"When you hear the whistling in the distance your entire body preventively crunches together to prepare for the enormous explosions.

Every new explosion is a new attack, a new fatigue, a new affliction. Even nerves of the hardest of steel, are not capable of dealing with this kind of pressure.

The moment comes when the blood rushes to your head, the fever burns inside your body and the nerves, numbed with tiredness, are not capable of reacting to anything anymore.

It is as if you are tied to a pole and threatened by a man with a hammer.

First the hammer is swung backwards in order to hit hard, then it is swung forwards, only missing your skull by an inch, into the splintering pole.

In the end you just surrender. Even the strength to guard yourself from splinters now fails you.

There is even hardly enough strength left to pray to God..."

-French veteran of Verdun