yarrr, ye scurvy boy-king, halt ye whinin'

They say that Ypres must fall now. One can see it burning - not without a pang for the beautiful city. Langemarck is a heap of rubbish, and all rubbish heaps look alike; there is no sense in describing one. All that remains of the church is the doorway with the date '1620'...

from 'A German view of trench fighting: excerpts from the diary of Rudolf Binding'

In 1918, Marcel Proust recalled the cathedrals north of Paris he had visited before the war: 'I admire and weep more for the soldiers than for the churches...' ...After the war, the cathedrals could be rebuilt, but what remained of the dead beyond the dual injunction, repeated ad infinitum, never to forget and never to allow such a catastrophe to happen again?

from 'Collective Mourning' - Understanding the Great War by Audoin-Rouzeau and Becker