"They went over in waves, the second one so many minutes after the first, and so on. Where one man from the first wave was wiped out, so was the second, which gave the Germans time to adjust their machine guns to receive the rest.
Wounded! Hundreds upon hundreds on stretchers, being carried, walking – all covered from head to foot in well-caked mud. One poor lad had both eyes shot through and there they were, all smashed and mixed up with the eyelashes. He was quite calm, and very tired. He said, ‘Shall I need an operation? I can’t see anything.’ He said he had to push past men with their arms blown off or horribly wounded. Then he would stand on something wobbly and nearly fall down – and realize it was a dying or dead man, half-covered in mud.
The two men beside him had wounds right through their chest and another man in the same room has his intestines sticking out through his ribs. However, they all seemed very cheerful.
Many men have told me that after our men have attacked, the Germans sweep the ground low with a machine gun to kill our wounded. I should think that this is an act best left to God to reward." - Sister Edith Appleton, Queen Alexandra's Imperial Nursing Service, General Hospital No1, Somme, France, July 1916 #stayzero #zerofoxtrot #reality #war