Today the Somme is a peaceful but sullen place, unforgetting and unforgiving. The people, who work largely at raising vegetables and grains, are “correct” but not friendly. To wander now over the fields destined to extrude their rusty metal fragments for centuries is to appreciate in the most intimate way the permanent reverberations of July, 1916. When the air is damp you can smell rusted iron everywhere, even though you only see wheat and barley.

Paul Fussell (1924-2012) American cultural and literary historian, author, academic

The Great War and Modern Memory, ch. 2 “The Troglodyte World” (1975)
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