Letter to my family

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LETTER TO MY FAMILY

        Dear mother and father and all I now take the pleasure in riteing you a few lines explaining what a typical day is like on the front line so I can express my feelings.

        To begin with, I will introduce you by writing our daily routine. In one month, each soldier spents four days in the front line, four days in the support line to pick up more rations and eight days "resting". These periods of "rest" are often taken up with army tasks such as fetching and carrying wood, wire and water to keep the trenches in good order, digging, filling the sandbags, replacing duckboards, strengthening the barbed wire defences or carrying ammunition. When we are holding front-line positions we have to be continually alert to the possibility of enemy attack. This situation is very frustrating for the soldiers who are alive because you feel very nervous since the uncertainty of disowning your destiny is very big. Wether you will survive or die that day, is something only God knows.

However, the long periods of inactivity in the appalling trench conditions are also hard to endure. Each day starts with "stand to", half an hour before dawn, when all men waits with rifles at the ready. After dawn, one sentry per platoon remained on the fire step. The others would go to the dugout to receive their daily rations. Last week I was on sentry duty and the tension of standing still for several hours without losing concentration for a moment is exhausting.  Unfortunately, trench activity increases at night within more than 10 %. This way of living is very bad for my healh. It can deteriorate my physical apperance and can cause serious psychological damages after a specific period of time. Small-patrols are sent out into no-man´s-land under the cover of darkness. I have gone a few times and the main target is to discover details about the enemy resources and strengh. Sometimes, full-scale trench raids are mounted to capture prisioners and gather information about enemy plans. To guard against  such night-time activities, we´ve decided to keep men on sentry duty at night and regularly lit up the night sky with star shells to reveal any trace of troop movements in no-man´s land. By day this task is often done by the newly formed air forces. We use them to flew observation patrols over enemy lines in order to take thousands of aerial photograhs showing enemy positions by creating detailed maps. They act as the eyes of the army.

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The inhumane conditions in trenches are often made worse by bad weather. Despite the use of dackboards, heavy shelling coupled with rain or snow make the trenches muddy and waterlogged. It´s horrible! I can´t put up with it. The trenches are infected with lice and gigantic rats which have grown fat through feeding on the dead bodies in no man´s land and diseases like the "trenchfoot" spreads rapidly among the soldiers. It´s very easily transmitted but luckily I´ve yet not been affected by its consequences. To add to the general discomfort, army food is monotous- nothing like your cooking ...

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