Trench Diary

Dear Mother and Father,
Last time I talked to y'all, I was in a trench on the battlefield, and now I am in a hospital in France. It all started out when I was in the Firing Trench, which is the first trench on the battlefield and is right behind No Man’s Land. It is 45 yards in front of the Cover Trench, and it is where we fire at the Germans. The trench has a dugout, duckboards, and firesteps. In the dugout, all the soldiers ate, slept, and rested before battle. Since there were so many people, we all suffered from diseases. I suffered from malnutrition because we had a lack of nutritious and food. Most of the time we ate bully beef and biscuits, and one time we had rice and peas. I was always very tired from being malnourished, and the food was always contaminated from rats. I would get very sick from the dirty conditions in the trenches. …show more content…
We got in ready position, and our commander blew a whistle. Being in this war, changed my life completely. We rapidly climbed the ladders onto the fire steps up on the parapet. We started shooting, but I was extremely scared and afraid of getting hurt or dying. We constantly had to go back to the ammunition shelf to reload our guns. While many of us were shooting, others were doing work detail jobs. About 30 minutes into shooting, a shell came and hit the ground right by the trench. A piece of the shrapnel came and hit me in the right leg, and some of the other soldiers died. I was truly lucky that I did not die, but I did have to get my leg amputated. It was the most painful thing I have ever experienced in my whole