"Of course, there are moments when the individual enemy absorbs you. Astonishing moments in battle when a man suddenly appears before you, a man you have never seen before, yet who, in a flash, suddenly becomes everything to you. He is the man who is coming to kill you, yet you do not hate him in the least. Yet you take in every detail of his face, remember the face of a boy of 18 or so, white, with teeth exposed and haggard eyes, like the runner in the last stage of an exhausting race, his eyes were on you, yet they seemed unseeing. Though, like a furious mechanical figure, he was about to pitch-fork you aside with his bayonet but my revolver did him first.
.
The ground is full of dead bodies and rats. Little solitary graves with a wooden cross to Un brave soldat allemand. A Frenchman and a German lie alone, face to face in a little hollow. In one grave lie 77 French soldiers, beside it, 78 Germans in a grave about half the size. The place around is strewn with torn knapsacks, pouches, and scraps of blue and grey cloth. The situation here is a bit peculiar, the line is broken by the river Somme and its marshes - the space between the broken ends of the two lines." - Pvt James Beatson, B Company, 9th Royal Scots Regiment, who would be killed a few months after this entry during the Battle of the Somme, on 23 July 1916. #ww1 #reality #war #stayzero #zerofoxtrot @stayzeroactual