Best Defense
Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

Soldier poets of the Great War (VI): Encountering corpses in no-man’s land

Arthur Graeme West leads a small night patrol that encounters …half a dozen men All blown to bits, an archipelago Of corrupt fragments, vexing to us three. Even more horribly, Edgell Rickword grows comfortable with a corpse lying out in front of his position, and reads aloud to him — until the body rot grows ...

By , a former contributing editor to Foreign Policy.
Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia

Arthur Graeme West leads a small night patrol that encounters

Arthur Graeme West leads a small night patrol that encounters

…half a dozen men

All blown to bits, an archipelago

Of corrupt fragments, vexing to us three.

Even more horribly, Edgell Rickword grows comfortable with a corpse lying out in front of his position, and reads aloud to him — until the body rot grows too repulsive:

He stank so badly, though we were great chums

I had to leave him; then rats ate his thumbs.

Thomas E. Ricks is a former contributing editor to Foreign Policy. Twitter: @tomricks1

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