"There were bodies, both our own and German, from the first wave. It was sickening to see your own dead and wounded, some crying for stretcher-bearers, others semi-conscious and others beyond all hope.
.
We were sitting amid a sea of shell holes, up to our knees in gluey, sticky mud. The stench of rotting bodies was terrible. The bodies of the dead and of the wounded would sink out of sight. This was all mud, mud and more mud, mixed together with blood.
.
You just had to go forward through all that mud and blood. It was absolutely sickening. I remember one lad from our regiment in particular. He was in a pool of blood, ripped open from his shoulder to his waist by shrapnel. When we got to him he said, 'Shoot me. But before we could draw a revolver, he was dead. And the final word he uttered was 'Mother'. It wasn't a cry of despair, it was a cry of surprise and joy. His mother was in the next world to welcome him and he knew it. .
We lived hour by hour. You saw the sun rise, hopefully you'd see it set. If you saw it set, you hoped you'd see it rise. Some men would, some wouldn't.
At the end, we fought for a few yards of soil and that cost the lives of so many, including my three best friends. There was no excuse for such slaughter for so little gain." - Pvt. Henry John Patch, Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, Passchendaele, Belgium Sept 22, 1917.