The first exhibit one encounters in the National Army Museum in London is about if you can be a soldier or not. It starts with a couple of tongue-in-cheek quotes like "The man who enlists in the British army is, in general, the most drunken, and probably the worst in his trade or profession to which he belongs" by the Duke of Wellington in 1831. Irrespective of that, it is illustrated by a collated image of soldiers including a female soldier on a Royal Enfield.
I would love to see this museum someday. British generals say the most colorful things. Gen. James Wolfe wrote of his Scottish soldiers (he had fought them at Culloden just five years earlier) "I should imagine that two or three independent Highland companies might be of use. They are hardy, intrepid, accustomed to a rough country, and no great mischief if they fall." Presumably all soldiers always have had things to say in return about their generals, rarely complimentary.
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