A Leak In The Safe

Marsden Hartley,  1915.

Kemper Art Museum

Over the ruins, as over all the most dangerous parts of the terrain, lay a heavy smell of death, because the fire was so intense that no one could bother with the corpses. You really did have to run for your life in these places, and when I caught the smell of it as I ran, I was hardly surprised — it belonged there. Moreover, this heavy sweetish atmosphere was not merely disgusting; it also, along with the piercing fogs of gunpowder, brought about an almost visionary excitement, that is otherwise produced only by the extreme nearness of death.

from Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger