Home| Excerpts A crazily heroic attack by dribbling the famous football ahead 1 We took over that deathtrap known as the Schwaben Redoubt 2 As we ran into Albert the chauffeur told us the true story of the Virgin of the Basilica. 3 Poor Josselin! ! He died very near us. 4 So with an aching heart and tears in their eyes, they each said goodbye to their home 5 Péronne appeared a hard nut to crack. 6 The first time I heard about Thiepval was a day I shall never forget 7 Nobody has prepared her to the 73,412 men without a grave. 8 Wounded and prisoners came streaming past in the half light. I was shocked by the dead horses and mules 9 Not a single tree in the wood remained unbroken 10 11 12 Combles was a mere skeleton of its former self. 13 The river water is thick, the color of blood. 14 It was the greatest bombardment of the war. 15 I wish I could just, in imagination, take you into the trenches. 16 A ribbon of isolated graves like a milky way across miles of country. 17 Millions of poppies covered these dead grasslands with a warm copper glow. 18 I shall never forget my first sight of the Somme battlefields. 19 It was like an enchanted land; but in the place of fairies there were thousands of little white crosses. 20 Our poor poilus are given a sorry, stupid task. 21 Mametz Wood was a menacing wall of gloom 22 Then a man was still a soldier, but now he is just an automaton, a trench beast. 23 24 One day destruction came like roaring dragons out of Heaven, and fell upon the town 25 Your battle-wounds are scars upon my heart 26 Smoke-black night. We stumble, fall and struggle back to our feet, warm with sweat as we sweat as we pant listlessly forward. 27 28 The rolling countryside of Picardy stretched to infinity before us. 29 I have suffered seventh hell. I have not been at the front. I have been in front of it 30 The Somme valley was raging as if the end of the world had come 31 Vache Wood, a sinister name for a nasty place. 32 God is absent from the battlefields. 33 34 Suppose war is coming. 35 I had time to study the La Maisonnette trenches during the second half of August 1916 36 I am glad to be going in first wave. 37 38 Before the world grew mad, the Somme was a placid stream of Picardy. 39 So this is what man has done to Earth. 40 When you stop at Amiens for artistic reasons, you are already welcome. 41 the streets of Saint Leu seemed to belong to a different century 42 Behind the gardens the river Somme broke up into small canals that were the picturesque feature of Saint-Leu 43 That's Côte 80!! You’ll see more wounded go through there than you have hairs on your head. 44 Better end in horror than this horror without end! 45