"Astonishing moments in battle when a man suddenly appears before you, a man you have never seen before, yet who, in a flash, suddenly becomes everything to you. He is the man who is coming to kill you, yet you do not hate him in the least. Yet you take in every detail of his face, remember the face of a boy of 18 or so, white, with teeth exposed and haggard eyes, like the runner in the last stage of an exhausting race, his eyes wereon you, yet they seemed unseeing. Though, like a furious mechanical figure, he was about to pitch-fork you aside with his bayonet when your revolver did for him.
The ground is full of dead bodies and rats. Little solitary graves with a wooden cross to Un brave soldat allemand. A Frenchman and a German lie alone, face to face in a little hollow. In one grave lie 77 French soldiers, beside it, 78 Germans in a grave about half the size. The place around is strewn with torn knapsacks, pouches, and scrapsof blue and grey cloth.
Alternating rushes and rests, shrapnel and stink bombs, bursting and sickening us with poisonous fumes and inflaming our eyes. I only wish the fellows who grumble at home over a few coppers or hours overtime were sent out here, they would understand things a bit better from our point of view.” - Private James Beatson, 9th Royal Scots Regiment, Ypres, Belgium, 1915 #ww1 #reality #stayzero #zerofoxtrot