LETTERS FROM WWI: LEONARD THOmpson

"As I walked the line, at the bottom of a shell hole in the freshly turned earth, five bodies were spread, but in such a regular manner that you could see the shell had burst in the middle of this little knot of men, to send one in each direction, so that these bodies formed five branches…

The violence of the explosion had pushed them deep into the earth. Three were almost completely driven into the lips of the crater, stuffed in like rags. The arm of one of these crushed bodies stuck straight out of the clay. The hand was intact and an aluminium ring encircled a finger.

I hardly recognised our HQ for it had been hit by shell after shell and at its entrance was a long mound of bodies. Crowds of my men had run there for cover just to be wiped out by shrapnel.

I had to climb over them to enter and as I did so, a hand stretched out and clung to my equipment. Horrified I dragged a living man from amongst the corpses.

The poor fellow was absolutely riddled. He lay in my arms until he died, shrieking in his agony, and said he hoped I would excuse him for making such as a noise as he really could not help it.

I was profoundly affected by the remembrance of his face… He was alive, and then he was dead, and there was nothing human left in him.

I had now got used to the idea of dying young. Strangely, it had a sort of soothing effect and prevented me from worrying too much. Because of this I gradually lost the terrible fear of being wounded or killed.” -leonard thompson, british soldier