A strip of murdered nature [WWI].

>To a French aviator, flying sublimely over it all, the Verdun front after a rainfall resembled disgustingly the ‘humid skin of a monstrous toad’. >Another flyer, James McConnell, (an American, later killed with the Lafayette Squadron) noted after passing over ‘red-roofed Verdun’ – which had ‘spots in it where no red shows and you know what has happened there’ – that abruptly there is only a brown belt, a strip of murdered nature. It seems to belong to another world. Every sign of humanity has been swept away. The woods and roads have vanished like chalk wiped from a blackboard; of the villages nothing remains but grey smears… During heavy bombardments and attacks I have seen shells falling like rain. _____________________________________ **Source:** Horne, Alistair. “Widening Horizons.” *The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916*. New York: St. Martin's, 1963. 173-74. Print. _____________________________________ **Further Reading:** [Bataille de Verdun / Schlacht um Verdun (Battle of Verdun)]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Verdun) [James Rogers McConnell]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Rogers_McConnell) [Escadrille de Lafayette (The Lafayette Escadrille)]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lafayette_Escadrille)