We are the Western Front: An infantryman in and behind the German trenches

Willy Hacker noted in his diary during his first days at the Western Front, the result of the first attack he lived through; a French soldier lay dying in front of the German trench:
"Amelie, est - tu la?"
"In just a few hours he will be looking upon Amelie from above.
All of this is so strange and unspeakable. It is impossible to comprehend that surrounded by nature, death is lurking in myriad forms."
That sense of the incomprehensible slaughter that he had been shoved into never left infantr...