Free The Book of the Poppy by Chris McNab Page B

dead. We had neither time nor space for burials, and the wounded could not be got away. They stayed with us and died, pitifully, with us, and then they rotted. The stench of the battlefield spread for miles around. And the sight of the limbs, the mangled bodies, and stray heads.
    FUTILITY
    Move him into the sun –
    Gently its touch awoke him once,
    At home, whispering of fields unsown.
    Always it woke him, even in France,
    Until this morning and this snow.
    If anything might rouse him now
    The kind old sun will know.

    Think how it wakes the seeds –
    Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
    Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides
    Full-nerved, – still warm, – too hard to stir?
    Was it for this the clay grew tall?
    – O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
    To break earth’s sleep at all?

    Wilfred Owen, 1918
    We lived with all this for eleven days, ate and drank and fought amid it; but no, we did not sleep. Sometimes, we just fell down and became unconscious. You could not call it sleep.
    The men who say they believe in war should be hung. And the men who won’t come out and help us, now we’re in it, are not fit for words. Had we more reinforcements up there many brave men now dead, men who stuck it and stuck it and stuck it till they died, would be alive today. Do you know that I saw with my own eyes a score of men go raving mad! I met three in ‘No Man’s Land’ one night. Of course, we had a bad patch. But it is sad to think that one has to go back to it, and back to it, and back to it, until one is hit.

    The final words in this letter are horribly prophetic, for Raws was killed just days later – he was hit by a shell on 23 August, and died instantly. The power of Raws’ letters transcends the distance of time. He was just one of the millions of war dead from that conflict, but his letters present a real man in real time, responding to a human crisis enveloping him.
    Since 1918, the literature and letters of war have continued to be written, new conflicts providing fresh contexts for reflection and remembrance. To read such literature does not require by any means an interest in military history, nor a desire to learn about the ways of war. Instead, it provides both a window into how humans think and behave under the most extreme circumstances, and poses the implicit question – what would you have done?

    QUOTES FROM THE LETTERS OF JOHN RAWS
    12 July 1915 – ‘… there are principles, and there are women, and there are standards of decency, that are worth shedding one’s blood for, surely.’

    27 May 1916 – ‘We whistled and sang the Marseillaise as we tramped … And my word it was heavy walking! This is marching order.’

    9 July 1916 – ‘Against the front breastwork we have a step, about two feet high, upon which men stand to shoot. When there is a bombardment nearly everyone gets under this step, close in against the side.’

    20 July 1916 – ‘The shells are coming from all directions by the thousand, ours and theirs, but I’m resting in quite a comfy little machine gun emplacement. We hope to be out of it in a few days, thank goodness. Our losses have been heavy.’

    8 August 1916 – ‘I was buried twice and thrown down several times – buried with dead and dying. The ground was covered with bodies in all stages of decay and mutilation …’

    12 August 1916 – ‘I lost, in three days, my brother and my two best friends, and in all six out of seven of all my officer friends (perhaps a score in number) who went into the scrap – all killed.’

    19 August 1916 – ‘Before going in to this next affair, at the same dreadful spot, I want to tell you, so that it may be on record, that I honestly believe Goldy and many other officers were murdered on the night you know of, through the incompetence, callousness, and personal vanity of those high in authority.’
    DEATH TOLLS OF MAJOR NAZI EXTERMINATION/CONCENTRATION CAMPS

5. A SYMBOL OF HOPE
    ONE OF THE IRONIES of war is that a