"The hill contained thousands of shredded, pulverized corpses. Nothing distinguished it from neighboring hills. It seemed to have been partly wooded at one time, but no trace of vegetation remained. The convulsed, overturned earth offered nothing but a spectacle of devastation.
There, human flesh had been shredded, torn to bits. At places where the earth was soaked with blood, swarms of flies swirled and eddied. You couldn't really see corpses, but you knew where they were, hidden in shell holes with a layer of dirt on top of them, from the wafting smells of rotten flesh.
Our mission consisted of maintaining liaison, by patrols, with the troops who held the facing slopes. But these patrols took place only on paper, in fictional reports. In reality, the patrols had ceased after three days – there was no one else left to send.
The most terrible accident had befallen my former section. Three of my old pals decided to make up a game of manille, without finding a fourth hand. No sooner had the cards been dealt that a 105mm shell fell right in their midst, blasting them to bits.
Our brains were shaken by the nearby explosions. Stunned, we expected to be pulverized at any minute. It was just a matter of time. Flat on our bellies with our noses in the dirt, we were terrified, disconcerted by this new way of scaring and killing people. An explosive mangle that resulted in many soldiers being blown into showers. Officially, missing troops were said to be the result of disintegration by artillery.
On both sides, we fought like cannibals, with a cruelty perhaps greater than in the long-ago times of the barbarian invasions.
We were a lamentable parade of human wrecks, a flock of sheep headed for the slaughterhouse. But at least sheep are unaware of their fate, right up to the moment of their death they're probably thinking that they're heading out to pasture, in a nice meadow
Looking ahead to the next war-to-end-all-wars, they should train the schoolkids, every day, to crawl on their bellies. Some day, or some night, the knowledge might come in handy.” - Cpl Louis Barthas, 15th Co., 296th Inf. Reg, Verdun, France, May 1916 #ww1 #reality #stayzero