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Grant, Reginald

"S.O.S. Stand to!"

Never to my dying day can I forget the sight
of those German dead! Dead everywhere! In whatever direction the eye
turned there were the rigid warriors of the Kaiser cold in death. It was
many nights before I could get a straight sleep without seeing
mortifying Huns. But I have long since ceased to have any pity for them.
Although they are the victims of a system over which they have no
apparent control, yet they are supposed to be human beings with human,
red blood in their veins, and the numberless deeds of which they have
been guilty have branded them as nothing better than brute beasts in the
eyes of all humanity.
With the help of the Pozieres Ridge we could observe Fritz quite clearly
now, and every time he attempted any digging-in work our guns would
speak to him in terms so convincing that he fain would desist. My
battery then moved up to within a thousand yards of the foe, one and a
half miles northwest of Labazell, where we had to dig right in the
open. At this point the dead were also strewn so thickly that it was
practically impossible to walk without stepping on a corpse, or part of
one, every other step, among them being many of our own fellows who here
paid the supreme price, and each time we came across a laddie in khaki
it was a signal for an outburst of swearing.


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