This is not war [WWI].

>The only dissentients from this new and harsher mood were the Indians, for whom Neuve-Chapelle marked their swansong on the Western Front. They would fight again, in the coming battles of Festubert and Loos, but not as a striking force. Losses already suffered had crippled many battalions and the sepoy, raised in a tradition of warrior honour quite different from the European, could not understand that a wound did not exempt the recipient from a return to the trenches. >”We are as grain that is flung a second time into the oven,” wrote a Sikh soldier to his father the weeks after Neuve-Chapelle, “and life does not come out of it.” >A wounded Rajput had written home a little earlier, “This is not war, it is the ending of the world.” ______________________________ **Source:** Keegan, John. "Stalemate." *The First World War*. New York: A. Knopf :, 1999. 196-97. Print. **Original Source Listed:** D. Omissi, *The Sepoy and the Raj*, London, 1994, pp. 117-18. __________________________________ **Further Reading:** [Battle of Neuve-Chapelle]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Neuve_Chapelle) [Battle of Festubert]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Festubert) [Battle of Loos]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Loos) [Sepoy]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sepoy) [ਸਿੱਖ (Sikh)]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikh) [Rajput]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajput)