Here is a little picture of life in a German dug-out near the British lines, written by a man now dead.

“The telephone bell rings. […] Thus the night is interrupted, and now they come, alarm messages, one after the other, each more terrifying than the other, of enormous losses through the bombs and shells of the enemy, of huge masses of troops advancing upon us, of all possible possibilities, such as  a man broken down and tortured by the terrors of the day can invent. Our nerves quiver. We clench our teeth. None of us can forget the horrors of the night.”

[Account of July 1916]. Extract from The Germans on the Somme, by Philip Gibbs, published 1917. [SPEC S/D525 (P.C. 67)]. This week’s war: 102.