"The Germans were waiting for us and when we attacked they cut us to ribbons, totally ripped us to pieces.
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We scrambled on to the top. Second Lieutenant Hirst was near to me, almost touching. He had just got wed before we came away and was a grand chap but it was not long before he got his head knocked off. Out of the corner of your eye you could see the boys going down but there was no going back. You could hear the bullets whistling past and our lads were going down flop, flop, flop, just as though they had all gone to sleep.
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Bullets were like a swarm of bees round you.
You could almost feel them plucking at your clothes.
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Them that made for the gaps in the wire were all piled up where the machine guns just laid them out. It was pure murder so we tried picking the Jerries off because they were on the trench top, some of them cheering their mates on while our lads on the wire were hanging like rags.
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Some I recognised, “That’s so and so” I thought, but one burst of their big machine guns and they were in bits. Arms and legs were flying all over." - Private Frank Lindley, 14th York and Lancaster Regiment (Barnsley Pals), Somme, France, 1916 #reality #ww1 #war #stayzero #zerofoxtrot