Daniel Desmond Sheehan

“ RAVAGES OF WAR. I have got my company to the cross roads where we rendezvous before we enter the trenches, and, being there well before our time, we rest for a few minutes while waiting for our guides to comes up. We find in a few seconds that we are right in the midst of a British battery of artillery at work. We see how deftly their guns are handled, in what a workman-like way our gunners go about their duties, how speedily one shell is made to follow another, and how admirably protected from aeroplane observation are the guns and the men who work them. ”

“ DEVASTATION. You have to see this village as it now is – broken and in ruins, with not a roof intact in any street or byway, with the marks of shot and shell and destruction and devastation everywhere, with church and chateau alike stripped of their beauty and fair proportions – to understand what the ravages of war mean, how pitiless it is, how it defaces and destroys the patient labour of generations of men, the industry of once happy communities, and how it roots out and scatters family bliss and social affection and all the sanctities and tenderness of civilised existence. ”

“ There is now a British cemetery in the centre of it, filled with the graves of many a hero, where, in years to come, pilgrims from the shores of England, Ireland, and Scotland will come to honour those who died that their country may be free.
Our guide bids us to push along – the sooner we get into the communication trench the better. Out in the open we constitute a better mark for the artillery of the enemy, and so at last we are in the trenches and in the war. ”