Henry Williamson

"Men, single and in couples, shuffling past them, answering no questions. Tin hats on back of heads, and no tin hats, tin hats with splinter-ragged sandbag-coverings; men without rifles, haggard, bloodshot-eyed, slouching past in loose file, slouching on anywhere, anyhow, staggering under rifles and equipment, some with jaws sagging, puttees coiled mud-balled around ankles, feet in shapeless mud boots, swelled beyond feeling, men slouching on beyond fatigue and hope, on and on and on. GS waggons with loads of sleeping bodies. Stretcher-bearers plodding desperate-faced. Men slavering and rolling their bare-teethed heads, slobbering and blowing, blasting brightness behind their eye-balls, supported by listless cripples."

"With the dried blood stiff on my temples I climbed the hill, cursing the satanic way of men, yet knowing myself vile, for they had not known what they were doing, but I betrayed an innocent; and the tears— weak, whiskey tears— would not wash from my brow the blood of a little brother."