"As we were about to go into no-man’s land, our Lt was seized with shell shock and could hardly be held on his feet. Another officer arrived ready to go over the top with us and was very excited! He decided to look over the top, then he said to me 'There is actually two bloody Germans stood on the parapet, here have a look!' I did and all I could see was wire, wire and double wire, and my thoughts at that moment were 'we shall never get out of this alive'. My officer then had another look over the top, it was his last as an explosive bullet blew half his head off.
The man in front of me started screaming that he was hit. I heard no bullet and as his haversack was hard on my chest I said ‘shut up you silly .................. do you want to cause a panic?’ But a bullet had entered his chest and it killed him. Somewhere in his body it was deflected for it didn’t come out of his back. I cannot believe I had sworn at a dying man– I couldn’t take it back and I couldn’t help him.
Before we had a chance to finally attack, the word came to retire. We retired through the tunnel back to the reserve trench, most of the time on our hands and knees over dead and dying, from that moment all my religion died, after that journey all my teaching and belief in God had left me – never to return.” - Sapper George Herbert Anderson, 209th Field Company, Royal Engineers (34th Division), Somme, France, May 1916. #stayzero #zerofoxtrot #ww1 #reality @stayzeroactual