This article was originally published by the Daily Mail:
The truth hit home for the German soldier with all the impact of one of the millions of artillery shells buzzing through the air at the Battle of Verdun during World War I.
He was digging a trench when his pickaxe became entangled in a bundle of slime. On the end were human entrails — all that was left of a dead man buried there by a previous bombardment.
‘Until then, I had seen the dead without really seeing them, like figures in a waxworks. But now the words closed upon my brain like a vice. A dead man. They choked my throat and chilled my heart.
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