It was a terrible list. [WWI]

[**The following takes place during the Battle of Passchendaele, which was famous for its mud and rain. As can be seen in the following excerpt, wounded men would famously fall into shell craters that would fill with water - contaminated by poisonous chemicals, decayed human remains, and more – until they drowned in it.**] >>From other shell holes from the darkness on all sides came the groans and wails of wounded men; faint, long, sobbing moans of agony, and despairing shrieks. It was too horribly obvious that dozens of men with serious wounds must have crawled for safety into new shell holes, and now the water was rising about them and, powerless to move, they were slowly drowning. Horrible visions came to me with those cries, [of men] lying maimed out there trusting that their pals would find them, and now dying terribly, alone amongst the dead in the inky darkness. And we could do nothing to help them; Dunham was crying quietly beside me, and all the men were affected by the piteous cries. >This was almost the end of Lieutenant Vaughan’s experience of 27 August. Just before midnight his unit was relieved by another, and he led his survivors back to the lines they had left on 25 August. >>The cries of the wounded had much diminished now, and as we staggered down the road, the reason was only too apparent, for the water was right over the tops of the shell holes… I hardly recognised [the headquarters pillbox], for it had been hit by shell after shell and its entrance was a long mound of bodies. Crowds [of soldiers] had run there for cover and had been wiped out by shrapnel. I had to climb over them to enter HQ and as I did so a hand stretched out and clung to my equipment. Horrified I dragged a living man from amongst the corpses. >Next morning, when he awoke to take a muster parade, >>my worst fears were realized. Standing near the cookers were four small groups of bedraggled, unshaven men from whom the quartermaster sergeants were gathering information concerning any of their pals they had seen killed or wounded. It was a terrible list… out of our happy little band of 90 men, only 15 remained. _________________________ **Source:** Keegan, John. "The Breaking of Armies." *The First World War*. New York: A. Knopf :, 1999. 364. Print. **Original Source Listed:** E. Vaughan, *Some Desperate Glory*, London, 1981, pp. 219-32. ___________________________ **Further Reading:** [Battle of Passchendaele / Third Battle of Ypres / Flandernschlacht / Deuxième Bataille des Flandres](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Passchendaele)