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 ...
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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