Small shell fragments inflicted wounds of almost surgical precision. An Irish medical officer fainted when the wounded man on his stretcher had his face sliced neatly off and hurled, like a rubber mask, against the side of the trench. C. P. Blacker saw a similar sort of wound, when a man had his face removed, ‘the soft parts being detached from the front of his skull from a blow upwards… The image of this groping signless figure, kneeling and pawing the air, has often come back to me since.;
Larger fragments behaved like the axe or bludgeon of a medieval executioner, lopping off limbs or cutting men in half. The cumulative effect of death by shellfire was all too well remembered by Harry Ogle:
Entangled in or sprawling across the barbed wire, slumbed over the remains of trench parapets, or half buried in the ruined trenches, were corpses, both grey-green and khaki-clad; and overall lay a covering of chalk dust and lies which never had time to settle before being raised by the next explosion. Amongst the wreckage crept wreaths and coils of smoke which hardly vanished before another shell obstructed the scene and added worse confusion. The days were hot and windless.. The dead remained where they had fallen and suffered alternate burial and didinternment by shellfire… In many places were mounds which indicated corpses with here and there an exposed head or knee. Across the parapet and parados were bodies either lying where they had fallen or slung there out of the way.. I never had a strong stomach and smoked Digger Mixture in a corn cob [smoking pipe] until my mouth felt like pickled leather.
Source:
Holmes, Richard. "Steel and Fire." Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front, 1914-1918. London: HarperCollins, 2004. 403. Print.
Original Source(s) Listed:
Blacker Have You Forgotten p. 260.
Ogle Fateful Battle Line pp. 103-4.
Further Reading:
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