 cubic metres of pee on the day
Of his catastrophic battle against Alexander the Great -
But you could raise that by two and half on some estimates.

And if you apply the same factors to the Battle of Waterloo
Where there were 200,000 men [and several thousand horses]
You come up with 25 tons of ordure and 280 cubic meters of human urine
On the 18th of June 1815, in a close run thing.

And let's just pursue the stream to its Niagara
In the First World War 9 million died [along with 8 million horses],
And 22 million men were wounded
After 70 million had been mobilized all told.
So that if you take the last figure on 28th July 1914
You get 8,750 tons of Number 9 and
98,000 cubic metres of Werris Creek or Gypsy's Kiss
From a fine bunch of lads.

So next time you see neat lines of marching men
With stripes and lanyards, pips and even plumes
Remember the US Marines at Iwo Jima
A first rate body of men - semper fidelis -
Who had to keep their heads down and defecate
In their trousers because their foxholes were so cramped

And all the stats that show
That war is a shitty business.