Eventually I nodded off for little over an hour only to be woken for breakfast at around 6 am. This consisted of not a lot. We had a few slices of bread and a glass of water that was extremely dirty. The bread was hard and had a speck of mould on it. However the day just got worse. At around 8 am we were ordered to patrol no-mans land to try and find ammunition and any water or weapons out there. This was very scary as the Germans were no much more than a mile away. Luckily for us there was this dense fog that meant we could do the searches quickly and without worry that we may be seen. We found many bottles of water and a few rounds of ammunition for our machine guns. However when we concluded the search and making our way back to the trench, a gun was fired and one of our men was shot straight in the back of the dead. I heard a bang followed by a scream. I turned round ad saw one of my friends writhing in agony on the ground. I had to shoot him to put him out of his pain knowing he had no chances of survival. I ran back to the trench just scrambling in when a bullet flew over my head like a bird hovering in the air. I heard machine guns firing turning round slowly, crouched I looked up saw men dropping like flies. This confirmed my fears that people really do die and a lot of people not just one or two. I sat and burst into tears at the fact that I just had to shoot my own friend like he was a German.
That was the hardest and most gut-wrenching thing I have ever had to do in my life.. When I sat and thought about what I had done, it was hard I didn’t understand why I had volunteered, I wish there was some way I could have turned back the time. I was trying to hold back the tears having had to shoot my friend. I tried to convince myself that it was the right thing to do yet it wasn’t working. I felt so depressed at that time and with only being there a matter of days I had nobody to explain what I was feeling.
Around one hour later we attacked we through shells and went over the top to try and charge the German trenches. However they had been waiting for us to retaliate for days and this was not what we had planned. I was told to stay near the trench and man the machine gun. Unfortunately I was inexperienced and not very good. From what I have been told they had around 15 machine guns in a row blasting through our men as they tried to stay alive. We lost 300 put of 500 men in our regiment on that day. It was hard none of us knew what to do. We all just sat there half expecting another attack and thinking how we lost so many of our men.
That night was grim. The rain hammered down and the rats came out. It was so wet, we couldn’t light our pipes at all. They were our only comforts in the war and we couldn’t even have them. The wind was howling blowing fresh air into our depressed faces. This was one of the lowest days in my life and I have only been here 3 days. I was told that this could get worse but that night was unbearable. It was a freezing cold night. It was like we were in the Antarctic. We all huddled up to try and keep warm but the trench was flooded at the bottom. The mud was falling on our faces as the walls were crumbling. I don’t think any of us got any sleep that night. We sat back unable to get a wink of sleep and sang a few songs. That cheered me up. I also made a new friend, he goes by the name of Paul and he’s from London. He looked after me and told me the stories of his friends being blown to pieces by German bombs and how he got the cut on his face. He said the worst thing about the attacks was not the shells landing in the trenches, as that rarely occurred, but the shrapnel piercing your skin like a knife through butter. Many men died because of shrapnel as it caused infection and disease.
This morning I woke fresh and with a bit of optimism. Two hundred men arrived to replace our dead colleagues. They reminded me of me when I came just 3 days ago. They came with clean uniform and shiny boots completely oblivious as to what may happen. I knew these kids had either lied about there age or had been rushed through training. They couldn’t do anything and had faces like that of a baby. It made me upset and angry that the Commanders at home would be prepared to send youngsters who aren’t prepared at all to die.
We are expecting another onslaught today to get us whilst we are down, to rub salt in the wound as some may say. We are stood introducing ourselves to the new people and everything is quiet except for one bird making an annoying tweeting noise. One of the newcomers sitting down, keeping himself to himself shoots the bird with his rifle. We all turn around sharply and with a look and feeling of anger. He is unaware of the danger he has put ourselves in. I shoot to him “You stupid fool, you have no idea of what you have just done!” Again it goes quiet, however we hear somebody shouting in the distance. I look up and see this shell flying in the air. It looks the size of a peanut at this stage, however it is coming closer and closer and lands roughly 20 metres away from us. Luckily we all ducked and took cover. Unfortunately our fears are confirmed. I look up and see a swarm of German soldiers. They look like a stampede of elephants. I’m thinking to myself that us older ones have to take charge, we set up machine guns rapidly and fire. Some drop dead in a flash. However they fire with deadly accuracy.
