The exhilaration of battle was agreeable to him, but the sight of the dead, with their clay faces, blank eyes, and stiff bodies, which, when not unnaturally shrunken, were unnaturally swollen, had always intolerably affected him. He felt toward them a kind of reasonless antipathy which was something more than the physical and spiritual repugnance common to us all. Doubtless this feeling was due to his unusually acute sensibilities - his keen sense of the beautiful, which these hideous things outraged. Whatever may have been the cause, he could not look upon a dead body without a loathing which had in it an element of reselltment. What others have respected as the dignity of death had to him no existence - was altogether unthinkable. Death was a thing to be hated. It was not picturesque, it had no tender and solemn side - a dismal thing, hideous in all its manifestations and suggestions. Lieutenant Byring was a braver man than anybody knew, for nobody knew his horror of that which he was ever ready to encounter. ("A Tough Tussle") .Ambrose Bierce
About This Quote
In this quote, Byring is describing his feelings about the dead bodies he saw in the war. He felt a repugnance for them that was not only physical, but spiritual as well. Byring found the dead bodies to be horrifying in every sense of the word. His hatred of death was a unique thing, and many people thought that it was crazy.
However, when you have been wounded in battle so many times, you learn to live with the idea of death. It becomes a part of your life and it doesn’t frighten or scare you anymore. And so you can come back from the field of battle and feel no remorse for your actions or how they affect others.
Source: Ghost Stories
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