It’s 1918 and you’re a German soldier on the Western Front. In a brief moment of repose, you slip your hand into your pocket and pull out a cigarette case. You open it up, slide one out and light it, closing your eyes as you put it to your mouth. You pay close attention to the feeling of smoke streaming into your lungs as you take the first drag. You’re alive. You’ve made it this far. Your body aches with exhaustion and your skin is decorated with bruises, cuts and scars, but no matter, because your feet still tread the land of the living, and the smoke dancing in your lungs is a sacred reminder of that fact.
You exhale and watch the smoke billow out into the night sky, looking upon the stars with a heart full of hope as you think of home and loved ones. You wonder what they’re doing right now. Are they asleep? Do their stomachs rumble as fiercely as yours? Never mind, you’ll be home soon. Surely this hell cannot continue much longer, after all. Either way, you’ll continue to fight for as long as necessary, for as long as your body continues to obey you. Even if it means being plagued by the ghosts of fallen comrades and having terrified eyes haunting your dreams, you’ll do it. For friends, family and the fatherland, there are no demons you won’t tackle.
However, you and your comrades never make it home. The most simple things; a meal, a hug… you’ll never share these with the people you love ever again.
You weren’t to know it, but you were within mere months of fulfilling your dream when French artillery shells plummeted to the earth and blasted your shelter apart, burying you and twenty others alive.
Ninety-four years later, archaeologists would uncover their perfectly preserved bodies as well as various other odds and ends during a dig at the Alsatian town of Carspach:
Like those at Pompeii, the men were discovered in the positions they were in at the moment of impact — some were sitting upright on a bench, one was lying in bed and another was in the foetal position, having been thrown down a flight of stairs. Amongst the odds and ends were a newspaper:
…a bottle and bell:
and a rifle and cup:
The team managed to retrieve thirteen of the men’s bodies, but the rest had to be left under their mountain of mud, as it was too dangerous to attempt recovery.
The perfect preservation of a scene from 1918 is incredibly haunting, as it makes the reality of the tragedy that much more lucid.
source: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-frightening-thing-thats-ever-been-discovered-by-archaeologists
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