The toughest part of this job is getting up morning after morning half an hour before dawn, so we are on standby for dawn raids. Then, at 8am we have the usual period of ‘daily hate’ where exchange verbal abuse and gunfire. After this things always calm down. Breakfast rations usually consist of Bully beef tea, hard biscuits and bread which are nearly always stale by the time it reaches us.
The first task of the day was on sentry duty which meant I spent the whole morning cleaning out the stinking Latrines and repairing the wall of the trench which has been damaged due to the heavy rainfall. I spend most of my time here carrying out boring routine tasks the daily grind is driving me mad.
The weather here for some days has been wet and cold and the mud in some places up to the knees, hundreds of rats are thriving on scraps of food and rubbish thrown into the trenches. Some of them have grown to the size of cats feeding off the plentiful supply of rotting corpses. And at night I hear them swimming through the stagnant water and crawling over my fellow patrol members.
This afternoon the dullness truly set in, Bill was chewing a piece of grass and John was smoking. Life her is a constant wait here, sometimes for death, sometimes hopefully for peace. We use ammunition boxes for storage and sitting around on. Sometimes we pass the time by ‘chatting’ where we use our cigarette ends to burst the lice that have infested our clothes and hair, this I am proud to say is quite a skill to manage this without setting ones clothes alight. The lice run along the seams and ‘pop’ like popcorn when they are lit. The smell here is so peculiar; food cooking on wood blended with the smell of rotting corpses, stagnant water and cigarette smoke all builds up to odour that is so disgusting sometimes it makes me want to be sick.
22nd December
In the middle of the night our patrol were surprised to hear tormented cries of ‘help’ and ‘for God’s sake’ coming from all sides of us. When daylight came we crawled out of our “dug out’ and were amazed to find half a dozen Tommies badly wounded, some insane, others almost dead with starvation. One man said that If we cared to look around him in the shell holes we would find dozens more wounded or dead ‘Tommies’.These chaps wounded in defence of their country had been left to die the most awful of deaths in the half frozen mud. While hundreds of able bodied men camped within five miles of the trenches. All these chaps had failed in their attack on the ridge they were trying to take. I have seen some pretty rotten sights since I have been here, but this sickened me. We dragged the wounded soldiers from no mans land and the Huns, to their credit did not fire on the medics who carried them away on stretchers. For 250 yards between us and the opposing team there was nothing but utter desolation, not a blade of grass, or tree and ten belts of barbed wire leading up to the opposing trenches, in the mud and for the rest just one shell hole touching the other.
Gas bombs and shells are used nearly every day here, they are the most feared and deadliest weapon they are used even when there is no attack going on. It really is awful, if ever an attack is launched no-one would survive.I hear it is like drowning in a sea of death but I prefer not to think these somber thoughts and keep my spirits up,by playing cards with the lads.
25th December
Today we were all thrilled to receive a package from the ‘soldiers and sailors Christmas fund’. It really was fun opening up the packages. Mine contained; a Christmas card, a picture of Princess Mary; cigarettes and some delicious sweets. Nora and the children sent a jersey with a number of pictures, drawings and letters. I have been away from home so long I’m starting to forget what they look like. It really was quite upsetting, when I thought about how they would be spending Christmas at home in such a different way, peaceful and happy, then me, not knowing whether I am going to live from one day to the next.
