[rlmorel]

To me, that was the striking thing about that graph...you don’t even NEED to read about it to understand at a gut level EXACTLY how horrible that must have been, how many frozen bodies, people dying of wounds in the snow, the trails of blood, the privation in the elements, the starvation, the hopelessness and the humiliation...

422,000 going in and 10,000 coming out. Just imagine that.

Line up all those 422,000 men, count off 1 to 42 and begin at one again, then have all the men with the number one assigned step forward, and say “All the rest of you are going to be sentenced to a horrible freezing death, or a gunshot or bayonet death if you are lucky.”

Just wow.

[SMARTY]

It was horrific. I've read several actual accounts, because many of the soldiers were writing down their experiences in letters, journals, biographies, copies of orders, etc.

Unbelievably, SOME of these veterans died natural deaths in their eighties. After all their privation, wounds, etc. they died in their beds. Accounts exist from veterans in all ranks... and I have to say, some of the best are from the lower ranks. I have kept most of the books because some were so hard to find... and I re read them occasionally.