"Hunkering down in terror on a small rise against the enfilading fire coming from upper stories of a neighboring village, I saw one of those guys who had already taken cover there get hit in the back with a bullet. I’ll never forget the sight of that hole, like it was made with a drill—a little whiff of smoke from burnt cloth, the man’s violent somersault, a groan, and then the stillness of death.
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Rarely so personal, death was more often oceanic and everywhere. Where the connecting trench joined in, an unfortunate fellow was stretched out, decapitated by a shell, just as if he had been guillotined. Beside him, another was frightfully mutilated… I saw, as if hallucinating, a pile of corpses … they had started to bury right in the trench … There’s no one here but the dead!
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On one nighttime march through a rain-filled trench, we came across a soldier cemented into the mud and left behind by his own fellow infantrymen. We made some vain efforts to pull him out, almost to the point of pulling his arms and legs out of their sockets. Seeing that we too were abandoning him, he begged us to put him out of his misery with a rifle shot." - Cpl. Louis Barthas, French 296th Infantry Reg/248th Infantry Reg, France, 1915-16 #stayzero #zerofoxtrot #ww1 #war #reality