...only the black rain out of the bruised and swollen clouds...is fit atmosphere in such a land. The rain drives on, the stinking mud becomes more evilly yellow, the shell-holes fill up with green-white water, the roads and tracks are covered in inches of slime, the black drying trees ooze and sweat and the shells never cease...they plunge into the grave which is this land...It is unspeakable, godless, hopeless.
Paul Nash, in a letter to his wife November 16, 1917. From Outline: An Autobiography and Other Writings