And what did that fellow Andresen want coming up to Sellanraa of Sundays, to talk fieldwork with Isak?
"Growth of the Soil"
Knut Hamsun
It is true that they had a disproportionate loss of men, and in their first encounter with the enemy did not always keep a firm front, and showed the rapid alternations of cowardice and courage which are peculiar to young troops; but called together from the plough and the workshop, badly clothed, badly armed, and little drilled as they were, they had in the very beginning to go through all the severe fieldwork of veteran troops.
"Pictures of German Life in the XVIIIth and XIXth Centuries, Vol. II."
Gustav Freytag