Mud, Blood and Poppycock

From p. 11 of the book, about the British army in World War I, by Gordon Corrigan:

...Some years ago the British army's small arms training manual was titled Shoot to Kill. This led to protests from libertarians who claimed that such a title instilled agression. Quite. Should the army have entitled its pamphlet Shoot to Miss? Soldiers are agressive: they have to be because their job is to kill other soldiers and to do it efficiently and without moral scruple...

Mr Corrigan (a retired British army officer) writes of the Canadian army in the Great War, p. 288:

They were well led and highly motivated, and by 1918 they were almost the shock troops of the BEF.

Quite. No poppycock.

Update: As Algy points out in the "Comments" the point of the book is to debunk the commonly accepted myths about World War I, e.g. that it is was pointless, that troops were miserable in mud in trenches all the time, that casualties were uniquely heavy in modern war, that the generals didn't have a clue about either how to fight the war or what things were like at the front, etc.