A Soldier's Diary: All Quiet On The Western Front

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I feel like a rat, hiding in these trenches. There are more threats than the enemy in our own trenches. Swarms of lice and rats will kill us before the enemy gets the chance to. The trenches are just joint holes filled with mud, water and corpses. The mud and water gets everywhere: my rifle and clothes have to be cleaned almost every hour. Still after two weeks of fighting in France one thing that haunts me one the numerous corpses littered around the trenches. It’s the smell that stays with me; the mixture of faeces and decaying bodies seemingly blinding my nostrils from anything else. If only the French were to have moved the bodies away from the trenches before they buried them. The corpses have become a part of the trenches. It really doesn’t help the state of mind being reminded you could die and be tossed away like nothing. The survivors, if you could even call them that, don’t seem to be fairing any better than the dead. Some seem physically fit for a fight however the slight crooked smile they wear tells a different story.

It was all lies. There’s no glory and honour in this. These conditions have driven soldiers to shoot themselves in the leg or arm so they would be able to be sent back to their
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I’ve seen things no person should have to. Just yesterday during a charge towards German trenches, they released the gas I had heard so much about. We were luckily supplied with these masks which we were told would allow us to avoid drowning in the sea of green. Some of the men rushing with us weren’t as lucky; those poor souls. The inhuman sounds they made as the gas filled their lungs is plaguing my head as I write this. At least one of them knew what he’d have to suffer through. The gunshot after his sounds of vomiting and coughing up his lungs reminded me the horrific choices these young men make out

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