"From the darkness on all sides came the groans and wails of wounded men; faint, long, sobbing moans of agony and despairing shrieks.
It was too horribly obvious that dozens of men with serious wounds must have crawled for safety into new shell-holes and now the water was rising about them and powerless to move they were slowly drowning.
The cries of the wounded men had much diminished now, and as we staggered down the road, the reason was only too apparent for the water was right over the tops of the shell-holes.
Down the road we staggered, shells bursting around us. A man stopped dead in front of me, and I cursed him and butted him with my knee. Very gently he said, 'I’m blind, sir,' and turned to show me his eyes and nose torn away by a piece of shell.
He then he asked for a cigarette. I produced one and put it between his lips; I struck a match and held it across, but the cigarette had fallen and he was dead.
I hardly recognised the boilerhouse for it had been hit by shell after shell and at its entrance was a long mound of bodies.
I had to climb over them to enter HQ. I was alone in my tent which I entered soaked in mud and blood from head to foot." - Captain Edwin Vaughan, 1/8th battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, Battle of Passchendaele, Belgium, September, 1917. #reality #ww1