Zweibund — the Dual Alliance — Germany and Austria-Hungary united, were the core of the Central Powers, and here join hands. The bars of Germany's flag border the top left, and those of the Habsburg Austrian Empire and ruling house the bottom right.
Schulter an SchulterUntrennbar vereintin Freud und in Leid!'Shoulder to shoulderInseparably united in joy and in sorrow!
"23 December: 'Mud and filth are getting the better of us. This morning at three o'clock an enormous deposit came down at the entrance to my dugout. I had to employ three men, who were barely able to bale the water that poured like a freshet into my dugout. Our trench is drowning, the morass is now up to our navels, it's desperate. On the right edge of our frontage, another corpse has begun to appear, so far just the legs.'"
Sebastian Jünger quoting his diary for December 23, 1915. Western front troops and commanders had not anticipated a stationary front, and the dead were sometimes buried where they fell, sometimes with little earth upon them, sometimes incorporated into trenches and ramparts. Heavy rains and shelling could unearth the dead of the prior 16 months.
Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger, page 58, copyright © 1920, 1961, Translation © Michael Hoffman, 2003, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 2003
1915-12-23, 1915, December, corpse, rain
