“We’ve been surrounded, trapped for the last 25 days, with no rifles, ammunition, knives or bayonets. For the last eight days, the soup carriers have not returned. Not a single man returned. They were all killed..with no exception.
We are hungry. We are thirsty. We see over the dead laying on the ground, rotten and full of flies, but their belts are still holding canteens and bread attached by a piece of wire. We wait for the bombing to calm. We crawl towards a body, we take the canteens, bread and crawl back. Some slices have been pierced by bullets. The bread is flabby, so one just cuts away the part that touched the body.
Around the evening, a buddy came back with a rat. Once skinned, its flesh is white like paper. However, with my bit in hand, I still wait for the darkest part of the night to eat it.
We are nine in a hole, nothing will get us out of here. We’ve eaten and we must relieve ourselves. The first of us felt the urge to climb out…he’s been there for 2 days now, 10 feet away, killed with his trousers down.
We crap on paper and throw it up and out, when we have no more paper, we go in our haversacks
The battle of Verdun continues, we go in our hands, dysentery flows between our fingers, we crap blood, we go where we lie. We are devoured by flames of thirst, we drink our own urine.
If we remain on this battlefield, it is because the Germans won’t let us get away.” – Private Jean Giono, 6th Co, 140th Infantry Regiment, 35th Div. Verdun, France 1916
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