 Fighting back and forth over the same corpse-strewn trenches for hours on end, using single shot muskets, the contending troops were periodically reduced to hand-to-hand combat reminiscent of battles fought during ancient times.Bodies piled up four and five high, and soldiers were forced to pause from time to time and throw corpses over the parapet since they formed an obstacle in the way of the fighting.Dead and wounded men were shot so many times that many of them simply fell apart into unrecognizable heaps of flesh.