The scene was nothing but mud, shellfire, flooded craters with their silent, pathetic, rotting occupants, knocked out tanks and Amtraks, and discarded equipment, utter desolation.
In the First World War, the sheer volume of casualties, wounds infected because of trench mud in the pre-Penicillin era and the traumatic effect of shellfire on some soldiers were all immense challenges.
Railton would spend his nights conducting funeral services over the remains of soldiers ripped apart by shellfire, often burying them on the spot, sometimes en masse in the giant craters the shells had left behind.