The stench of the dead bodies now is awful as they have been exposed to the sun for several days, many have swollen and burst. The trench is full of swarms of rats. I can't sleep in my dugout, as it is over-run with rats. Pullman slept here one morning and woke up to find one sitting on his face. I can't face that, so I share Newbery's dug-out. If you leave your food the rats grab it. They are fearless; sometimes we shoot them. But if the sergeant catches us we are put on a charge for wasting ammunition. The rats can reproduce almost a thousand times in a year so the trenches literally get swarmed with them. Life in the trenches is hell on earth, there are lice as well as rats, trench foot where the foot swells up and gets too big for the boot, trench mouth where the gums rot and you lose your teeth and of course dead bodies everywhere.
The Germans can now throw a bomb 200 lbs in weight and 5ft long a distance of 1000 yards, it explodes like a mine and kills a vast number of people. They send several over every day and kill a significant number of men. I knew one of the four men of our Battalion who was killed from one of those bombs; he was the last of five brothers all of whom have been killed in the war.
The food is appalling as well. The biscuits are so hard that you have got to put them on a firm surface and smash them with a stone or something. I once held a biscuit in my hand and hit the sharp corner of a brick wall and only hurt my hand. Sometimes we soak the smashed fragments in water for several days. Then we heat and drain, pour condensed milk over a dishful of the biscuits and get them down our throats. In training the food was just about eatable but here in France we are starving. All we eat on is tea and those rock hard biscuits. If we get meat once a week we are very lucky, but imagine trying to eat standing in a trench full of water with the smell of dead bodies nearby.
Trench foot is a condition which came about not too long ago, only about three months ago I think. Your feet swell to two or three times their normal size and go completely dead. I’ve seen men stick bayonets into them and not feel a thing. If you are fortunate enough not to lose your feet and the swelling begins to go down. It is then that the intolerable, indescribable agony begins. I have heard men cry and even scream with the pain and many had to have their feet and legs amputated. I have seen this happen many times but luckily it hasn’t happened to me, yet. After the cause of this condition was found out to be that because the feet were too wet and never dry so the skin became soggy and started to swell up, so part of the trench was reserved for men to go two at a time, at least once a day, and rub each other's feet with grease.
Yours Sincerely
Mansoor Khan