"The fascination of going from dead to dead and looking at each was so great that inevitably one went on further and further from home, seeking and looking with a strange intensity in the heart.
The story of each man's death was plainly shown in the circumstances in which he lay. The brave machine-gunners, with resolute look in shoulders and face, lay scarcely relaxed beside the oiled machines, piles of littered brass, the empty cartridge-cases of hundreds of rounds which they had fired away before being bayoneted at their posts.
On the other hand, facing those machine-gunners, one saw how our men rushing forward in extended formation had fallen...one here, another there, one, two, three, four, five, all in a sort of sequence.
One poor wretch had got far, but had got tangled in the wire, had pulled and pulled and at last been shot to rags; another had got near enough to strike the foe and been shot with a revolver.
In other parts of the field, one saw the balance of battle and the Germans evidently attacking, not extended, but in groups...and now in groups together dead.
I remember especially two of the fellows in a shell-hole, fear was in their faces, they were crouching unnaturally, and one had evidently been saying to the other, "Keep your head down!" Now in both men's heads was a dent, the sort of dent that appears in the side of a rubber ball when not fully expanded by air." – Pvt. Stephen Graham, Scots Guard, Western Front, France, 1918