"When you hear the whistling of incoming artillery in the distance, your entire body preventively crunches together to prepare for the enormous explosions. Every new explosion is a new attack, a new fatigue, a new affliction. Even nerves of the hardest of steel, are not capable of dealing with this kind of pressure. The moment comes when the blood rushes to your head, the fever burns inside your body and the nerves, numbed with tiredness, are not capable of reacting to anything anymore. In the end you just surrender. Even the strength to guard yourself from splinters now fails you. There is even hardly enough strength left to pray to God....Four days and four nights – ninety-six hours – the last two days in ice-cold mud – kept under relentless fire, without any protection whatsoever except for the narrow trench, which even seemed to be too wide.. I arrived with 175 men, I returned with 34 of whom several had half turned insane. Companies of skeletons passed, sometimes commanded by a wounded officer, leaning on a stick. All marched, or rather: moved forwards with tiny steps, zigzagging as if drugged. It seemed as if these speechless faces cried over something appalling: the unbelievable horrors of their martyrdom. When anyone is exposed unto such trials and tribulations he is no longer of any use as an attacker or defender" - Unknown French Soldier, February 1915, Verdun, France #ww1 #reality #thinkaboutit #steel #stayzero #zerofoxtrot