"You could have buried them merely by filling up the trenches with
earth. And that old beet-sugar factory which you saw this noon when we
were at field headquarters--it was crowded with badly wounded
Englishmen.
"At once they rallied and forced us back, and now it was our turn to
lose heavily. That was nearly three weeks ago, and since then the
ground over which we fought has been debatable ground, lying between our
lines and the enemy's lines--a stretch four miles long and half a mile
wide that is literally carpeted with bodies of dead men. They weren't
all dead at first. For two days and nights our men in the earthworks
heard the cries of those who still lived, and the sound of them almost
drove them mad. There was no reaching the wounded, though, either from
our lines or from the Allies' lines. Those who tried to reach them were
themselves killed. Now there are only dead out there--thousands of
dead, I think. And they have been there twenty days. Once in a while a
shell strikes that old sugar mill or falls into one of those trenches.
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