Knee breeches

I find I have a copy of The Military Experience in the Age of Reason on my bookshelf¹. I assume I must've purchased it for its cover art. Could I ever, in sincerity, have doubted the general tenor of that 'experience'? Could I have imagined that soldiers woke up in the morning and thought, "My do I enjoy catching diseases out here in the mud. Not a day goes by that I don't thank providence for the string of circumstances that led to my becoming an artillery target in the Austrian Plumed-Hat Corps."?

Endnote:

1. (Christopher Duffy, Wordsworth Editions Limited: Hertfordshire, 1998).