Diary of a WWI Soldier

Diary of a WWI Soldier - Part 1

15th September 1915

Dear Diary,  

I have decided that I will now write a diary. This is due to the horrific conflicts of war and if anything is to happen to me (hopefully nothing will) I would like my family to know about my time in the war if my diary was to ever be found.

There has been a constant downpour of rain for the past few days and we just can’t cope with anymore. It only stopped raining either late last night or early this morning. We now have to live in about 5-10 inches of water as the ground can’t take anymore in.

Before the rain started, about four days ago, the German’s let off a gas canister. Unluckily for them, but luckily for us, the wind decided to change direction just as they let it off. Instead of us British troops being affected, harmed and possibly killed by whatever poison gas they decided to release on us, the Germans took a direct hit from it.

Yesterday I managed to shoot down, with help form my new buddy Charlie, a German troop of about twelve men. I feel sorry for taking those men’s lives as I haven’t taking many other lives apart from theirs as they would have had families like I do and they are just like me apart from their nationality. But a war is a war, and I have to do whatever I can do to keep myself safe.

The water in the trench is disgusting. It is causing some of the men’s feet to swell to two or three times their normal size and they are saying that their feet are completely dead. One man has said that his feet are so dead, you could stick a bayonet through them and he would not feel a thing. Only a few men who have had this awful illness have been lucky enough not to lose their feet. It is then that I could hear men lying and screaming out with pain. It seems that the worse comes when the swelling goes down. It is strange, this seems to be getting to be quite common yet it has no name.

There are so many other illnesses as well as this foot disease. Many of which the majority of men would have heard of in the household. Illnesses such as influenza, colds and infections spread like wild fire among the soldiers. We live in such close proximity to one another it is almost impossible to catch at least one illness at some time or another. Also there are rats which carry and spread diseases living in among us.

I have seen so many horrid creatures in the trenches and my living space. There are so many rats, they seem to be multiplying daily, most likely due to the fact they are living off of the (urgh) dead carcasses which lie about everywhere. The trenches and the water that is lining the bottom of them are alive with frogs, and red slugs which climb up the sides.

There are many careless men out here. Men that do stupid things such as stick their head over the top of the trench to look out at No-Mans-Land and get their heads shot off by the enemies. I am not one of them though, at least not yet. As I look out to No-Mans-Lands, carefully and safely, I can see many dead men. Some of these men haven’t done anything wrong. They may have been forced to sign up, never killed anyone in their life. Yet here they are lying dead on the ground. Not all of them have been directly hit. Some of them have been killed by the impact of an explosion.

I better go to sleep now anyway and hope that nothing happens to me during this night.

War is unfair and so is life.

Michael.