This war just gets better and better, doesn't it? But quite honestly theis battle sounds worse than Bastogne. All the black, heavy volcanic soil everywhere sounds dreadful. Iwo Jima and Okinawa are not places I will be visiting any time soon. All the battles just keep getting more intense and bloody. How many more lives will be wasted or tortured or murdered? I for one am ready for all the gore to be gone. Your mind can only take so much of the dead people lying on the ground right in front of you. And there is nothing you could do to help them. I don't know if I can take anymore of the smell and the ashes and the news of only hearing all the deaths. I can't sleep at night and when I finally fall asleep I have nightmares of the people who have been killed. These thoughts won't leave my mind. They are permanently in my mind and will haunt me for the rest of my life.
-Markus Engel, für die Männer, die gestorben
