Just let us be dead. [WWI]

>Sergeant Dubrulle, the Jesuit priest, was revolted above all by the hideous indignities he had seen TNT perpetrate upon the bodies God had created. After one terrible shelling early in the battle when human entrails were to be seen dangling in the branches of a tree and a ‘torso, without head, without arms, without legs, stuck to the trunk of a tree, flattened and opened,’ Dubrulle recalls ‘how I implored God to put an end to these indignities. Never have I prayed with so much heart.’ >But, as day after day, month after month, such entreaties remained unanswered, a growing agnosticism appears in the letters from the men at Verdun. >Later, on the Somme, even Dubrulle is found expressing singularly un-Catholic sentiments: >>Having despaired of living amid such horror, we begged God not to have us killed – the transition is too atrocious – but just to let us be dead. We had but one desire; the end! _____________________________ **Source:** Horne, Alistair. “Widening Horizons.” *The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916*. New York: St. Martin's, 1963. 186. Print. ______________________________ **Further Reading:** [Bataille de Verdun / Schlacht um Verdun (Battle of Verdun)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Verdun) [Agnosticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism) [Bataille de la Somme / Schlacht an der Somme (Battle of the Somme) / Somme Offensive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Somme)