plan, look forward, build up life and character for themselves.
This unnatural and irresponsible existence, moreover, was to be spent among scenes of appalling savagery and the worst primitive passions.
"The place was rotten with dead; green clumsy legs
High-booted, sprawled and grovelled along the saps;
And trunks, face downward, in the sucking mud,
Wallowed like trodden sand-bags loosely filled;
And naked sodden buttocks, mats of hair,
Bulged, clotted heads slept in the plastering slime."
Only devils can serve the Devil of War; and the supreme sacrifice our sons made for us was the sacrifice of their humanity.
To "do their bit," they put away themselves.