6 Quotes by Paul T. Dean

One of the surprising realities about the Western Front was that intense action and peril were surrounded by long periods of having very little to do.

. Leaving the city behind, they entered the wasted countryside. Large shell holes, jagged stumps of full-grown trees, and gas residue clinging to puddles all pointed to the power of modern warfare. No living thing remained. The odor of rotting human corpses filled what was left of the woods: the dead wearing the uniforms of France, Germany, and the US.

While they continued to march toward the sounds of the guns, Roy noticed fear behind the eyes of some of his fellow soldiers. Death and destruction surrounded them. Corpses in the ditches, wounded on stretchers, shell holes were everywhere. They hadn’t even reached the front lines yet.

When Roy’s 32nd Division arrived in France, the Great War had been grinding on for over three years. Though called the “War to End All Wars,” it was the “War that Went on Forever” to those in it. The lines were static, the casualties horrendous, and hope for any breakthrough was fleeting.

In addition to the American officers, walking around the bustling camp were French and British officers who lectured the wide-eyed teenagers about the conditions in the trenches on the Western Front. The foreign officers told stories of the terrible battles of Ypres, the Somme, and Verdun. Roy listened with awe and foreboding to the danger from unseen enemies firing shell after shell, the muddy lines of trenches, the heroic acts of men disregarding their own safety to rescue wounded comrades.

America didn’t start the war, didn’t appreciate unrestricted submarine warfare, and had gradually come to see the German Empire as an international bully.