It was one of our infantrymen and he was sitting on the ground, propped up his elbow with his tunic open. I nearly vomited. His insides were spilling out his stomach and he was holding himself and trying to push all awful stuff back in. When he saw me he said. “Finish it for me, mate. Put a bullet in me. Go on. I want you to. Finish it!” He had no gun himself. When I did nothing he started to swear

Any dent in the ground you'd stick your head down as far as you could ram it. There might be a shell-hole, there might be not, but you had to lay flat on the ground when these creeping barrages came, and they were terrible things. You don't think you're coming out of it. There's the blast of them, you know, and you can hear the steel, awful sound, piece of steel as it goues by you. It would cut you in half, a piece of that shell. You can't imagine ite - every night, every night, every night.

Darkness alternates with light as bright as day. The earth trembles and shakes like a jelly… And those men who are still in the front line hear nothing but the drum-fire, the groaning of wounded comrades, the screaming of fallen horses, the wild beating of their own hearts, hour after hour, night after night. Even during the short respite granted them, their exhausted brains are haunted in the weird stillness by recollections of unlimited suffering. They have no way of escape, nothing is left them but ghastly memories and resigned anticipation… The battle-field is really nothing but one vast cemetery.