Why was the bloodiest, most horrible day in English history a joy to an eight-year-old boy on the streets of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in the summer of 1916?

July 1 that year was the first day of the Battle of the Somme in northeastern France. Between sunrise and sunset the armies of England suffered a shocking, unbelievable sixty thousand casualties. In slow and vulnerable lines, under heavy packs, the bravest and brightest youths ever assembled in that green island walked into barbed wire and massed machine guns, under full observation even before they left their own trenches. Every man was a volunteer. They walked straight. They lay dead in straight rows.

That summer I was selling the noon edition of the Cedar Rapids Gazette on 3rd Avenue, downtown. In those days the paper would publish an "Extra" if there was some great event, bringing it out between regular editions. I bought them for one penny and sold them for two, a fine capitalist rate of profit. Extra papers meant extra pennies. I would howl out the headlines, "BIGGEST BATTLE IN FRANCE, ENGLISH AND GERMANS! THOUSANDS DEAD! READ ALL ABOUT IT!" My voice must have been quavering, uncertain, shrill, but I sold those Extras. My pocket became heavy with little copper pieces because the blasted fields of French farms became heavy with the bodies of England's most loyal, most courageous young men. Every one a volunteer, including the Newfoundlanders, so far from their own loved island.