On much of the battlefield it was impossible to dig graves in the rocky ground. Bodies rotted in the heat for weeks. They bloated, darkened, and broke open like rotten fruit. Sledge’s unit found their way around the terrain by using familiar corpses as landmarks. “It was gruesome to see the stages of decay proceed from just killed, to bloated, to maggot-infested rotting, to partially exposed bones—like some biological clock marking the inexorable passage of time.”
