Best 7 quotes of Paul T. Dean on MyQuotes

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.

Newspaper writers and politicians treated the pilots as “knights” of the war. They flew fast and dangerous maneuvers in order to defend critical artillery observation balloons. They battled other pilots either one-on-one or in squadrons, fought like heroes, and died in droves. France alone produced at least 68,000 aircraft, of which 52,000 were lost in battle. The planes reached speeds of over 100 mph and fired machine guns, pistols, or rockets at each other. The winners sped away; the losers spiraled to the earth

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.

Rats, the only creatures that seemed to flourish in the trenches, were quite brave and were often a foot long (not including the tail), the size of a small cat. They grew fat on the corpses in No Man’s Land and were known to bite sleeping soldiers’ faces and gather around the eating areas. The French left the rats alone. Like a canary in a coal mine, the rats were a warning that gas shells had been fired. At the slightest whiff of gas, the large rats flipped feet up, dead. The Americans hated them too much to leave them alone. They bludgeoned the rats with shovels and rifle butts or shot them with their side arms.

The column swung into single file, with space between companies and platoons. Marching until 3:00 a.m., they stopped in a small forest, put their heavy packs on the ground, and unrolled their packs. The woods were thick. In the blackness, Roy could only see a few feet in front of him in the dark, and there wasn’t any acceptable cover. He had just put his pack down, when it started. A distant set of krumps went off somewhere in the distance and, moments later, the screaming shells descended, men yelled, and wood shrapnel flew from exploding trees. Roy hit the deck, grabbed his helmet, and held the fear back behind his clenched teeth. In the flash of the exploding shells, he saw his comrades and friends lying still, small, some crouched behind trees, some cursing, all helpless. Bigger shells came, shaking the landscape like a freight train speeding past a rickety station. Everything shook with diabolical red flashes and deafening roars. It went on and on, hour after hour.

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.

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.