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At nightfall, Dragan lit his horse-to-cigarette in the trenches, and he shrunk himself in the foxhole to prevent being sniped, for these warriors on the battlefield smoking was an important thing. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

This is a bad habit in modern times, but cigarettes have been inextricably linked to war since they were introduced to Europe. The nicotine in tobacco has the effect of anesthesia and hemostasis, which can relieve the pain, and at the same time, it can also cheer up the exhausted and calm the anxious and irritable people, and boredom, fear and pain are the worst enemies of soldiers, so tobacco naturally fits their needs.

The tobacco epidemic in Europe began in the military camps. In order to alleviate the bad mood of soldiers in war, many Western countries began to distribute tobacco and pipes to their own soldiers and mercenaries. In the 17th century, King Louis XIV of France, although he did not smoke and hated the smell of tobacco, he understood the significance of tobacco to his soldiers, so the French army had a large amount of tobacco in its strategic reserves. Tobacco is sometimes as important as food.

The unprecedented frequency of wars in Europe in the 17th century led to widespread epidemics - epidemics such as cholera and malaria easily thrives in densely populated armies and spread as soldiers fought and returned home. With it, the bad habit of smoking was brought from the barracks to the civilian population by soldiers. Tobacco was first used to treat diseases by the American Indians, and the nicotine and other substances it contains can not only relieve pain, but also kill many germs such as cholera bacillus and pneumonia bacillus. Therefore, in the context of the era of low medical standards, it is only natural that tobacco has become a cheap panacea for Europeans plagued by epidemics, and more and more people are joining the ranks of smokers. Even the United Kingdom, which was the first to strongly advocate a ban on smoking, was forced to change its attitude towards smoking because of the cholera epidemic.

A visual example of this is the Second World War, when the German army had a very limited supply of cigarettes and was far from being as abundant as portrayed in some blockbuster films. Allied soldiers were given 5 to 7 packs of cigarettes per week, and the Americans were even more, while the Germans were only able to receive a measly 6 cigarettes or 2 cigars a day. Although they are allowed to buy 50 cigarettes per month out of their own pockets, they must pay a special tax of 900/0 above the general retail price. This was not because of the lack of supplies in Germany, but because Hitler was extremely disgusted with soldiers smoking.

In 1939, German scientists first demonstrated the epidemiological relationship between smoking and lung cancer, and Hitler had every reason to oppose smoking in Germany. He set off a vigorous anti-smoking campaign in Germany, banning citizens from smoking in public, and imposing strict restrictions on smoking among soldiers on the battlefield.

However, on the battlefields of World War II, Nazi soldiers did not rejoice in staying away from cigarettes and lung cancer, but instead became increasingly decadent and depressed because they did not have enough cigarettes. In the early stage of the war, German soldiers could also refresh themselves by capturing cigarettes from British and French soldiers, but as the war situation took a turn for the worse, the problem of cigarette shortage became more and more exposed.

Just imagine, in the years of artillery fire, stray bullets flew everywhere on the battlefield, blood stains and mud were mixed around, and everyone was crowded in the narrow trenches day and night, life and death, and no one knew if they would live to see the sunrise the next day. For many people, their only hope at this point is a cigarette in their hand, and wouldn't it be a joke if someone told them to be careful of lung cancer? What's more, cigarettes are one of the few things on the battlefield that bear a trademark other than weapons, and the familiar words and patterns are like family letters, evoking good memories of soldiers and outlining their good life after the war.

In this way, when the American GIs smoked "good luck" and "camels" and longed for a better life after the war, and when the Soviet soldiers smoked "Mahe cigarettes" and recalled the beautiful countryside and sweethearts of their hometowns, the German soldiers could only look for cigarette butts in the cold and freezing foreign land. Eventually, the smoking Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt commanded their "smoking guns" to defeat the non-smoking Führer of the Third Reich and his smokeless army. Ironically, after the defeat of Germany, a sack of the extremely devalued Reichsmark could not buy a pack of cigarettes, so cigarettes replaced the mark as the proxy currency for the daily business activities of the occupied territories.

The popularity of cigarettes is inseparable from war, and at the same time, it is also a catalyst for war, which has a non-negligible impact on morale and combat effectiveness. Because for those young people who have left their homeland and come to the battlefield, cigarettes are like photos of their parents or sweethearts, their hope for survival, and they are also the few spiritual sustenance they have in desperate situations.

Smoking Ma He's cigarette, Captain Dragan is now a little more comfortable, you must know that a bloody battle in the afternoon made him lose half of his company's brothers, and the others also took out Ma He's cigarette and the cigarettes turned over from the German corpses, and smoked, after two days of bloody fighting, Dragan's company can already be said to be veterans, but thinking of their dead comrades, they are equally sad.

Ensign Ivan noticed this, and when he saw that the cigarette in Dragan's hand was about to run out, he took out a pack of cigarettes from his body and handed it to Captain Dragan, who took it and saw that it was actually a camel brand cigarette, which was treated well by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, compared to Mahe cigarettes (made by the smoker's own hand, not machine-produced). But paper for cigarettes is generally hard to come by, and logistics, of course, prioritizes weapons, ammunition and food, not those few cigarette papers, so the soldiers use all kinds of paper, usually newspapers at the regimental headquarters. The army only provides tobacco directly from paper rolls, so how about smoking boxed cigarettes? Buy it yourself! Of course, there is no place to buy money in wartime. But even this was rare in war, and the distribution of tobacco was usually under the direct control of senior military officers. Pravda and Red Star were standard cigarette papers, and some soldiers said: "In all aspects of life, the quality of the cigarettes is what they care about the most." The smell of Mahe cigarettes is more like rotten wood, and when lit, it is like the smell of burnt leather, which definitely makes people who have never smoked it "deeply affected" - so some people say that the taste of Russia is: leather boots, black bread, cabbage, Mahe tobacco!

At the same time, Ivan took out a lighter and lit the cigarettes in the hands of the two.

Smoking a camel cigarette, Ivan looked at Dragan and said, "Comrade Captain, this is war!" Dragan slowly took a puff of cigarette and said, "Yes, but if it weren't for this war, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to fight side by side with the people of the Ministry of Internal Affairs." ”

Ivan knew that most of the commanders and fighters of the Siberian Volunteer Division were from the punishment battalion and the Gulag, and Andrei asked the internal affairs troops to "invite", so they were very hostile to the internal affairs troops, the Cheka, and the secret police, but since the Germans invaded and went to the battlefield, then everyone should fight side by side, so Ivan did not care about the hostility in Dragan's words, and said: "Yes, but for us now, there is no difference between the branches, only the soldiers who fight together for the motherland!" ”

And at the division headquarters at Mamayev Gang, Andrei saw that the Central Railway Station had almost lost two companies of heavy casualties in one afternoon, and knew that this bloody battle had just reached the prologue!