Ww1 Informal Letter

War is hell.That is a summary of my life right now.we have been spend a few months in the trenches which is not better than warfare.There is disease and death.There are dead bodies, human waste , and men who have not showered in months. In the trenches the air is so wet,and there is water at the bottom. There are many times where we are ankle deep in mud for weeks on end. Many of us have trench foot ,is a horrible condition where our feet become waterlogged and

A 4 foot deep trench was dug into the ground miles wide. Swerving through trees and hills. The smell of worms filled my nose as the fresh earth lay behind the trench. Proper defences were created to give us a better chance at defending the German attack. At 10:00 a.m. the first German soldiers were spotted. I held my rifle at my shoulder and looked through the small cut out in the trench. Thousands of Germans were running through open fields. Red mist coming out of most. A deafening array of gunfire to my left and right. With the rifle’s sight up to my eye, German soldiers were put into picture, and with a squeeze of a trigger, and a loud scream, they would fall over. Flashes of light came from 300 meters away. German snipers were picking out targets from an almost unreachable distance. Helmets were flying off left and right. My friends dying in front of my eyes. A single bullet was forced through the barrel of a Gewehr 98 rifle. Traveling at 878 meters per second, an 8 millimeter cartridge hit my helmet. It continued through into my skull, shredding my brain. Feeling nothing, my body lay on the ground dead. Blood spilling from the side of my head out of the helmet. The rats came running. Dead meat attracted hundreds of them. Crawling in and out of bodies, getting free meals along the way. A funeral wasn’t held for myself and the other casualties until after the war. The Treaty of Versailles was signed 5 years

How are you and the kids? I miss you so much and wish I could be at home with you, John, and Anna. I don’t spend a day without thinking about you and the kids and it has been such long time since I’ve held you in my arms. How is the bakery business going? I hope running the business while taking care of John and Anna isn’t too stressful. I’m writing to you from a camp reserve right now, and it’s been a week since we captured Vimy Ridge. It has been so cold, wet, and muddy, and I’ve been struggling to keep warm so if possible, it would be helpful if you could send a few pairs of socks. While resting in the trenches during the battle,

Living in the trenches is extremely horrible, even though I have only been in it for two days. Although, it is clever that these trenches, that are created by digging in the mud, are designed to protect us from machine gun fire. They are muddy, and when it rains, the mud can slowly trickle onto my outfit. These trenches are rat infested, and the filthy rats always steal the last morsels of food that we have. We use the backside of our shovel to smash and kill the filthy rats. When I first smashed a rat, blood oozed out of the rat and its body was twisted. Nobody could bear to watch that horrendous sight anymore. I immediately ran away; it was the first living thing that I had killed in my entire life. I felt happy but remorseful at the same time. Here in the Western Front, clouds always block the rays of the vivid sunshine; the

These past couple of weeks haven’t so been easy for me. I know I went through a lot at home, but the stress is even worse here. The trenches are horrible, the fighting is horrible and the food is horrible! The trenches are muddy, cold and just horrendous. It smells like rotting dead bodies everywhere I go. Every hour, there’s a grenade flying over my head and I know that my luck is running out. There’s going to be a time when I am not going to be able to pick the grenade up fast enough to throw it over the trench. That isn’t even the worst of it. A bunch of my comrades and I are coming down with trench foot. Our feet are swollen, cut up, wet, cold, muddy and disgusting. I’m hoping the war will end fast enough so that I won’t have to get my legs chopped off. And you

We arrived in the trenches six nights ago. We do most of our work during the night to go unnoticed by the Germans. Shells are bursting around me as I write to you. The noise is unnerving. I think I’ve had seven hours sleep in the last three days. There

Although it’s been nearly a year since I’ve last visited home, the fight continues to rage on. Your care package with all the goods, including the fresh pair of socks, was very nice. I saw a fellow soldier in my unit die from trench foot about a fortnight ago. It was terrifying to witness, as his toes were all permanently stuck together, but I stay out of the poor conditions of the trenches as much as a can. Another surprising event that occurred was when I was dozing off. I realized there were rats in my blanket with me. Disgusted, I quickly jumped up and tried kicking them around, but they got away.

But during the Germans were planning their offensive, French airmen had spotted the German Guns moving to a concentrated spot across no man’s land. Over the next week or so, The French moved thousands of men and Guns to the Verdun trenches. Eventually the Germans started their Artillery bombardment and apart from killing and injuring a large number of men, knocked out a nearby rail line, where the French had been getting the food and ammunition moved up to the front, they removed the rail line and used it as a convoy road, so they could still receive their supplies, if they did not figure out how to continue their deliveries of supplies the battle would have turned out

Right now, I am sitting in dirty, muddy and quite frankly, disgusting trenches somewhere on the Western Front. All I can do is to feel anxiousness and fear which makes the time go by, albeit unpleasant. It’s very cold here. It’s as if there were ice patches surrounding me and enclosing my body during the freezing days and nights, making me constantly shiver. All I can think of every single day is about my loving family which keeps my spirit alive. Though I feel cold on the outside, the thoughts for both of you bring warmth to my heart.

