"The dead lay everywhere. The deeper one dug, the more bodies one exhumed. Hands and faces protruded from the slimy, toppling walls of the trenches. Knees, shoulders, and buttocks poked from the foul morass, as many as the pebbles of a brook. Here had been a heavy slaughter of English lads four days before; so great had been the price in blood and sweat and tears of those few acres. There were also German dead, but it was hard to tell them from the resr, for khaki is grey when soaked and muddy.
Our clothes, our very underclothing, were ponderous with the weight of half and inch of mud on the outer surface, and nearly as much on the inner. Casualties were heavy in the sixty hours we were in that place. The days were bad, but sixteen hours of a cold, pitchy night was a burden not easily borne. We were shot at from three sides, and it was torment. There was no hot food and no prospect of it. We drank shellhole water, as it was too cold for the corpses to rot. We were soaked from head to feet (the feet that were never dry all that winter) with sweat and icy mud"
To the Last Ridge, W.H Downing. p 17. Duffy and Snellgrove, Sydney (1998).
1 comment:
It has been quite eye-opening to read these short extracts you have been placing on your blog. The writer is so descriptive - you get the sense that you are present where all these atrocities are taking place. It is incomprehensible what it must have been like as a soldier in these places - dirty, wet, unclean, hungry, thirsty, death all around, bullets flying past your head, mates injured and dying - it must have been harrowing.
I have ordered a copy of the book online and I am awaiting it's arrival. I think I am looking forward to reading it all.
'Come Lord Jesus, Come'.
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