I looked to my left and I see Charlie, a lad from my street. He looks very pale and nervous. Reaching over, pat him on the back and he smiles at me. I can see that he must be feeling just the same emotions. Wonder if I should ask him how he feels, but that would be stupid; he must be experiencing what I am experiencing.
Nearly 7:00am. I glance around: some men are eating, others playing cards. Most are just sitting in silence staring in front of them. There is a huge rat, gnawing at a decaying body further up the trench and I feel the bile rising in my throat as I look at it and imagine that body is mine. There is no way of burying all the dead, the British and the Germans, so they simply rot where they fall and the sun and the rain and the rats and the maggots take away all strip them of human dignity consigning them to a bone- scattered end on a foreign field forever.
When we go over the top, what will it be like? Supposing I'm not killed but horribly wounded, lose both legs, both arms, finish in a wheel chair. What could but wait for death? Supposing I'm gassed, blinded or horribly disfigured like that man I saw who had his jaw cut almost in half by a sabre.
Things have changed a lot since that Christmas day when we had a kind of truce and played football. They're just like us, fighting for ours. I wonder if German women give out white feathers if they think a man is a coward too afraid to go to war.
One minute to go......
“Guns at the ready” bellows the sergeant. I can hear my heart pounding. I feel so cold. Ready, ready, the barbed wire is cut everywhere and and this is going to be easy, the officers have told us. The officers have told us that all the Germans have left their trenches and run away. It must be true; they would not tell us any lies....
Now! Up and over the top and running towards the German lines. All the equipment is so heavy. I can't go any faster and the wire is there! Like a great, black wall of death in front of us and the German machine guns are firing at us. Men are falling everywhere around me, screaming and writhing in anguish as they're caught on the wire like flies stuck on the web of a malevolent spider.
I see Charlie in front of me and he falls face downwards on the earth and is still. Tears are running down my face and, suddenly, I begin to feel heavy and there is a deafening silence. The ground is coming up to me, finding it hard to breathe. The grip on my rifle is beginning to loosen and my sight starts to blur. There seems to be a swirling mist coming over the battlefield on this beautiful day. There is a blood everywhere: blood of soldiers; blood of bitterness; blood of remorse; blood of blood of …..