For all the gallantry and self-sacrifice of the cuistots, hunger and thirst became regular features at Verdun, adding to the sum of misery to be endured there. Second Lieutenant Campana, whom we have seen earlier on the Mort Homme, recalls dispatching a ration party of eight men one night in March. The following morning five came back – without rations. That night another eight set out. None returned. The next time some hundred men from all companies set forth, but were literally massacred by violent gunfire.
After three days without food, Campana’s men were reduced to scavenging any remnants they could find upon the bodies lying near their position. Many had been decomposing for several weeks. The experience was more the rule than the exception; so too, as winter sufferings gave way to a torrid summer, was this spectacle:
I saw a man drinking avidly from a green scum-covered marsh, where lay, his black face downward in the water, a dead man lying on his stomach and swollen as if he had not stopped filling himself with water for days…
Source:
Horne, Alistair. “Widening Horizons.” The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916. New York: St. Martin's, 1963. 182-83. Print.
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