You don't look, you see. You don't hear, you listen. You taste the top of your mouth. Your nose is filled with fumes and death. But the veneer of civilization has dropped away.
The senses are employed differently on the battlefield. There is no point in having a sense of smell because it is completely taken over by a smell of rotting flesh, and death. Soldiers now start to associate the smell of fumes with the smell of death. Although they can still utilize their senses, and act on them accordingly, civilization has changed forever. There is no longer a sense that people are genteel, that the world is a decent place, because on the front line the soldiers see differently. The veneer of civilization enabled one's senses to only see, hear and smell that which was pleasant. Without it, only that which is unpleasant is left.
Arriving in the trenches was like an adventure. Like camping, but with a little danger to make it sporting.
The description that the soldier gives of his arrival at the trenches explains in many ways how the dangers of what the men were to be facing were downplayed by the leadership of the time. Most of the men in uniform were barely old enough to go to war, and it was not so long ago that they were having similar camping-come-war games adventures themselves. What they found was anything but a game, a sport or an adventure. In the space of a few seconds, German artillery fire drove them onto their last nerves, changed them psychologically in the blink of an eye and drove many almost insane because of the daily constant threat of death. This was really never mentioned by their leaders, and it was barely acknowledged after the war either, as men who had suffered untold mental anguish, and found it difficult to fit back into a peace time society, were viewed with almost contempt, as if their mental anguish was a character flaw or an act of cowardice.
