Rats This amazing colorization made by Marina Amaral shows a German(Prussian landwehrmann) soldier tanning rat skins in a dugout during WWI.

Rats This amazing colorization made by Marina Amaral shows a German(Prussian landwehrmann) soldier tanning rat skins in a dugout during WWI. 


A Prussian Landwehrmann tanning rat skins in a dugout, WWI. The trench soldier of WWI had to cope with millions of rats. 

They were attracted by the human waste of war - not simply sewage waste but also the bodies of men long forgotten who had been buried in the trenches.


It's possible that he used the skins to make patches for repairs to uniforms. Rats were everywhere in the trenches, terrible tetemonies tell of how the rats feasted on the bodies of the dead. 

Many of those killed in the trenches were buried almost where they fell. If a trench subsided, or new trenches or dugouts were needed, large numbers of decomposing bodies would be found just below the surface. 

These corpses, as well as the food scraps that littered the trenches, attracted rats. One soldier described finding a group of dead bodies while on patrol: "I saw some rats running from under the dead men's greatcoats, enormous rats, fat with human flesh.

 My heart pounded as we edged towards one of the bodies. 

His helmet had rolled off. The man displayed a grimacing face, stripped of flesh; the skull bare, the eyes devoured and from the yawning mouth leapt a rat."





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