A feature by Eugene Ostashevsky

Every historian or archaeologist selects and arranges the fragments they use to serve a purpose. To describe the sequence of assaults that eventually took the Passchendaele Ridge. To analyze the assumptions, intel, and pressures that drive commanders in theatre to make the decisions they did. To illustrate, at the level of the individual soldier, the unimaginable horrors and tedium they faced on a daily basis. I guess I arranged my fragments for a different purpose—as a means, not an end. I began with texts from two kinds of manuals, military and spiritual. I trusted that if they seemed connected, and I had been deeply interested in them for decades, something would appear through and in language. Maybe I would find a way in to ground, and into a time, that I could not see.