Right, while going over the top of the trench to cross no man's land and attack the enemy trench is what lights our romantic imagination, most soldiers' lives were dominated by the fear of shelling. According to a journal published by French soldiers, there's nothing more horrible in war than being shelled. It's a form of torture that the soldier can't see the end of. Suddenly, he's afraid of being buried alive. The man stays put in his hole, helplessly waiting for, hoping for, a miracle. Although soldiers then, as now, lived under conditions it's difficult to imagine, there was more than the threat of death to distress them. According to German officer Ernst Jünger, it was not danger, however extreme, that depresses the spirit of men so much as over-fatigue and wretched conditions.