The living and the dead
The strange juxtaposition of the 'well spread table' of British officers and 'Tommies without heads' is described by Lance Corporal Ramage in a snapshot-in-time recorded in his diary of 26 May 1915:
'A peep into a shuttered ground window discloses officers round a well spread table — stumbled along a railway cutting being shelled occasionally — passed dug outs and corpses of two British Tommies without heads — waterproof sheets where heads should have been — one was still holding his rifle slung over his shoulder — these gallant chaps had met a ghastly death while serving their country in this wicked salient before we had arrived there.'
