Account of 7 October 1918.
Diary of Alvin York
Context: God would never be cruel enough to create a cyclone as terrible as that Argonne battle. Only man would ever think of doing an awful thing like that. It looked like "the abomination of desolation" must look like. And all through the long night those big guns flashed and growled just like the lightning and the thunder when it storms in the mountains at home.
And, oh my, we had to pass the wounded. And some of them were on stretchers going back to the dressing stations, and some of them were lying around, moaning and twitching. And the dead were all along the road. And it was wet and cold. And it all made me think of the Bible and the story of the Anti-Christ and Armageddon.
And I'm telling you the little log cabin in Wolf Valley in old Tennessee seemed a long long way off.
“Great God! this is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority.”
Journal, 17 January 1912 http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/museum/diaries/scottslastexpedition/page/7/, quoted in Scott's Last Expedition (1913) vol.1, ch.18
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Robert Falcon Scott 8
Royal Navy officer and explorer 1868–1912Related quotes
The Inferno (1917), Ch. XVI
Context: I come back as I always do to the greatness of mankind's curse, and I repeat it with the monotony of those who are always right — oh, without God, without a harbour, without enough rags to cover us, all we have, standing erect on the land of the dead, is the rebellion of our smile, the rebellion of being gay when darkness envelops us. We are divinely alone, the heavens have fallen on our heads.
Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 157
“The vision of the gods without the power of the gods. What a terrible gift.A glorious gift.”
Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (1996)