I’m blind, sir. [WWI]

>Edwin Vaughan, a wartime officer of the 1st/8th Warwickshire Regiment, describes the effort of his unit to get forward: >>Up the road we staggered, shells bursting around us. A man stopped dead in front of me, and exasperated I cursed him and butted him with my knee. Very gently he said, “I’m blind, Sir,” and turned to show me his eyes and nose torn away by a piece of shell. >”Oh God! I’m sorry, sonny,” I said. “keep going on the hard part,” and left him staggering back in his darkness. >[…] >>As we all closed in, the Boche [**German**] garrison ran out with their hands up… we sent the 16 prisoners back across the open but they had only gone a hundred yards when a German machine gun mowed them down. >Inside the pillbox Vaughan found a wounded German officer “who greeted me cheerily. ‘Where are you hit?’ I asked. ‘In the back near the spine. Could you shift my gas helmet from under me?’ I cut away the satchel and dragged it out; then he asked for a cigarette. Dunham produced one and he put it between his lips; I struck a match and held it across, but the cigarette had fallen on to his chest and he was dead.” __________________________ **Source:** Keegan, John. "The Breaking of Armies." *The First World War*. New York: A. Knopf :, 1999. 363. Print.