The dead were in the distorted positions that indicated how the end had come for them. Those killed in machine-gun pits were smashed to bits, the effect of hand grenades and bombs which American advance guards had tossed in among them after working round their flanks and getting in behind them.
Occasionally one saw German snipers or machine gunners sprawled flat on the ground at the foot of a tree after they had been shot out of their camouflaged positions among its foliage. The most sickening sights were where bodies of the enemy had attempted to make stands in ditches or beside sunken roads and had been trapped by American enfilade machine gun fire. The deadly automatic rifles had ripped through whole lines of Germans, and investigation frequently showed that every man's body was pierced by seven or eight bullets and that frequently the same bullet passed through three or four men.
Corpses looked like heaps of rags or discarded uniforms and equipment, so closely did they overlap one another. No trace of nervousness. But, despite all, the Americans marched forward, stopped three or four times a day for meals, and then made camp, and slept at night amid the horrible surroundings without ever doing more than showing a surprising preliminary interest in the matter. If they saw a corpse in khaki they looked it over closely to see if they knew who it was. Only I occasionally did they have time to inter it; that was left to the burying parties that followed them up. As they walked through woods and fields to get water or supplies, they implanted rifles, bayonets down, in the  Ground to mark the spot of every dead American they discovered. 