"It was not a contest of warrior against warrior, sentient man against sentient man, but rather, of indifferent machine against helpless human flesh and blood.
Shellfire, the great killer of the war. Thousands blown to bits, buried alive, field weapons specifically intended to atomize bodies into unrecoverable fragments. My friend Izard was struck with an explosive bullet, tore his guts to shred, and then another man crawled towards me...he had no face left. An explosive bullet had blown up his mouth, blasting out his cheeks, ripping out his tongue, (a piece of which hung out) and shattered his jaws. Blood poured out copiously. We wrapped bandages of what was left of his face and finally got him to a first aid station hours later that evening.
As day broke, I looked out upon this famous, nameless hill. 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; it only contained thousands of shredded, pulverized corpses.
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. There was all sorts of debris everywhere: broken rifles, gutted packs from which spilled out pages of tenderly written letters and other carefully guarded souvenirs from home, and which the wind scattered; crushed canteens, shredded musette bags.
All human sentiment was banished. Any living thing had been snuffed out." - Cpl Louis Barthas, 15th Co, 296th Inf. Regiment, Verdun, France. May, 1916