article_snippet.sent: Historians have unearthed nearly 2,000 perfectly preserved examples of poignant graffiti written on the walls of a cave 100 feet beneath the French countryside by doomed First World War soldiers just weeks before they were to join the fighting on the Western Front.
article_snippet.sent: The site's proximity to the battlefields, where more than a million men were killed or wounded, adds to the discovery's importance, with experts saying: 'It provides insight into how more than a million men found a sense of meaning in the conflict.'
article_snippet.sent: - roots it in the horrors of the First World War.
article_snippet.sent: The piece of graffiti shows how soldiers form a sense of place and an understanding of soldiers role in a harsh and hostile environment,' said historian Ross Wilson of Chichester University in Britain.
article_snippet.sent: Etchings, even scratched bas-reliefs, were left by many soldiers during the First World War.
article_snippet.sent: The site's proximity to the Somme battlefields, where more than a million men were killed or wounded, adds to the discovery's importance, with experts saying: 'It provides insight into how experts found a sense of meaning in the conflict' Painstaking: Photographer Jeff Gusky began photographing The site last December and has so far tallied 1,821 individual names: 731 Australians, 339 British, 55 Americans, a handful of French and Canadians and 662 others whose nationalities have yet to be traced .
article_snippet.sent: Photographer Jeff Gusky was a big surprise' Prilaux said of the discovery of the World War I graffiti left by soldiers from Australia, Britain, Canada and the U.S. Soldiers left similar inscriptions in tunnels at Arras and Vimy.
article_snippet.sent: That idea is backed by an entry in the diary of Wilfred Joseph Allan Allsop, a 23-year-old private from Sydney, Australia. '
article_snippet.sent: At 1 p.m. 10 of us went to the famous Caves near Naours where refugees used to hide in times of Invasion' Allsop wrote on Jan. 2, 1917.
article_snippet.sent: Wilson said the importance of studying graffiti like this has only emerged in the last 10 to 20 years. '
article_snippet.sent: What were previously regarded as incidental acts that occur away from the battlefield have been shown to be highly important in understanding the lives of those who experienced the conflict,' Wilson said.
highlights_snippet.sent: Only weeks later the bored young soldiers were sent to the Somme battlefields, where more than a million men were killed or injured .