"You offer yourself to be slain. This is the essence of being a soldier. By becoming soldiers, men agree to die when we tell them to." (Gwynne Dyer)

The most important point to be made about the male body during the First World War is that it was "intended to be mutilated."
Joanna Bourke in Dismembering the Male

Limbless British Veterans after the First World War (Roehampton Military Hospital)