While the allied losses were at the time shocking, the attrition of the German army’s moral and resources would have dramatic effects as the war continued. By the Somme’s end, total resulting casualties on both sides were appalling: 419,654 British Commonwealth and domain soldiers, near to 200,000 French soldiers, and 465,000 German troops. Physically, the 4 month campaign resulted in very limited allied advances, varying from a few hundred yards to 7 miles along a thirty mile front. This was not however the only achievement of the battle of the Somme. Hindenburg, a German general admitted within his Memoirs that while very little land was lost fighting in the Somme, the German army wouldn’t have survived many more campaigns similar to it or Verdun. Moreover, the Somme marked a change in the global perception of Britain; it became a force to be reckoned with. Erich von Falkenhayn, Chief of the German General Staff had anticipated a major, but inept, British attack, and without Allied efforts to conceal preparations for the Somme, he was aware of its location. Falkenhayn could not, however, have anticipated the commitment of Britain and France at the Somme and the drawn out erosion of his resources that the battle would become. His original intentions were to launch a swift counter attack, driving the BEF out of Europe while wearing down the French army to an eventual defeat. With this in mind, on July 1st 1916 to prevent the 27 divisions, or around 750,000 Allied

I couldn't move or think. I saw men running, guns swinging, and the camp covered in blood n bullets. It's like my whole body froze in that minute. I start to run and I see soldiers wounded all over the place. I look back and forth debating if I should save myself or help the other soldiers. I grab two men and brah them into a empty room. I told the men to stay put and that I would be right back because I needed to get medicine and supplies. I start to run but before my eyes could see it, a union soldier stabbed me right in the leg with his bayonet. I was sure that I was gonna die right there but I ended up waking up in a hospital. I thought missing my leg was enough but coming home not seeing my wife's face was tragic. I didn’t know what to do anymore. I didn’t know either to feel angry towards the union army, my wife's sickness, me being lonely. But in the end, my wife and my son would want me to forgive and to be happy, not to be a lonely grump. So I started practicing medicine more. This hard for me though. I really didn’t want to live knowing that I’m lonely and it's hurts. I took more classes and studied more since I had the time. After a couple years, I heard the Robert E. Lee had

He leaped out of the plane. I stepped closer to the door and looked down at the scorched battlefield underneath me. I felt the dreaded tap on my back from the commander and knew that it was my turn to leap into the battlefield below. I could feel adrenalin making its way through out my body. I began sweating and felt sweat drip from my brow as I readied myself for the jump. He tapped me again telling me to hurry up. I leapt out and felt myself accelerate through the cold air before felling the sudden jolt as the parachute opened and slowed my decent. I felt weightless like a dandelion seed floating and being caught by the wind. I looked down and studied the violent battlefield that was approaching me slowly. I could see through the clear blue sky for miles but it was the same scene in every direction. Smoke, destruction and the eyesore of decimation all around. There were planes in the air and tanks on the ground and small figures that were men on the ground running. It looked just like a sand table in action. I could hear gunshots, ear piercing explosions from this height and mortars being fired. I could smell the strong smell of smoke from fires caused by explosives. As the ground got closer and the first of the paratroopers started to touch the ground I started to prepare myself for the coming landing. Seconds later the ground touched my feet before I swiftly undid my parachute and began to run toward the trench were I would meet with the rest of my squadron. I looked around for James my friend whom I had I last seen before he jumped out of the plane ahead, but I couldn’t see him. I tripped up whilst running and fell. I looked back to see what had tripped me

The reason why I’m writing this letter is to not get out of the decision that I’ve made. Even though you warned me of the reality of what war really is, the main reason why I am writing this is to thank you for making me the kind of person I am today. I learned a lot of things being in war. In the type of conditions we face at the trenches require most of the crew to be alert and focused. At any given time our enemies could head on attack our fort, so in order to be focused the men and I, have little to sometimes no sleep for days.

When I came to senses again I looked around to see what was happening only to find that the enemy were in front of us shooting madly and shouting commands. Some of the soldiers that managed to be fine were shooting back at the enemy, but a few the soldiers were one the ground bleeding or had mortal wounds groaning in agony and a large amount of my team lying motionless. Soon enough the air smelt of blood and smoke. I knew I had to do help my team and tried to stand up only to feel a sharp pain course through my leg I groaned in agony looking sown to find that my leg was blown off and was bleeding severely. I tried my best to stop the building and stand up but soon enough I had lost so much blood that I wasn’t able to move so all I could do was sit there and watch my comrades get picked off. Me and my group were an elite squad but against

As one local soldier wrote back, ‘ I think I shall never forget that terrible Thursday evening when the enemy attacked us with gas. We stumbled about half-blind, rubbing our eyes. The whole party realised that the boys holding the hill needed the bombs so we groped our way along as best we could, snuffling and coughing, our eyes blinking and streaming. It certainly was a very busy time for me; our section did not have any rest for nearly a week, in fact we never had the harnesses off our horses for five days’. Private Tom Beal of The Gloucestershire Regiment, wrote to his uncle in Epworth saying, ‘if only we had the Germans on open country, we should soon wipe them out. We should be more satisfied to have a fair smack at them than to face