The nervous cases were the worst and in greatest number. Many men went
raving mad. The shell-shock victims clawed at their mouths
unceasingly, or lay motionless like corpses with staring eyes, or
trembled in every limb, moaning miserably and afflicted with a great
terror.
To the Germans (barely less to British troops) the Somme battlefields
were not only shambles, but a territory which the devil claimed as his
own for the torture of men's brains and souls before they died in the
furnace fires. A spirit of revolt against all this crept into the
minds of men who retained their sanity--a revolt against the people
who had ordained this vast outrage against God and humanity.
Into German letters there crept bitter, burning words against "the
millionaires--who grow rich out of the war," against the high people
who live in comfort behind the lines. Letters from home inflamed these
thoughts.
It was not good reading for men under shell-fire.
"It seems that you soldiers fight so that official stay-at-homes can
treat us as female criminals.
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