“Trench fighting is the bloodiest, wildest, most brutal of all…

Of all the war’s exciting moments none is so powerful as the meeting of two storm troop leaders between narrow trench walls. There’s no mercy there, no going back, the blood speaks from a shrill cry of recognition that tears itself from one’s breast like a nightmare.

Trenches look like a butcher’s bench even though the dead have been removed. There is blood, brains and scraps of flesh everywhere and flies are gathering on them. Whole lines of soldiers are lying in front of the positions, our passages are filled with corpses lying over each other in layers.

And still, the heroic, grand impression given by this endless passage of death uplifts and strengthens us survivors. As strange as it may sound, here you become reacquainted with ideals, the total devotion to an ideal right up to the gruesome death in battle.”

Lt. Ernst Junger, 73rd Infantry Regiment Albrecht von Preussen, Hannoverian 19th Division, Somme, France July 3, 1916.