With the fighting raging back and forth over the same narrow, corpse-saturated battlefield in the blazing summer heat, the screw of horror tightened (if such a thing were possible) yet another turn. A French officer, Major Roman, describes the scene at the entrance to his dugout in July:
On my arrival, the corpse of an infantryman in a blue cap partially emerges from his compound of earth, stones, and unidentifiable debris. But a few hours later, it is no longer the same; he has disappeared and has been replaced by a Tirailleur in khaki. And successively there appear other corpses in other uniforms. The shell that buries one disinters another. One gets acclimatized, however, to this spectacle; one can bear the horrible odour of this charnel-house in which one lives, but one’s joie de vivre, after the war, will be eternally poisoned by it.
Source:
Horne, Alistair. “Falkenhayn Dismissed.” The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916. New York: St. Martin's, 1963. 301-02. Print.
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